Hometown Cinderella

“So we’re neighbors,” Eden said, lamenting the fact more to herself than to him.

“Neighbors, but not friends,” he countered, turning on his heel and once again presenting his back to her as he walked away.

And even if it was a very, very fine back, Eden had to fight the inordinate urge to pick up a rock and aim for it.

Chapter Two

Cam had done his usual morning workout before he’d gone on duty. But he knew if he didn’t work off some of what Eden Perry had riled up in him he’d never be able to relax, let alone sleep that night. So about eight o’clock he went out the back door of his house and braved the cold January air to cross his yard to the garage.

Both his and Eden’s houses and garages had originally been built by identical twin brothers who had designed the ranch-style houses and the garages to be as much alike as the brothers themselves. Which meant that both garages were single-car sized with a second story containing very small studio apartments. Each apartment was comprised of an open space for a combined living room-bedroom, a tiny bathroom, and a bare-basics kitchen made up of a few cupboards, a sink and a section that could accommodate a refrigerator and a stove.

Cam had had plans to buy the house, garage and apartment at the end of his lease, figuring to eventually add the now-missing stove and refrigerator, and rent the place to a college kid for some extra income. Until then, it was a decent spot for his weights and other gym equipment.

But after spending even a small amount of time that afternoon with Eden Perry he thought he should reconsider buying the place at all and being right next door to her indefinitely.

He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to even live out the next two months of the lease so near to Her Royal Highness The Mighty Forensic Artist.

He slung the towel he’d brought with him over the stand that held his weights, and stripped off his sweats so he was only in gym shorts and a T-shirt. Then he started to do his second warm-up of the day, hoping that exercise would get Eden Perry out of his head. Because that’s where she’d been since the first minute he’d set eyes on her at the station today.

If there were any justice in the world, he thought as he stretched his calf muscles, she would have stayed looking the way she had when she was a teenager—hair that had been such a bright orange and so stick-out-everywhere curly that it had looked as if it belonged on a clown wig, glasses as thick as the bottoms of mayonnaise jars, braces imprisoning crooked teeth, bad skin and a body that had been as flat as a pancake with only knobby knees and pointy elbows to give her any shape at all.

Her homeliness had helped him make it through that miserable time he’d had to spend with her fourteen years ago. He’d figured that it served her right, that it was a warning of what was below the surface—foul on the outside, foul on the inside. It had seemed fitting.

But now?

Hell, now she was so damn gorgeous his mouth had nearly dropped open when she’d stopped at the end of that hallway coming back into the office.

And that didn’t seem fair….

Sufficiently warmed up, he got down on the floor for sit-ups. But that still didn’t allow him an escape from thinking about Eden Perry.

Her hair wasn’t orange anymore, now it was the color of Colorado’s red rocks when they were drenched with spring rain—a deep, warm, fresh lobster hue. And the kinky curl? That had calmed down to thick, shiny waves that fell to her shoulders.

It didn’t frame a splotchy, zitty face any longer, either. Her teenage blemishes had cleared and what she had left was skin like the petals of a pale pink rose. Dewy, soft-looking skin over high cheekbones, a delicate nose and a facial structure that had somehow blossomed into a kind of subtle elegance.

Damn her, anyway.

The braces had apparently done their job, too, because her teeth were straight. And gleaming white behind lips that were no longer chapped and uninviting. Lips that had the barest blush to them and were anything but uninviting….

He picked up the speed on the sit-ups.

But no matter how fast and furious he did them, the mental image of Eden kept assaulting him.

He’d been shocked to see her eyes. He guessed he’d never noticed them when they’d been hidden behind the lenses of her glasses. But when she’d raised them to him that afternoon? It had been hard to believe he could have ever missed them. They were blue—like a clear summer sky—but they were like looking at that clear blue sky through frosted crystal. They almost seemed transparent. And coupled with that hair? Geez, she was a knockout.

He flipped over and started doing push-ups even faster than he’d done sit-ups, counting them aloud in hopes that that would distract him from thinking about Eden. From picturing her.

But did it?

No, it didn’t. At number thirty-one it occurred to him that that was Eden’s age. And that her thirty-one-year-old body was better than it had been, too. Not centerfold better, but definitely better enough that he hadn’t been aware of her elbows or knees. Instead he’d noticed that she was a tight, compact little package, with just enough up-front. Just enough to draw his interest. More than once.

Yeah, if Eden Perry wasn’t the transformation of the century, he didn’t know what was.

On the outside.

But what about the inside? That probably hadn’t changed, he thought with some satisfaction.

The satisfaction was short-lived, however, because when he tried to think of how her bad disposition had displayed itself he couldn’t come up with anything.

He’d been the one with the bad disposition today. She hadn’t acted the way she had when they were teenagers, and he reluctantly—very reluctantly—admitted that.

Of course she also hadn’t been warm and friendly.

But then neither had he.

He’d been rude and obnoxious, if the truth be told. And she hadn’t even shot back at him.

How come? he wondered suddenly.

That sure as hell wasn’t the old Eden Perry. The old Eden Perry would have shot first. And barring that, she would certainly have returned fire. Hell, the Eden Perry he’d known would have mounted a savage counterattack.

But the Eden Perry he’d known had also been sixteen years old, he thought—again for no reason he understood. Sixteen years old and as ugly as a mud fence. And this Eden Perry wasn’t either of those things anymore.

So, what if she also wasn’t the rude, mouthy, insulting, aggravating nightmare she’d been before, either?

That would be hard to believe!

But somehow the possibility slowed his push-ups and eventually brought them to a stop.

Was it possible Eden Perry was different outside and inside? he asked himself as he moved on to the weight bench for a few biceps curls.

Eden Perry different…

Huh.

Did he buy that? Did he buy the all-business version she’d been today? Kind of wooden but not nasty or mean-spirited or bitchy?

He didn’t know. He supposed that he could concede that she might—just might—have learned to curb her tongue in the course of growing up.

But so what? he asked himself. Did that mean that she thought of him any differently than she had when they were kids?

Probably not.

And given that, did he want anything more to do with her than he had when he’d been expecting that sharp tongue to fly out and cut him like a razor blade?

No, he didn’t.

Even if she was something pretty eye-popping to look at.