Just Desserts (14 page)

If possible, he liked her even more.

He steadied her as she got her footing then managed to get to his own feet, dripping mud and primordial ooze.

Apparently it was a good look in the dog world because Rhoda wagged her tail and nuzzled his hand like they were long-lost friends. For every step backward he took, Rhoda took two forward.

“For what it's worth,” she said, obviously trying not to laugh, “she doesn't like just anyone.”

“What does she do to people she doesn't like?”

“Pretty much ignores them.” Her eyes were practically dancing with amusement. “It's a kind of good news, bad news thing.”

Rhoda, sensing her moment, rose up on her hind legs and placed her two massive front paws against his chest. Her brown eyes were aglow with doggie adoration.

He had to admit there was something to be said for unconditional love.

He looked over at Hayley. “You said she likes Chinese.”

“Egg rolls rock her world.”

“I brought four of them. If that guy Lou didn't eat his way through the order, she can have one.”

“Don't worry. Lou won't eat the egg rolls.” She seemed highly amused by the whole thing. “How much did he soak you for?”

“Ten bucks for thirty minutes. He said we can negotiate beyond that.”

“Lou is an institution around here. You'll be lucky if you get your bags back for less than twenty.”

“He's worse than a three-card monte hustler.”

“Don't give him any ideas. He'll set up a table at the corner of Main and Watch Your Wallet.”

“Just in case, what else does Cujo here like?”

“Lo mein, hot-and-sour soup—”

“She's not getting the soup.”

“She's flexible. Half an egg roll and she'll be your friend for life.”

“And another dream comes true.”

The laughter she had been holding back broke free. “I'm sorry,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes, “but if this is a date, we're in big trouble.”

“So you think this is a date?”

“Actually I'm not sure.” Her smile downshifted. “Are you?”

“I debated it all the way down the turnpike. The jury's out.”

“I was counting on you to come up with the answer.”

“We're both single and there's Chinese food involved. Where I come from that usually means something.”

“Maybe it just means we like Chinese food,” she suggested.

He glanced down at himself. “And mud.”

“We could hose you down in the backyard.”

“Or run me through the car wash.” He took a close look at her. “Maybe we can get a two-for-one deal.”

“You can use my shower. Well, you can use it after I re-hide the junk I hid behind the shower curtain before you got here. And, to be perfectly honest, I should tell you the shower curtain has seen better days. If I didn't look like the loser in a mud-wrestling contest, I'd run over to Target and buy a new one.”

He started to laugh. “The point of hiding stuff behind the shower curtain is to keep people from knowing you hide stuff behind your shower curtain.”

“You sound like you have some shower curtain experience of your own.”

“Ovens work too. Great for dirty dishes.”

“I'm a baker. I use my oven.”

“You use your shower too.”

“I keep forgetting you're a lawyer. Everything I say can and will be held against me.”

“Don't worry. I don't think this rises to Miranda standards.”

She whistled for Rhoda, who had wandered off to inspect an azalea bush, then turned back to Finn. “Come on. I can wash and dry your clothes in the time it takes us to stand here and talk about it.”

“It's too much trouble.”

“It's not like I'll be scrubbing them against a rock. You can't drive home in a mud suit.”

She had a point there.

“It's really simple, Rafferty, I promise. You take your clothes off. I wash them and dry them. You put them back on.” She flashed him a grin. “And don't worry. I promise I won't peek.”

A date,
he thought, as they followed Rhoda back to the bakery.

No doubt about it.

Lou next door liked to sit in front of his son's dry-cleaning establishment and watch the world go by. Weather permitting, Lou set up a lawn chair on the sidewalk every afternoon, poured himself a cold one, and waited for something to happen. Unfortunately for Lou, Lakeside was a very small town, which meant that on a given day nothing much did.

Hayley knew that the sight of the three of them—Finn, Rhoda, and herself—all covered in mud and gunk would be a gossip bonanza.

“Don't say anything more than you have to,” she warned Finn as they approached. “Mary Jane Espo already has enough information. And don't let him talk you out of more than twenty bucks. He may look old and innocent but he's an operator.”

An operator with the second-biggest mouth in town. News of the tall, dark, and handsome stranger bearing bags of Chinese food had probably spread from one side of town to the other.

“Forty-two minutes,” the old man greeted them as he protected the bags of food at his feet from her inquisitive dog. “That's thirty-five dollars.”

“Lou!” Hayley shot him her most quelling look. “He is so not paying you thirty-five dollars for watching our food. We'll give you fifteen and even that's highway robbery.”

Lou could scowl with the best of them. In his day he had inspired terror in the local kids. “Thirty.”

Rafferty stepped forward. “Our agreement was ten dollars for thirty minutes, right?”

Lou took a long drag on his cigar and nodded. “Yep.”

“Hayley's right. At that rate, forty-two minutes comes out to fifteen bucks.” He paused for effect. “If you round it up.”

“What are you,” Lou demanded, “some kind of lawyer?”

“He is,” Hayley said. “And a good one too.”

Lou didn't miss a beat. “Twenty-five. That's with the professional discount.”

“Twenty,” Rafferty countered, “and I'll toss in an egg roll.” He grinned at the old con artist. “That's a professional courtesy.”

Rafferty pulled a soggy twenty from his back pocket and handed it to Lou. Lou held it up to the sun, inspected it front and back, then stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

He pushed the bags toward Rafferty.

“I already ate one of the egg rolls,” he admitted. “My blood sugar…”

She met Finn's eyes over the old man's head and saw a mixture of compassion, amazement, and laughter ready to break free any second. The compassion alone was enough to do her in.

Hayley led him around the side of the building to the back door. “You managed to ransom back our Chinese food with only minor financial damage and Lou still thinks he came out on top. Very impressive.”

She wiped Rhoda's massive paws with a rag dipped in the pail of water she kept near the door for that purpose.

“He's tough,” Finn said as he pulled off his muddy shoes and left them on the doormat. “I'd rather go up against a hungry divorce lawyer than that guy.”

Rhoda shook herself then bounded up the back stairs.

She kicked off her shoes on the mat beside his. “You didn't have to give him anything.”

“Tell that to Lou.”

“You were kind to him. Not everybody is.”

“Maybe I was trying to impress his neighbor.”

“I don't think that's the only reason.”

“What can I tell you?” he said as he followed her upstairs. “He reminds me of my uncle Paddy.”

“Your uncle Paddy extorts neighbors for bingo money?” she asked over her shoulder.

“He instituted a Christmas gift surcharge that put his two daughters through college.”

“You lie!”

“He died at ninety-three with six thousand dollars in singles under his mattress.”

She laughed out loud. “He would've loved my aunt Fee. She works from home as a seamstress. I think she has every dollar she ever earned tucked away in her hall closets.”

Two nosy cats scattered when she and Finn reached the second-floor landing.

“Georgette and Phyllis,” he said.

“Mary and Ted, but nice try.” Where was Murray? She started down the hall. “The washer and dryer are on this floor. Give me five minutes to grab the stuff I hid in the bathtub and hide it somewhere else, then it's all yours.”

“Okay,” he said. “Sounds like a plan.”

Two huge armfuls of junk later she handed him a stack of brand-new bath towels and a fresh bar of Dial, and pointed him down the hallway.

“Pink?” he said, staring at the fluffy pile of colorful terry cloth.

“Hot pink,” she corrected him. “They were final sale at Target. We stocked up.”

“Do you have something in white or a manly navy?”

“Hot pink,” she repeated. “Good luck.”

She told him to leave his dirty clothes outside the bathroom door and she would start a wash before she went upstairs.

“Still think it's a date?” she asked as he disappeared into the bathroom.

Fortunately his answer was muffled by the sound of her phone ringing.

“Is it the lawyer?” Aunt Fiona demanded the second Hayley said hello.

“Lou outdid himself this time. I figured it would take him until after supper to cover your side of town.”

“Not Lou. Mary Jane Esposito called to tell me she saw you rolling in the mud by the lake with some strange man.”

“He's not a strange man. Yes, he's the lawyer who commissioned the cake I'm doing next week and no, we weren't rolling in the mud. Rhoda ran away. He found her. She knocked him down. I slipped. We both ended up in the mud. And I thought I told you he was driving down when you called earlier.”

“You did and I'm disappointed,” Aunt Fee said. “I was hoping for something a lot juicier.”

“Go back to watching your
Melrose Place
reruns, Fee. I'll call you later.”

She heard the squeak as the bathroom door opened and then closed, followed by the sound of running water. One of the benefits to living above the shop was the fact that she had an industrial-strength water heater at the ready whenever they needed it. When you shared close quarters with a teenage girl this was no small thing.

She grabbed his muddy jeans and T-shirt and tried not to dwell on the fact that there was no underwear in the mix. The Suit she met last week wouldn't go commando but the man in the mud with her just might.

Either way she wasn't going to think about it. His underwear (or lack thereof ) wasn't any of her business. It never would be her business.

Even if she was doing his laundry.

 

Finn was fiddling with the wonky shower nozzle when he saw the cat. The huge white feline was balanced precariously on the shower rod, watching him like he was an open can of Fancy Feast.

“Hey, kitty,” he said in what he hoped was a neutral, non-threatening tone of voice. “How about you get down and sit over by the door.”

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable request, but the cat arched its back like a circus high-wire walker and took a step closer to him.

Naked in the shower with a pissed-off fifty-pound voyeuristic cat.

Not good.

“Okay, kitty, time to back off.”

The cat laughed in his face, clear proof he wouldn't be taking home a stray feline anytime soon. A cat would wipe the floor with him.

“Didn't anyone tell you cats hate water?” he said as he made another pass at turning off the faucet. A fine spray was shooting everywhere and the cat didn't seem to notice.

Old Fluffy made another Flying Wallenda move on the shower rod deeper into Finn's naked comfort zone, close enough that he could smell the catnip on his breath.

How the hell had the cat gotten in there in the first place? The room was small. There was no way he would have missed the king-sized furball, no matter how preoccupied he had been.

He heard loud snuffling outside the door. Just what he needed. A giant cat on steroids on one side of the door and a dog the size of a runaway moose on the other.

The cat watched as he stepped out of the tub and reached for the hot-pink towel. A layer of terry cloth wasn't much in the way of protection but it was a step up from naked.

The snuffling stopped, replaced by a quick double knock. Either Rhoda had shaved her knuckles or Hayley was on the other side.

“Finn, is Murray in there with you?”

Now there was a question he had never heard before.

“If Murray is fat, white, and furry, the answer is yes.”

“Thank God! I've been tearing the house apart looking for him.”

“He's balanced on top of the shower rod glaring down at me.”

The silence went on longer than he liked.

“I can handle it,” he said. “Is he homicidal?”

“He's not homicidal.” A long pause. “Finn, I don't know how to tell you this, but he needs the litter box.”

 

The door swung open before the words “litter box” faded and Hayley found herself staring straight into the sun.

Okay, so maybe she wasn't staring into the sun but it felt like it. She was staring at Finn Rafferty's splendid, nearly naked body. The same body she had been happily sprawled across less than thirty minutes ago, the interesting contours of which were branded against her hip and thigh. The only thing keeping her from a full-on swoon was the hot pink towel wrapped around his midsection. If it slipped, she couldn't be held accountable.

During her marriage to Michael Goldstein, she had perfected a cool seen-it-all expression that had served her well. Never let them see you sweat. How well that philosophy would hold up against this full frontal peep show had yet to be determined.

“The litter box?” Rafferty didn't look at all his cool and confident self.

She really didn't want to be having the litter box conversation.

“His box is inside the vanity,” she explained. “He must have been in there when you closed the bathroom door.”

“So he just popped out to say hello.”

“He popped out to tell you he wants privacy.”

Rafferty poked his head back into the bathroom. “Knock yourself out, Murray,” he said and closed the door.

And things had been going so well up until then.

Runaway dogs. Mud wrestling. Litter boxes. What on earth had she done wrong to piss off the fates?

“At the risk of sounding like one of those cat ladies, Murray really doesn't like having the door closed on him.”

“Whatever Murray wants.” He opened the door an inch. “Maybe he—” The dazed and confused expression he had been sporting suddenly morphed into something a little wicked and a whole lot warmer.

“What's your problem?” she asked. “Animals have preferences same as we do. I have to tell you, Rafferty, I don't think you're ready to—”

She followed his gaze and looked down at herself. Skin, skin, and more skin. Not to mention a small puddle of water at her feet. Rafferty wasn't the only one clad in nothing but a towel. Wet, pin-straight, truly bad hair spilled over her naked shoulders. Naked arms. Naked legs. Naked thighs complete with cellulite and three nasty little spider veins. She took small comfort in the fact that she had shaved her legs last night. Except for the stretch marks she now officially had no secrets.

Where was the earth-destroying meteor when you needed it?

“Your clothes should be dry in fifteen,” she told him as casually as she could manage given the circumstances. “We have some T-shirts and yoga pants downstairs in the pantry if you don't want to wait.” And a hypnotist who'll erase my thighs from your memory banks. She started backing down the hallway, praying for dim lighting and poor eyesight.

 

Murray stood in the doorway looking up at Finn.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, bending down to scratch the woolly mammoth behind the ear. “You're wondering why I didn't make a move.”

Murray purred and leaned into his hand.

“It's complicated, Murr. Be glad you're a cat.”

Sometimes being a red-blooded male of the human species wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The heat between them had been palpable. The chemistry had been there from the first moment they met.

So would somebody please explain what he was doing standing there talking to a cat?