Troublemaker (7 page)

She grunted from effort as she dragged the duffle out of the Tahoe; it was so heavy she couldn't prevent it from thudding to the ground, so she knew he hadn't lifted it into the SUV himself. Probably he hadn't even packed it himself.

Huffing and puffing, she lifted one end of the duffle and dragged it
to the house and inside the door, where she let it drop with a thud. She looked at the flight of stairs going to the loft bedrooms, pondering the further logistics of her houseguest. She doubted he could make it up the stairs to the guest bedroom, so that meant he'd be sleeping on the sofa. There wasn't any point in trying to wrestle the heavy bag upstairs when he'd need it down here. At least there was a full bathroom on the ground floor, or they'd have a serious problem. For now, the best she could do was shove the duffle close to the sofa so he could reach it if he needed anything.

His eyes were still closed despite Tricks's bouncing back and forth. Bo hesitated a minute, thinking of all that needed doing, such as feeding them both and probably taking care of somehow getting him to the bathroom. Testing the waters, she asked, “Are you conscious?”

No answer.

Damn. She didn't know if that was good or not. If he was just asleep, that was good. On the other hand, if he was
unconscious,
that could be very bad. She shouldn't disturb him if he was sleeping. If he was unconscious, not doing something could kill him.

This was a bona fide dilemma.

Better to make a mistake and ask forgiveness than do nothing at all,
as the saying went. She leaned over him and gently shook his right shoulder. “Hey—”

That was the only word she got out because his eyes flared open and his right arm shot out, his hand clamping around her throat, fingers digging deep and cutting off her air. For a split second all she could see was the blazing blue of his eyes, filling her own vision as it rapidly began dimming. Panic shot through her, hot and acid; the abrupt certainty that she was going to die blurred into an instinctive fury and without thought or even being able to see what she was aiming for, she struck, putting all her strength behind her right fist as she drove it toward his face. The impact jarred her arm all the way to her elbow.

He grunted,
“Fuck!”
and released her throat.

She staggered back, gasping for air, her hand going to her throat to
massage the aching tissue. As soon as she could suck in some air she gasped, “
Shit!”

They stared at each other from a safe distance of several feet.

Whoever had said it was better to make a mistake and ask forgiveness, blah blah blah, had been full of shit.

He'd been in the house fewer than five minutes, and he'd already tried to kill her. This
couldn't
be good.

S
HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN AXEL WOULD LIE.
“
NOT A
danger to her,”
hah!

Bo eyed him as she gingerly shook her hand; punching someone in the face
hurt
. Probably it hurt him, too, but that was his problem. He struggled to a sitting position and felt his nose. A little bit of blood trickled down and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

Guilt almost—but not quite—assailed her for punching a wounded man. Common sense told her not to be angry, but he'd been trying to choke her and she didn't feel very sensible about it. She wasn't the instigator here. Even as weak as he was, she knew in her gut that he could easily have killed her, likely would have if he hadn't realized what he was doing and who she was.

She didn't want him bleeding all over her sofa. Silently she fished in her pocket for one of the clean tissues she always carried, in case Tricks gave her a drink of water she hadn't asked for, and held it out to him. He took it and wiped at the blood, then looked down at the smear of blood on his hand and wiped it away too. He didn't seem to want to look at her.

Tough.

“What the hell?” she demanded and left it to him to decipher her meaning, not that he needed to be a mental giant to do so.

“Sorry,” he muttered, holding the tissue to his nose. “Just . . . don't shake me, okay? Yell, or throw something at me.”

“You can bet I'll throw something at you.” Annoyed, she realized she was as much as admitting she wasn't tossing him out on his keister. She'd made a deal with the devil, and she was getting paid for it.

Besides . . . she wasn't stupid. The man had been shot, after all, and she could add two and two. She said, “Combat?”

He hitched up his right shoulder, then froze as the movement evidently pulled on things that didn't want to be pulled. After a moment he said, “Of a sort.”

She didn't see how there could be a “sort” of combat; you either fought, or you didn't. Still, enough said. She got it. She was still grumpy about the incident, but she got it. She stood with her arms crossed, half-glaring down at him. “Okay,” she finally said. “But don't choke me again.”

Blue eyes flashed up at her. “I'll try not to.” He dabbed at the slowing trickle of blood from his nose. “You have a good punch. How's your hand?”

“Hurts.”

“So does my nose.”

“Good.”

He sat there looking as if he might keel over again, which made her wonder if she'd try to get him up or just let him lie there. No, she'd have to get him up, or Tricks would go bonkers with joy thinking a human on the floor was some new game. Thinking of Tricks made her look around in search of her pet, and she heard the big slurps from the kitchen as Tricks got a drink of water. She looked back at her guest to find him slowly surveying the mound of stuffed animals and squeaky toys in front of the sofa. His chest rose and fell as he took a cautious breath. “Booby trap?” he finally asked.

As if she knew they were now talking about her, Tricks abandoned her water bowl and grabbed another toy before trotting over. This one was a squeaky rubber chicken which she had never played with a lot, but
now she bit the squeaker and made what was supposed to be a clucking sound, then deposited it in his lap.

“Bribes,” Bo said. “She's trying to entice you to play with her.”

He looked down at the rubber chicken draped across his leg. Tricks nudged it as if urging him to pick it up. “She's gotta do better than a chicken.”

“She won't give up until you give in, so my advice is to go with it.”

He scowled at her, the expression on his rough face both annoyed and exhausted. “Can't you keep her in a crate or something? I'm really not up to this.”

He was only telling the truth, and ordinarily Bo would have already been making Tricks behave, but she was still pissed so she wasn't inclined to cut him any slack. “I'd put you in a crate before I would her,” she snapped. “Here, baby.” She clapped her hands and Tricks came to her, nuzzling her knee. She bent to stroke her dog and narrowed her eyes at the human interloper. “This is her home, not yours. You're here on sufferance.”

His glance was cold, telling her that despite his condition, he wasn't about to back down. “I'm here because you need the money.”

Knowing he was right didn't help her temper any. On the other hand, continuing to argue with him would be childish. She clenched her teeth, then grudgingly said, “You're right, and this isn't getting us anywhere. I'll try to keep her away from you. Before you pass out again, you need to eat something. What would you like?”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Okay, I'll fix you a smoothie.”

An appalled expression crossed his face before he quickly blanked it and said, “No, thanks, I'm really not hungry.”

“I didn't ask if you were hungry.” Her tone was curt. “If you don't have something, you'll just get weaker. It's common sense. If you aren't up to solid food, I can throw together a smoothie with some peanut butter, milk, banana—things like that. That way you'll at least have something nourishing.”

“How about just some milk?”

“Fine with me, as long as it has peanut butter and a banana in it.”

He muttered something under his breath, but her own expression must have said he'd drink it or wear it, so he finally said, “I don't care, make what you want.”

She intended to. She turned and went to the kitchen, which meant the middle section of the wide-open bottom floor plan. She lived in a barn—a real, honest-to-God barn, one that she herself had overseen the design and renovation of, though it hadn't been for herself because she'd never wanted to live in a barn. She'd done it for a client who had then backed out on her, leaving her saddled with debt and a barn dwelling she didn't want in a location she hadn't picked for herself.

But it had worked out. She couldn't say it hadn't. The barn had become hers, and she had made a life for herself here in this little corner of West Virginia, with the mountains and rivers and plenty of space for Tricks. She had friends, she had a job—two of them—and damn if she wasn't content with it all.

The kitchen was a brightly lit square, framed by posts that set it off, and the flooring was slate while the rest of the first floor was plank hardwood. It was so open that she could keep an eye on both Tricks and Yancy while she threw things into the blender: milk, yogurt, peanut butter, a banana, vanilla flavoring. She kept the portions small, because she didn't think he'd be able to down very much. That was guessing on her part because she'd never been seriously ill or injured, but she imagined his appetite would be slow to return. The trick was to keep enough nutrients in him that he'd get better. The deal was to give him a safe place to recuperate, right? Once he had recuperated and could take care of himself, he'd be gone; therefore, the better care she took of him now, even if she had to bully him to eat, the better the deal for her.

Besides, she liked the idea of bullying him. He'd not only tried to choke her, but he didn't like Tricks. She found the second charge the most damning. Okay, so a lot of people weren't animal lovers, but considering his position in her house he'd been damned rude about it. He wasn't even allergic because he hadn't started sneezing or anything even
when he was lying on the sofa, where Tricks liked to lounge. Some people were just butts, with no other explanation needed for their behavior.

She added ice to the blender and turned it on, running it until the contents were smooth. Then she poured it into a glass, stuck a straw in it, and took it to the sofa. “Here,” she said, setting the glass on the end table. “Cheers.”

Reluctantly he picked up the smoothie and sipped at it. It must not have been as bad as he'd anticipated, because he took a few more sips, then sighed and set it down. “Thanks,” he said, and though the word was grudging at least he said it.

“You're welcome. I need to take her for a walk—” At the word “walk,” Tricks grabbed her tennis ball and went to the door where she stood fairly vibrating with anticipation. “—and I'll be gone about twenty minutes, maybe a little longer. Do you want the TV on?”

“No, I just want to lie down and rest for a while.”

“Okay, then. Drink the rest of that smoothie.”

She started to leave the door unlocked, but realized that when she left, he would likely go back to sleep, which was the equivalent of leaving the house unprotected. Without saying anything, she got her keys and pistol as usual and grabbed a heavier coat on her way out the door, flipping the hood up to cover her head. The wind was now downright icy, and the low dark clouds pressing down on the hills looked as if they might start dropping snow any minute.

She locked the door and started off across the yard. Tricks dropped the ball at her feet and, as usual, took off running, certain Bo would throw the ball in the direction she'd chosen.

They had a route they walked, a path that had been tramped down over the many walks she'd taken since getting Tricks. The path wound around the edge of some woods, and Bo stayed well away from the small hidden lake where she sometimes let Tricks swim in the summer. Going to the lake was a treat, not a routine. Beyond the woods was a meadow, and beyond that more woods where the trail climbed a decent hill. When she'd first started walking Tricks, Bo would be out of breath by the time they reached the hill, much less climbed it, but now she crested
it without any problem. She threw the ball for Tricks the whole way, with Tricks racing back and forth.

This was the best part of every day, out walking with her dog, her boots making rustling noises in the fallen leaves, watching Tricks's joy as she dashed back and forth.

She would have liked to stay out longer than usual in case the weather turned especially nasty during the night, and she wouldn't be able to walk Tricks tomorrow as often as normal, but her other work waited for her at home and she couldn't prolong the walk forever. She said, “Let's go home, girl,” and, with a happy wag of her tail, Tricks reversed her course.

They were about halfway back when a hush fell around them. The wind died and fat, silent snowflakes began drifting down on them, the flakes decorating Tricks's pale golden fur like confetti. Bo took out her cell phone and snapped a few pictures of the dog with snowflakes on her head because she looked so pretty with the swiftly melting decorations. Tricks was a camera hog who stopped and posed, dark eyes bright and smiling, every time she saw a camera, as if she knew what a picture she made. “Good girl,” Bo crooned, bending down to nuzzle the top of her head. The dog cuddled against her for a minute, always happy for a snuggle, then they continued on the trail. The flurry stopped before they reached the house again, but given how cold it had gotten, Bo expected there would be more snow coming.

When she unlocked the door and went in, she saw that her “guest” was stretched out on the sofa, sound asleep. Tricks trotted over to him and began a head-to-toe sniffing exploration. Bo watched to see if he was disturbed, but he didn't stir, and after a minute Tricks abandoned him for one of the stuffed animals still piled in front of the sofa, shaking it, then trotting with it to her own bed where she beat it against the floor a time or two before dropping it and selecting another.

Bo checked the smoothie. He'd drunk about half of it, which she guessed was about as good as she could expect this first time. She poured the rest of it down the sink.

She had some time before feeding Tricks and herself, so she went to the small office area she'd set up under the slant of the stairs and opened the file on her computer. Her current project wasn't all that interesting, converting technical language on how to operate a camcorder into language the average person could follow, but it was something she was good at. It helped to have the actual product in her hands, but if that wasn't possible, she could make do with diagrams. As long as she could visualize the action, she could describe it.

One of the deals she'd made with the town was that it provide Wi-Fi to her house, meaning she could now send and receive all the data she needed to work without having to drive into town to use the library's Wi-Fi. Just that convenience had made a big difference in her productivity. She always had proposals out, and she worked hard at delivering her projects by deadline or ahead of time, so over the years her business and income had grown—but not grown enough to keep her afloat after getting saddled with the barn and all the personal debt she'd stupidly piled up getting
that
project done. With that one blow her fledgling business in house flipping had died a gruesome death, and she'd returned to the tech writing to keep herself in food.

Sometimes Bo could only marvel at how her life had turned on that one bad deal. At the time she'd been panic-stricken, but if the client hadn't left her holding the bag—or, in this case, the barn—she'd have moved on to another town, another house, and she wouldn't have the roots she'd eventually put down here. “Roots” had been an alien concept to her; she'd moved around, not getting attached to any place or any person, then life had happened and here she was. She had a place that had become home, she had friends—good ones—and she had Tricks. All in all, she thought she'd gotten the best part of the deal. Sure, sometimes she wished she could take in a concert or wander through a museum, eat at a restaurant with a decent wine list—and someday she might take a vacation and do just that—but she was oddly content where she was. No one could have been more surprised than she was at herself.

Tricks curled up on the rug beside Bo's chair and took a nap. With dog and man both asleep, Bo got in a couple of hours of solid concentration, finishing one project a week early and getting started on another. When her stomach reminded her that it was time to eat, she pushed back from the computer desk and stretched. Tricks immediately looked up, her expression one of happy anticipation because she too knew it was time for food.