tongue has been registered as a lethal weapon in a couple of states.”
There was a suitable comeback to that, he was quite sure. And it would have rolled out of his brother Max’s mouth immediately. But Mike wasn’t wired that way, to grab any opening a woman provided and charm his way through it. No. Instead, he kept his reactions deep inside, schooled in giving no one an advantage by revealing his thoughts. Especially like the ones flooding his mind right now…the heated images of what her tongue was capable of doing. Wicked things. Amazing things.
She glanced at the house. “I feel like I’m heading into the lion’s den.” Her face was a little pink. Probably from her stroll in the sunshine—not a subtle admission that she knew what had been going through his mind. And certainly not that her thoughts had echoed his.
“Have any idea what you’re going to say?”
“Not exactly. They don’t understand,” she said, not looking very sure who she was trying to convince more, herself or him. “I need to make them see that I’m talking about The Love Boat on land for seniors. Not the nasty, run-down home for the indigent that they’re picturing.”
“Sounds reasonable.” And it did. To him. A twenty-seven-year-old single male living in a small house in Queens. If he were the one being asked to leave his home and move into a sterile “retirement community”? Well…he wasn’t so sure.
“Thank you, Mr. Taylor. I really do appreciate you stopping, but I can handle this on my own now.”
He stared into her face, noting the blueness of her eyes, a contrast to the stormy gray they were when she was angry. She looked calm…resolute. Able to take on any challenge. He suspected her relatives would have more trouble on their hands with a determined Jennifer Feeney than with an enraged one. Because something told him this woman didn’t give up when there was something she wanted. Ever.
Oh. Right. She’d told him exactly that, hadn’t she?
“Goodbye,” she said, putting out her hand to shake his. She didn’t suggest they see one another again, didn’t offer her phone number or ask for his. And since he already knew she didn’t give up on anything she wanted, there was only one conclusion he could reach: she didn’t want him. The attraction was purely one-sided.
That, it seemed, was the end of that. The interesting interlude was over and he’d never see Jennifer Feeney again. By her choice. He wondered why the thought bothered him so much, considering he’d known her all of an hour.
Left with no other option, he put out his hand. Ignoring the cool softness of her skin against his, he said, “Good luck. Don’t kill anyone.”
Without another word, he got in his Jeep, and drove away.
RIGHT AFTER SHE’D BEEN DROPPED off in the driveway by Mr. Hunky-but-aloof, Jen calmly finished picking up all her things. Well, pretty calmly, considering how painful it was to see the mangled shoes and broken luggage. If her parents had been around to hear the words coming out of her mouth, they would have regretted wasting their money on her parochial-school education.
Somehow, she put aside her anger and managed to repack. Though she suspected Ida Mae and Ivy were watching from their windows, no matter how many times she looked toward them, she never caught as much as a twitch of a curtain.
That didn’t mean anything. The old structures were so dark inside—as forbidding and unwelcoming as a pair of caves—either of the aunts could have been standing behind an uncurtained window, studying her every move. Her gaze would never have been able to penetrate the murky recesses of the houses to see them. But she could see them in her mind. Arming themselves in case she came in. Or praying to the gods of mean old ladies for her to get in her car and drive away, never to bother them again.
Fat chance. Not giving up, not giving up, not giving up.
When, she wondered, had it become a crime to offer to pay a fortune to put up your relatives in a pricey, lovely retirement village where they could be waited on, kept fed and entertained, with lots of elderly single men to keep them occupied?
She simply had to explain—had to make them see.
Once she’d picked up all her things, she carried them to Ida Mae’s porch and reached for the doorknob. It was, for the first time she could ever recall, locked.
Pounding on the door, she cupped her hands around her eyes and tried to peer through the dirty inset glass. About all she could make out were the tiny dead bugs stuck between the window and the door frame. “Aunt Ida Mae? Come on, open up, we need to talk about this,” she yelled before pounding again.
A full minute went past. No Ida Mae. No Ivy. But from somewhere above, she heard the squeak of a window. Quickly backing off the porch, down the front steps, she looked up just in time to see a toothbrush come sailing through the air.
It was hers. And it landed in the dirt.
Jen gritted her teeth as the window slammed shut. “I’m not leaving,” she shouted, glaring at the second story of the house.
The window slowly groaned open again.
“Aunt Ida Mae?”
This time, her hairbrush was sent flying. It landed in a patch of mud a few feet away from the toothbrush.
“This is war,” she muttered, marching back up to the porch and trying the windows to the parlor. Though they didn’t budge, she wasn’t about to give up, and made her way around the entire perimeter of the house. Knowing the old woman wasn’t too concerned about security in this small, quiet town, she tried every single window, certain Ida Mae wouldn’t have locked them all since she’d ditched Jen in the middle of nowhere.
“Damn,” she muttered, trying the last one, to no avail.
Still not giving up, she went next door to Ivy’s monstrosity, only to discover the same thing. “They’re pretty serious,” she whispered, still not sure whether to scream and pound on the door or laugh at how darned determined they were.
The warped back porches of both houses nearly touched each other, and the two sisters went back and forth constantly, never trying to keep each other out. If Ida Mae had locked her door against Ivy, her sister would likely have taken offense and burned her house down.
Some would speculate that it wasn’t the first time.
Despite being a Feeney, Jen was not an arsonist. “But I am capable of a little breaking and entering,” she murmured. Especially because she paid the bills on these two houses.
Eyeing a small window into Ida Mae’s laundry room, she gave it some serious thought. It was already dingy and cracked, and would be just big enough for her to squeeze through.
Well, maybe. Given her recent love affair with two guys named Ben and Jerry, who’d substituted for any real man in Jen’s life, she had some serious hip action going on and she suspected some in the hood would say she had back. But she still suspected she could push herself through and pop out the other side like a cork emerging from a bottle.
Only to land on her head on the washing machine and bleed to death because, given her mood, Aunt Ida Mae wouldn’t lift a hand to call 9-1-1, if they even had such a thing in this town.
Okay. No breaking and entering.
