his contact with the girl-next-door, and he wanted to keep it that way. Lulu Vandenberg had been the most annoying next-door neighbor any geeky kid should have to endure, and he was lucky he’d made it out of his childhood with his sanity—and his tailbone—intact.
He did vaguely wonder how she’d turned out. Lulu had, after all, been one of the prettiest girls he’d ever known, not that he would never have told her he thought so in a million years. Maybe she’d grown up to be a hag, though he doubted it. Her emails had been friendly and chatty, brimming with self-confidence. Of course, Lulu had been that way, too. Always talking, always ready to hand out advice. She’d been a real know-it-all.
Nah. He didn’t really want to see how she’d turned out.
“She had the nerve to ask you for help after the way she always treated you when we were kids?” Sarah said, finally thinking of someone other than herself.
To be fair, Lulu hadn’t been all bad. They’d actually gotten along fine much of the time, usually by ignoring each other. It was just that she was so damned bossy, and good at everything. She’d out-played him on the basketball court, had ridden her bike in circles around him while he still struggled with his first ten-speed. She was the bravest and the toughest when it came to playing truth-or-dare. She was also dangerous—he’d been a witness to the great playground fight, when she, at age eight, had slugged an eleven-year-old boy who made fun of six-year-old Lawrence for still having a teddy bear.
And of course there was the ladder incident. Sometimes, when he sat down just the right way, he still got a twinge out of that forever-cracked tailbone.
“It’s no big deal. Mom asked me to help out. Lulu’s her best friend’s kid. What was I supposed to do, say no?”
“Well, hopefully you told her the safest place in the city to live is Anacostia,” Sarah said with a heaping helping of spite, since that neighborhood was one of the most dangerous in the district.
Chaz grunted. “Let it go, little sister.”
It was kid stuff, and he’d tried to forget it. That said, he did hope his Realtor had found Lulu an apartment far away from his own neighborhood.
“What, exactly, did Lulu tell you about Lawrence?” she asked.
“Just that he was coming here to go to school, too.”
“Did she mention that he was doing it so he could be close to some girl?”
Chaz stayed quiet, sensing a trap in the question.
Eventually Sarah continued. “Because he happens to have a girlfriend! And I think they might be living together!”
From several feet away, where he’d left his sexy witch, he heard a cough, but he stayed focused on Sarah, knowing he had to hear her out, give her a brotherly word of wisdom, and then send her on her way. “And that’s your business...why?”
She sputtered. “Well, he had to have been aware I’m at A.U. He did it on purpose, came here just to get close to me and try to make me jealous.”
“Is it working?”
“No, it is not. That’s ridiculous.”
“Great. Then there’s no problem.”
She gritted her teeth and literally growled at him. “Of course there’s a problem.”
He had never found out exactly what had happened between his sister and Lawrence. Nor was he sure he wanted to. Knowing his sister, and well aware that Lawrence was a great guy, he had to assume Sarah had been at fault, not that he was about to say that to her. He valued his eardrums too much; she would scream the neighborhood down if he accused her of being anything but the injured party in that long-ago breakup. The key being long ago.
“Sarah, it’s been years. Why haven’t you moved on?”
Her bottom lip pushed out and her big blue eyes grew moist. He could see unshed tears, illuminated by the street light overhead. Damn it, his sister really could turn on the waterworks.
“You just don’t understand.” Sniff. “Of course you’d take his side. You’re such a guy.”
“I understand breakups and exes. I’ve had my share.”
He didn’t add that he was the one who usually did the breaking up, his job being a lot more important to him than anyone he’d ever dated. And most women his age didn’t want to wait around for weeks at a time while he jet-setted his way across the globe chasing stories.
There had been one who’d seemed like she could handle it. She’d assured him she could, in fact. Then he’d come home early from a trip and gone to surprise her at her place.
Surprise! She was dating another dude on the side, and had been for a while.
They hadn’t had any exclusive agreement or anything, but she’d told him flat-out that she wasn’t seeing anyone else. He could take a woman who dated others, but he would not put up with one who lied. In his line of work, where he had to rely on sources, he had absolutely zero tolerance for liars. He’d devoted most of his efforts to tyrants and warlords, but even the lowliest liar could do serious damage. He’d seen friends’ careers ruined because of other people’s falsehoods, which was bad enough. Worse were the deceptions that put others in harm’s way. In some of the darker, more dangerous countries he had visited, deliberate lies had lured journalists to their own brutal deaths, and Chaz was always slow to give his trust and quick to take it back if it were betrayed.
“Listen, why don’t you go ahead with your plans for tonight. Go have fun, you’ll feel better. I’ll take you out for breakfast on Sunday.” Seeing that she was considering it, he added the key point. “I’ll bet running into you didn’t make Lawrence change his plans.”
That did it. The crocodile tears dried immediately and her shoulders squared. “You’re right. I can’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he ruined my Halloween.”
“Atta girl,” he said, squeezing her arm and gently pushing her toward her car. He opened the door and helped her shove all the loose fabric of her costume inside.
She rolled down the window and blew him a kiss. “Thanks, Chaz. Happy Halloween. Have fun with your...oh, where’d she go?”
“Who?”
“Weren’t you with someone?” she asked, craning to look through the windshield at the sidewalk.
The empty sidewalk.
He didn’t panic. “She must have gone up to the porch to wait for me.”
Sarah sat up higher in her seat and peered toward the front of his house. “Nope, nobody there.”
“I’m sure she’s around,” he said, not worrying...not really, anyway. “Call me tomorrow about breakfast.”
Sarah agreed and then backed up the car and drove away. The second she was out of sight, Chaz spun around to return to his companion. He assumed he’d find her in the shadows of one of the large live oak trees that lined the front of the row of townhouses. But she wasn’t there.
His heart rate kicked up. He
