her food-in-a-box out of the freezer. Meat loaf with peas and carrots and a brownie, ready in six minutes.
She sat down to eat about the same time that Jack did. His dinner looked wonderful, and he seemed to enjoy every bite. Her dog sat at his feet, begging. To Jack’s credit he didn’t feed the dog from his plate. Dahlia picked at her own food, then finally dumped it in the trash, reminding herself that she had refused Jack’s offer.
The evening dragged by, and Jack made no move toward leaving after he heated water in a pot on the grill and cleaned up. That he didn’t need anything from her was vaguely irritating even as she acknowledged his resourcefulness. If the man had left a mess on her porch, she would have had something to complain about.
She retreated to her office, but nothing there held any appeal. There were journals to read, research documents to update and protocols to review for her next set of observations. Instead she played game after game of FreeCell, the conversations with Jack and her mother rolling through her head. She called her sisters again and again, and got their respective phone answering machines.
The minute the clock struck ten, she went to the back-door to get her dog. Boo was sitting on Jack’s lap. In deference to the brisk evening air he’d donned a jacket. Even then, he looked just as at home as he had before.
He looked up when he heard the door open.
Boo jumped off his lap and, wagging her tail, came inside.
“Mind if I use the bathroom before you lock up for the night?” Jack asked standing up.
She stood to the side so he could come through. In his wake he left the crisp aroma of night air. She peeked outside and saw that he’d spread a sleeping bag on the chaise lounge.
By now her sister Lily would have invited the man into the house and made him an honorary member of the family. That’s what you did when you thought the best of others. Lily hadn’t had Dahlia’s experience of being completely wrong in her instincts.
Jack came back down the stairs a moment later. When he reached the door, he stood looking down at her a moment. That in itself was a novelty. At six feet, she rarely looked up to any man. Aware as she was of his scrutiny, she couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze.
Finally he tapped the door handle. “Lock up,” he said, stepping outside. “Sleep well.”
To wish him the same when she refused to invite him in seemed completely stupid to her, but she responded, “You, too.”
On her way up the stairs she flipped off the lights, plunging the house into darkness. In her room Dahlia emptied the pockets of her shorts, discovering that she still had his pocketknife, which she had forgotten to give back to him. Her imagination took off at a gallop, with thugs breaking into her house, chasing her down the way they had this morning, following her in the supermarket, making her a prisoner of her own fear. Jack had to be wrong. She set the knife down with a thump and stalked to the closet to change into her pajamas.
When she settled into bed, Boo was there to curl against her side. There in the dark she could almost believe this night was like all the others of the last two years. Just her and the dog, rebuilding a life where she focused on her work and came to grips with the fact that she no longer trusted her instincts about men.
Everything about Jack proclaimed him as one of the good guys. Even if she had met him under more ordinary circumstances, she would have noticed him, been drawn to him. In her book that automatically made him off limits. The ultimate Catch 22. If she was attracted, he had to be bad for her. If she wasn’t attracted, he’d probably be an okay guy—who she wouldn’t give the time of day.
On that disturbing thought she fell asleep.
Jack awoke instantly. He remained stock-still, listening for whatever it was that had brought him out of a fitful sleep. Then he heard it—the barely perceptible sound of someone walking across the grass. Without moving his head he looked toward the back fence that separated Dahlia’s yard from a bike path that ran alongside a canal, remembering the invisible path of scent that Boo had followed from the far corner of the yard to the base of the tree. The dark form of a man emerged out of the night. He moved purposefully toward the tree that would give him access to the porch roof and to Dahlia’s bedroom.
Jack had worried about the front porch, which had been black as a cave when he’d checked it before coming back here. He had settled on the lounge, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood and attuned to Dahlia’s movement inside. He had lain there a long time thinking about how he’d like to be sharing that big bed with her. A stupid fantasy to torture himself.
Now he thanked the instincts that had made him choose sleeping under Dahlia’s window. The mere thought of this creep getting into Dahlia’s room made Jack’s blood boil. He would bet everything he owned this guy wasn’t here to steal the TV.
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