stuck on him. In much the same way that melting slush stuck to the side of his car, or a glob of gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe. At least, she could see, that was the way he was feeling about her at the moment.
“I am so sorry,” she said by way of a greeting, lurching to her feet and grabbing for a dish towel to wipe him off. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
Hastily, she began brushing at her new neighbor’s clothing, then realized, too late, that because of their dark color, she had no idea where her tea might have landed on him, or if it had even landed on him at all. So, deciding not to take any chances, she worked furiously to wipe off all of him, starting at his mouthwateringly broad shoulders and working gradually downward, over his tantalizingly expansive chest, and then his temptingly solid biceps, and then his deliciously hard forearms. And then, just to be on the safe side, she moved inward again, over his delectably flat torso and once more over his tantalizingly expansive chest—you never could be too careful when it came to spilling hot beverages, after all—back up over the mouth-wateringly broad shoulders, and then down over his delectably flat torso again, and lower still, toward his very savory—
“What the hell are you doing?”
The roughly—and loudly—uttered demand was punctuated by Jack Miller grabbing both of Natalie’s wrists with unerring fingers and jerking her arms away from his body. In doing so, he also jerked them away from her own body, spreading them wide, giving himself, however inadvertently, an eyeful of her…Well, of her oversized flannel jammies with the moons and stars on them that were in no way revealing or attractive.
Damn her luck anyway.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Miller,” she apologized again. “I hope I didn’t—”
“How did you know my name?” he demanded in a bristly voice.
She arched her eyebrows up in surprise at his vehemence. Paranoid much? she wanted to ask. Instead, she replied, “Um, Mrs. Klosterman told me your name?” But then she realized that in replying, she had indeed asked him something, because she had voiced her declaration not in the declarative tense, but in the inquisitive tense. In fact, so rattled was she at this point by Mr. Miller that she found herself suddenly unable to speak in anything but the inquisitive tense. “Mrs. Klosterman was just telling me about you?” she said…asked…whatever. “She said you moved in this week? Downstairs from me? And I just wanted to introduce myself to you, too? I’m Natalie? Natalie Dorset? I live on the third floor? And I should warn you? I have a cat? Named Mojo? He likes to roll a golf ball around on the hardwood floors sometimes? So if it bothers you? Let me know? And I’ll make him stop?”
And speaking of stopping, Natalie wished she could stop herself before she began to sound as if she were becoming hysterical. And then she realized it was probably too late for that. Because now Mr. Miller was looking at her as if the overhead light in the kitchen had just sputtered and gone dim.
Although, on second thought, maybe it wasn’t the overhead light in the kitchen that had sputtered and gone dim, Natalie couldn’t help thinking further.
Oh, boy…
“Mr. Miller,” Mrs. Klosterman said politely amid all the hubbub, as if her kitchen hadn’t just been turned into a badly conceptualized sitcom where a newly relocated former mobster moves in with a befuddled schoolteacher and then zany antics ensue, “this is my other tenant, Ms. Natalie Dorset. As she told you, she lives on the third floor. But Mojo is perfectly well-mannered, I assure you, and would never bother anyone. Natalie,” she added in the same courteous voice, as if she were Emily Post herself, “this is Mr. John Miller, your new neighbor.”
“Jack,” he automatically corrected, his voice softer now, more solicitous. “Call me Jack. Everybody does.” He sounded as if he were vaguely distracted when he said it, yet at the same time, he looked as if he were surprised to have heard himself respond.
For one long moment, still gripping her wrists—though with an infinitely gentler grasp now, Natalie couldn’t help noticing—he fixed his gaze on her face, studying her with much interest. She couldn’t imagine why he’d bother. Even at her best, she was an average-looking woman. Dressed in her pajamas, with her hair pulled back and her glasses on, she must look…Well, she must look silly, she couldn’t help thinking. After all, the moons and stars on her pajamas were belting out the chorus of “Moon River,” even if it was only on flannel.
But Mr. Miller didn’t even seem to notice her pajamas, because he kept his gaze trained unflinchingly on her face. For what felt like a full minute, he only studied her in silence, his dark eyes unreadable, his handsome face inscrutable. And then, as quickly and completely as his watchfulness had begun, it suddenly ended, and he released her wrists and dropped his attention to his shirt, brushing halfheartedly at what Natalie could tell now were nonexistent stains of tea.
“’Yo,” he finally said by way of a greeting, still not looking at her. But then he did glance over at Mrs. Klosterman, seeming as if he just now remembered she was present, too. “How youse doin’?” he further inquired, looking up briefly to include them both in the question before glancing nervously back down at his shirt again.
Okay, so he wasn’t a native Southerner, Natalie deduced keenly. Even though she had grown up in Louisville, she’d traveled extensively around the country, and she had picked up bits and pieces of dialects in her travels. Therefore, she had little difficulty translating what he had said in what she was pretty sure was a Brooklyn accent into its Southern version, which would have been “Hey, how y’all doin’?”
“Hi,” she replied lamely. But for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a single other thing to say. Except maybe “You have the dreamiest eyes I’ve ever seen in my life, even if they are what I would expect a Mob informant in the Witness Protection Program to have,” and she didn’t think it would be a good idea to say that, even if she could punctuate it with a period instead of a question mark. After all, the two of them had just met.
“‘Yo, Mrs. Klosterman,” Jack Miller said, turning his body physically toward the landlady now, thereby indicating quite clearly that he was through with Natalie, but thanks so much for playing. “I couldn’t find a key to the back door up in my apartment, and I think it would probably be a good idea for me to have one, you know?”
Mrs. Klosterman exchanged a meaningful look with Natalie, and she knew her landlady was thinking the same thing she was—that Mr. Miller was already scoping out potential escape routes, should the Mob, in fact, come busting through the door with tommy guns blazing.
No, no, no, no, no, she immediately told herself. She would not buy into Mrs. Klosterman’s ridiculous suspicions and play “What’s My Crime?” Mr. Miller wanted the key to his back door for the simple reason that his back door, as Natalie’s did, opened onto the fire escape, and—let’s face it—old buildings were known to go up in flames occasionally, so of course he’d want access to that door.
“I forgot,” Mrs. Klosterman told him now. “I had a new lock put on that door after the last tenant moved out because the other one was getting so old. I have the new key in my office. I’ll get it for you.”
And without so much as a by-your-leave—whatever the hell that meant—her landlady left the kitchen, thereby leaving Natalie alone with her new mobster. Neighbor, she quickly corrected herself. Her new neighbor. Boy, could that have been embarrassing, if she got those two confused.
The silence that descended on the room after Mrs. Klosterman’s departure was thick enough to hack with a meat cleaver. Although, all things considered, maybe that wasn’t the best analogy to use. In an effort to alleviate some of the tension,
