maybe you enjoy dirty phone calls? Some people even pay for the privilege of crawling through that particular gutter.”
She closed her eyes. Her face, already pale without the war paint, grew a shade whiter.
“Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll just state my business, you can hand over my property, and I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Property?”
He did a quick countdown, trying to hang onto his temper. “I believe I mentioned before that you’ve got something that belongs to me?” He wouldn’t have been surprised to find the lady in the process of sneaking out with all six boxes, after the way she had tried to elude him at the mall. He had let her get away, just to see what she was up to, but the game was over.
“Look, just hand over the boxes and we’ll call it even. I won’t prosecute and you can get back to your—”
“You won’t what?”
“Uh…prosecute?” Indignation wasn’t precisely the reaction he’d expected.
“Look, for your information, I don’t have one damned thing that belongs to you, and what’s more, I’m tired of jerks like you who won’t give up!”
“You’re tired? Well, that’s just tough, lady!”
Jerks like him? By the time he had tailed her here, nearly losing her twice in rush hour traffic, found a parking space a block and a half away, jogged the distance on concrete sidewalks and then climbed three flights of stairs, what little patience he might have been able to scrape up had eroded down to bedrock.
“If you want your friend to quit calling, sic the cops on him. The advice is free. Now you can hand over my personal property. I won’t even press charges.”
“Charges! What charges? You’re crazy, you know that? I’m going to call 911 right now and report—”
“Fine. Then you can explain how you came to be in possession of six boxes of my personal, private property!”
Gray eyes. Clear as rainwater. You’d think a woman with eyes like that couldn’t hide a damned thing, but she was hiding something, all right. Guilt, obviously, because if she’d been innocent, she wouldn’t have run away. “I’m waiting. Want to make the call or shall I make it for you? I’ve got a cell phone in my truck.”
She was leaning against the door now, one hand gripping the edge so hard the tips of her fingers were white. She wasn’t anywhere near as cool as she would like him to believe, not by a long shot.
He shoved his foot another inch through the crack and hoped to hell she didn’t throw her weight against the door. His metatarsals were about the only bones that hadn’t been busted at one time or another in his colorful career. He would kind of like to keep it that way. “You going to call the cops?”
“The cops,” she repeated numbly.
“Right, O’Malley. The men in blue. So I can reclaim my boxes and you can get your boyfriend off your back. That is, if you want him off your back?”
Heavy sigh. Her fingers slid down the edge of the door. They both knew she was fighting a losing battle—evidently fighting it on two fronts. Hell, even the U.S. armed forces had trouble doing that in these days of military cutbacks. “Miss O’Malley? You want to talk about this?”
Somewhat to his surprise, a few protective instincts kicked in. It was part of the code every SEAL team operated under, only this was no team operation. If there were rules to cover a situation like this, he’d never heard of them. With his back on the verge of spasms, his left leg giving him fits and his gut complaining about the pastrami and horseradish he’d had earlier, he had to reach deep for patience. “Look, there’s obviously something going on here. You need to call 911. I can wait out here, or I can wait inside. Either way, I’m not leaving.”
Small gasp. Could’ve been a sob, but he didn’t think so. And then the chain fell and she opened the door. Roughly 110 pounds, swathed in a shapeless velvet tent, hair spilling over her shoulders like a dark waterfall, not a speck of color in her face except for those wide gray eyes…and she was mad as hell. Ready to knock his head off.
Ignoring an inappropriate and totally unexpected sexual response, he held up both hands. “Unarmed, see?”
She backed down half an inch but still had that pit-bull look on her face. He couldn’t blame her. Evidently there was more going on here than six boxes of stuff he owned and she was trying to claim. “You want to make that call now or shall we get our personal business done first?”
“Personal business.” She was stalling, trying to come up with a good story, so he pushed a little harder.
“We can do this the easy way, or we can fight it out in court. Your choice.”
“You’re still upset about those papers? I’ve got this fruitcake who won’t let me alone—someone breaks into my apartment, meddles in my underwear drawer, and you’re worried about some papers?”
Oh, boy. “You want to run that by me again? Your underwear?”
“It probably wasn’t you, because you were right here at the door when he called, but…but—oh, dammit, I am so tired of this…this harassment!”
“It’s happened before?” He was inside her door now, automatically sizing the place up. A few nice pieces—way too much clutter. Potted plants, books, papers—bottom line, it looked like a cross between one of those house-and-garden spreads and a city dump.
“It happens almost every day. Not the…the flower and the awful underwear, but the calls.”
“The, uh, awful underwear?”
“Some creep left a rose and a pair of really disgusting panties in my underwear drawer day before yesterday, and then he had the nerve to call me and brag about it. I just want it to stop!”
“Have you reported it?”
“Well, of course I’ve reported it, what do you take me for, an idiot?”
He didn’t think she really wanted him to answer the question, and so he didn’t. “What did they advise?”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Change my phone number, change my lock—go on an extended vacation until the creep loses interest.”
“And?” Curt prompted. He needed to get on with his own business, but no officer who called himself a gentleman would walk away, leaving a lady in this much distress. Not that he was much of a gentleman—in name only, maybe.
And not that she was that much of a lady.
“Oh, I did it all—the works. The caller missed one day, and then he started in again. I hope he fries in hell. I hope he catches an awful disease and rots from the toes up. Slowly!”
“Remind me never to tick you off,” he said dryly. “Uh, about the other. My boxes?”
She took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her small but definitely feminine chest. “Look, whether you like it or not, I bought those boxes. They’re mine, along with whatever happens
