She shook her head so her wiry silver curls bounced. “He’s terrified of being outside. Usually, when I open the door, he runs the other way. But I’ve looked all over the apartment. He’s gone. Just…gone.”
Crystal took Doris by her thin shoulders. “Stop. Take a breath. Think thoughts of peace and positive outcomes. He can’t have gone far.”
“Oh, I do hope you’re right.”
“Come on,” Crystal said briskly. “We’ll find him. You’ll see. We’ll start by going through your apartment again.” She turned Doris to point her in the right direction and gave her a gentle push along the concrete walk toward her apartment door.
Tanner Bravo rolled up the windows, killed the Mustang’s engine, draped a hand over the steering wheel and glared out the windshield at the white stucco wall of Crystal’s apartment complex.
She’d invited him to dinner. Why?
Since they were always planning not to have sex again, they never did things like going on dates or sharing a meal with just the two of them, alone. They would hook up without planning to at family events: his niece DeDe’s dance recitals, Sunday dinners at his sister, Kelly’s….
At least once a week, it seemed, they ended up in the same room together, surrounded by family. Simple proximity—that was all it took, though in front of the others they would fake complete lack of interest in each other for all they were worth.
Even when it was time to go home, both would try their damnedest to keep up the pretense that they had no intention of getting naked and crawling all over each other the minute they were alone. They would say their goodbyes to his sister and her family and drive away in their separate cars.
And then one of them would weaken and call the other. The other, breathless, would say yes.
And after that? His place or her place, it was always the same: hot and wild and absolutely amazing.
Damned if he wasn’t getting hard just thinking about it.
But an invitation to dinner at her apartment? That wasn’t the way they did things. Something was up.
And what the hell was that noise? Some kind of alarm or something, coming from inside the building.
Tanner got out of the car. Yeep, yeep, yeep, yeep…
Sounded like a smoke alarm. It seemed to be coming from Crystal’s place….
He raced the hundred yards or so along the walk to Crystal’s door, the alarm growing louder with each step. When he got there, he raised his hand and knocked, yelling, “Crystal!” good and loud.
She didn’t answer. But the door, not quite latched, drifted open.
Gray smoke billowed out. From inside, the smoke alarm shrieked. Yeep, yeep, yeep, yeep…
Tanner shouted, “Crystal, Crystal!” No answer.
Was she in there defenseless, unconscious from smoke inhalation? The thought made his heart pound the walls of his chest like a wrecking ball and his gut clench tight. “Crystal!”
Again, she didn’t answer. So he pulled the top of his shirt up to cover his nose and mouth, dropped to his hands and knees to get under the worst of the smoke and crawled across the threshold, shouting her name.
Chapter Two
Nigel was nowhere to be found.
Crystal and an increasingly freaked out Doris had searched every inch of the older woman’s apartment about six times. They’d checked outside in the parking lot, under all the cars. They’d closely examined the small spaces between the photinia hedges that rimmed the walkways. They’d raced down the sidewalk between the complex’s buildings and scoured the central courtyard, with its swathes of emerald grass and pretty weeping willow trees. They’d even gone all the way to the rec room, and opened all the cupboards and checked under all the furniture. They’d beat the bushes around the pool area, too.
No sign of an overweight pug-nosed, long-haired cat with a smoky-black outer coat and creamy fur beneath.
Finally, they’d returned to Doris’s living room, where Crystal’s neighbor wrung her hands and cried, “My poor, poor baby. Where have you gone?” A tear cleared the boundary of her lower lid and tracked a shining trail down her brown, creased cheek. “Oh, Crystal. He won’t last a day outdoors. I know he’s got an attitude. He thinks he’s king of the world. But really, he’s just a fat, fuzzy sweetheart with no survival skills beyond a crabby meow when he wants his dinner….”
“He’s okay, I know it,” Crystal insisted for the hundredth time.
“Oh, you’re a darling to say so, but—”
They both heard the low, cranky “Rrreeow?” at the same time and turned in unison to face the open arch to the entryway. Nigel sat there, his expression aloof, his fuzzy explosion of a tail lazily twitching against the floor tiles.
“Nigel!” Doris cried. She ran to him and scooped him up, gathering him close against her heart. “Where have you been? You scared us to death!”
The cat let out another grouchy meow and acquiesced to be scratched under his almost nonexistent chin.
With the back of a hand, Doris swiped tears of relief from her cheeks. She turned grateful eyes Crystal’s way. “Oh, thank you, thank you.”
Crystal laughed. “For what? I didn’t do anything. Nigel seems to have found himself.”
“True, true.” Doris laughed in relief and happiness. “He did, didn’t he? But you were here with me while I was so afraid. I can’t tell you how much that meant at a time like that.”
“Well, I know you’d be there for me, too, if I needed you.”
“I would. I swear it,” Doris passionately declared. “Anytime.” She stroked the cat’s thick fur. “Oh, where did you get off to, you bad, bad boy?” The cat started to purr, a deep, rough sound. Doris sighed. “I suppose we’ll never know…”
Now that the crisis was past, Crystal glanced at the small gold-and-ebony clock perched on a spindly side table. It was six forty-five.
“Oh, no,” she muttered. “Tanner…” He was probably waiting at her door, thoroughly annoyed, wondering where the hell she’d gone off to now.
Doris frowned. “Excuse me?”
Crystal put on a smile. “Oh, nothing. Really. I invited someone over. I have to get going.”
“Someone?” Doris hugged the fat cat, her still moist eyes now sparkling with interest. “A man? A date?”
“Uh, not exactly.”
Still cuddling Nigel, Doris trailed her to the door. “Not exactly a man?”
Crystal laughed again. “Oh, he’s a man all right. But it’s not exactly a date….”
“Humph.
