as lame as a zombie. If what Turner suspected was true, his visitor was way more dangerous than that. More dangerous, even, than the Magma Creature from Milwaukee. Or the Lizard Man from La Jolla. Or the Wasp Woman from Walla Walla.
Stumbling barefoot across the living room, he mentally cued the Twilight Zone music, tugged down his T-shirt that read Vinnie’s House of Hubcaps, and made sure the drawstrings of his faded black sweatpants were suitably tied. Couldn’t go meeting one’s destiny with doom looking like a slob, after all. Well, not too much like a slob. Peeking through the peephole, he saw that he had been correct in his suspicions. Because the beast lurking on the other side of his front door was indeed the scariest, most perilous creature known to mankind.
Or at least to this man, kind of.
With a sigh of resignation, Turner curled his fingers over the doorknob and swiveled it, then pulled the door toward himself with an ominous creeeeeeak. And even though it probably would have been more appropriate for him to say, in his best Boris Karloff voice, “Gooood eeeeveniiiing,” he instead only smiled and said, “Hi, Becca,” to the woman who stood on the other side.
She smiled brightly, a response more dangerous than the heat lasers shooting out of the eye sockets of the Evil Ectoplasm from Encino. Well, more dangerous to Turner, at any rate. The residents of Encino might beg to differ.
“Hiya,” she replied cheerfully, in a voice more menacing than the fireballs exhaled by the Fiend from Fresno. Well, more menacing to Turner, anyway. The residents of Fresno… Oh, never mind. “Thought you might like a little company,” she added easily.
He glanced over his shoulder at the clock on his mantelpiece, the one shaped like a minuscule slot machine, with the glowing red numbers of the hour, minutes and seconds where the three cherries would have been had he just hit a jackpot. The clock had a purple lava lamp sitting on one side of it, and a framed, eight-by-ten, black-and-white glossy of Wayne Newton—though it had been autographed to someone named “Buddy,” unfortunately—sitting on the other side. But tacky as they were, the things on the mantelpiece went with the lounge look Turner had striven so hard to achieve throughout his apartment.
Of course, the main reason he had striven to achieve a lounge look was because he’d found a lot of stuff appropriate for a lounge theme at local garage sales when he’d moved out of his parents’ basement ten years ago, but that was beside the point.
“At ten in the evening?” he asked, turning to look at Becca again.
She lifted one shoulder and let it drop in what he supposed was meant to be a negligent shrug. However, if there was one thing Turner knew about Becca Mercer, it was that she was anything but negligent. No, what Becca Mercer was was…
He expelled a mental sigh of frustration. Gorgeous, that was what she was, he thought as he took in the dark-blond hair that fell just past her shoulders, and the coffee-colored eyes that made his heart pound faster and more furiously than all the caffeine in the world could. And she was built, too—like a brick shit house, as a matter of fact. He dropped his gaze—discreetly, so she wouldn’t know what he was doing—and ogled the snug, faded jeans that hugged her curvy hips, and the brief black sweater that molded her full breasts. Oh, yeah. Becca was curvy and full in all the places a man liked to see a woman curvy and full, all the places a man liked to touch and caress and taste and—
And she was intelligent, too, he knew, stopping his errant thoughts before they could get away from him—because they would get away from him if he let them, not to mention leave him feeling frustrated as hell, the way they always did where Becca was concerned. And she was funny, too, he continued, still cataloging her positive traits. And she was witty. And sweet. And kind. And hot. And amazing. And a million other things he could spend the rest of the night listing. Above all else, though, she was his best friend in the whole wide world.
Dammit.
Because although Turner cherished his friendship with Becca and had for two decades, what he felt for her deep down—what he’d felt for a long time—went way beyond friendly. As much as he hated to admit it—and God knew he never would admit it to anyone but himself—what he felt for Becca might very well be the big L.
No, not lust, though there was certainly plenty of that in the mix. And not licentiousness, either, though that was definitely in there, too. As were lechery, lasciviousness, lubricity and libido. And maybe even a little lewdness, too. But it was that other L-word that had him so worried. The big L. Love. If Turner let himself think about it long enough, he’d probably have to admit that he was in love with his best friend. So he never let himself think about it. Or, at least, he tried to never let himself think about it. And whenever he did catch himself thinking about it, he made himself knock it off.
Because Becca didn’t feel the same way about him. Yeah, she loved him, but it was in the same way she loved her other—female—friends. She wasn’t in love with him. And he wasn’t about to bare his soul to her and tell her how he really felt, because he was afraid he’d lose her if he did. She’d always been the one to put a stop to things whenever the two of them had gotten physical in the past. And she’d always made such a big deal of telling him how lucky she was to have a guy friend like him, and how they were both too smart to mess it up by getting sexually involved. Because she’d seen too many good girl-guy friendships turn sexual, and after they did, everything just went to hell, and the friendship dissolved completely.
And Turner had to admit that maybe she was right about that. Sex, for being such a basic, natural act, did have a tendency to screw up relationships for some reason, sometimes beyond repair. It was probably best just to keep things the way they were. He’d rather have Becca for a friend than not have her at all. And if that meant he had to carry a torch for her for the rest of his life…
He’d just do his best not to set fire to anything. Unless it was an ancient castle full of zombies.
As he studied her more closely, he realized she was carrying a bigger bag than she usually carried. A bag big enough to hold, say…a change of clothing. And maybe something to sleep in. And girl stuff like makeup and a toothbrush. Like maybe she was planning to…
“Oh, no,” he said when he realized her intention. “No, no, no, no, no. No way. No how. Nuh-uh. Não. Nem. Ikke.”
Hey, he’d known those cassette tapes from the “How to Talk to Any Girl in Any Language” correspondence course he’d taken in college would come in handy someday. Except he’d planned to use all the “yes” words instead of the “no” words. He’d bagged the whole Grand Tour of Europe thing, though, when he ended up spending most of the money he earned waiting tables to buy cigarettes, instead of socking it into a Grand Tour bank account, the way he’d promised himself he would.
Oh, well, he thought. Maybe he’d still meet a woman named Deolinda or Sziszi or Frøydis someday. It could happen. Hey, Indiana was a huge draw for European women. Everybody said so.
“You are not spending the night here,” he finally concluded.
“What makes you think I plan to spend the night?” Becca asked innocently.
He eyed her warily. “Then why are you here?” he asked flatly.
“I’m spending the night,” she told him, taking a step forward.
Immediately, Turner braced his forearms against both sides of the doorjamb. Hard. Then he leaned forward to crowd into her space, which was really his space anyway, on account of he rented it.
“Why?” he asked.
Becca
