no harm in just looking,” Lynn noted.
Chloe tried telling herself that as Steve drove her home a short while later. No harm in just looking. The glow of the streetlights passed over his face, creating sharp angles and increasing his good looks.
She shifted her attention to his hands on the steering wheel. His fingers were long and lean. As he tapped out the beat of a Rod Stewart song with his index finger, she couldn’t help wondering how it would feel to have him tapping out a sensual beat on her body.
He had the radio playing so they didn’t have to talk much. She was glad. Her thoughts were much too messed up for her to make polite conversation.
She wondered what he was thinking. Was he eager to get rid of her? Was he wishing he were someplace else? With someone else?
Why should she care? If she were smart, and she was, she shouldn’t have any interest in Steve’s thoughts. Or his body. Or his lean hands.
She’d never been the sappy sort to get all hot and bothered over a man. Not until she’d met Brad. And that experience should certainly have cured her of any desire to repeat past mistakes.
But there was no ignoring her reaction when Steve had touched her hand earlier.
Chalk it up to hormones, or sexual chemistry, or nerves. Whatever she called it, she was not about to act on it.
Chances were that after tonight, Steve would go out of his way to avoid her. Her plan was working. She should be pleased, not all restless and edgy.
He pulled into the driveway and turned off the car before turning to face her. “So do you want to tell me what you’re up to?”
His question caught her completely off guard. “Wha-at are you talking about?”
“I just have this feeling that you’re up to something.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe not.”
“Thanks for the ride. Good night.” A second later, she’d hopped out of the car and raced into her house.
Steve watched her go, noting her haste. Not the actions of someone with nothing to hide. So what was the little librarian next door really up to?
He found out several hours later while making a midnight raid on the fridge and the leftover roast beef Busha had stored there. As he entered the dark kitchen, he noticed that the kitchen blinds were rolled up. Which allowed him free visual access to Chloe’s kitchen window, only a few feet away, also with the blinds rolled up. Unlike him, she’d turned on the lights as she looked in her fridge, on the other side of her kitchen.
“Well, I’ll be….” Steve swore under his breath.
The dowdy librarian had been transformed into a sexy woman, wearing a Bears’ jersey that went mid-thigh, allowing him a generous view of a pair of gorgeous legs.
He’d been had!
Chapter Two
Steve blinked and looked again. Maybe he’d just imagined Chloe.…
Nope, there she was. Her dark hair was down around her shoulders instead of tightly pinned up. The silky strands fell around her shoulders in sexy disarray.
And there was no mistaking her long shapely legs. Steve had excellent night vision and he could see just fine how great her body really was. This was no frumpy librarian!
She’d deliberately made him think she was a stereotypical dowdy bookworm. Why? What kind of con was she pulling here?
His internal lie-detector system went on high alert. Steve hated being deceived. Especially by a female. Chalk it up to his bad experience with Gina. The memory of how she’d hoodwinked him still made his gut clench.
Steve couldn’t believe he’d been had by another female. He’d sworn not to be taken in again, yet here he was, in the dark about the girl next door. The supposedly sweet neighbor who had given him a hard time tonight with her superior intellectual attitude.
If she’d been trying to get his attention, she had it.
But that was just it. She hadn’t tried to get his attention. It was almost as if she’d gone out of her way to make him overlook her.
The same question arose again. Why?
Steve was tempted to go over there and demand answers, but it was after midnight. Not exactly the time to go knocking on someone’s door.
That was okay. Steve could wait. He’d done plenty of that in combat. Sometimes a mission required patient surveillance in order to get good intel.
Yes, sometimes waiting worked out just fine. It made the ultimate confrontation all the more satisfying.
Switching on the coffeemaker Saturday morning, Chloe’s gaze lifted to the vintage hand-painted wooden sign she’d put over the sink. Home * Sweet * Home.
Chloe loved her brick bungalow. Not a day went by that she didn’t thank the Realtor gods for her good fortune in finding it. The instant she’d spotted the For Sale sign planted in the scrubby lawn, she’d immediately called the number listed. Once inside, she’d been won over by the generous rooms and abundance of natural light. She’d envisioned the possibilities instead of being turned off by the negatives, like the dated kitchen in garish green and maroon.
Nothing, not the chipped molding, scarred hardwood floors or the other blemishes around the house had deterred her. Those were cosmetic things that could be corrected by someone with the ability to look beyond the dull surface to the sound heart beneath it all.
In the thirties, these homes were the dream houses of working-class Polish, Bohemian, German, Irish and Italian families. Now this one was Chloe’s dream house.
Some might find the architecture unappealing. She’d heard plenty of people say that the bungalows in this neighborhood all looked the same.
Chloe found comfort in the dependability of that sameness. Because you knew what you were getting.
But what you did with it, ah…that’s where the creativity came in.
Chloe had done plenty with her bungalow. Not as much as she’d like, but she’d made some inroads on her to-do list in the three years since she’d bought it. And she’d done her research with the help of the Historic Chicago Bungalow Initiative. Thousands and thousands of the one and one-half story residences had been built in a semicircle around the city, sometimes called the “Bungalow Belt.”
Compact in size, well-crafted, efficiently laid out, the house had only needed a bit of rehabbing. Okay, maybe more than a bit. She’d replaced the cracked linoleum floor in the kitchen with black-and-white tile before moving on to the rest of the house, going from the back of the house toward the front, through the dining room and then the living room.
She hadn’t done it alone. Lynn’s husband was a handyman and he’d done a great job working on Chloe’s house. She’d done a lot of the work herself as well, like stripping the avocado-green paint from
