tight, compact little package, with just enough up-front. Just enough to draw his interest. More than once.
Yeah, if Eden Perry wasn’t the transformation of the century, he didn’t know what was.
On the outside.
But what about the inside? That probably hadn’t changed, he thought with some satisfaction.
The satisfaction was short-lived, however, because when he tried to think of how her bad disposition had displayed itself he couldn’t come up with anything.
He’d been the one with the bad disposition today. She hadn’t acted the way she had when they were teenagers, and he reluctantly—very reluctantly—admitted that.
Of course she also hadn’t been warm and friendly.
But then neither had he.
He’d been rude and obnoxious, if the truth be told. And she hadn’t even shot back at him.
How come? he wondered suddenly.
That sure as hell wasn’t the old Eden Perry. The old Eden Perry would have shot first. And barring that, she would certainly have returned fire. Hell, the Eden Perry he’d known would have mounted a savage counterattack.
But the Eden Perry he’d known had also been sixteen years old, he thought—again for no reason he understood. Sixteen years old and as ugly as a mud fence. And this Eden Perry wasn’t either of those things anymore.
So, what if she also wasn’t the rude, mouthy, insulting, aggravating nightmare she’d been before, either?
That would be hard to believe!
But somehow the possibility slowed his push-ups and eventually brought them to a stop.
Was it possible Eden Perry was different outside and inside? he asked himself as he moved on to the weight bench for a few biceps curls.
Eden Perry different…
Huh.
Did he buy that? Did he buy the all-business version she’d been today? Kind of wooden but not nasty or mean-spirited or bitchy?
He didn’t know. He supposed that he could concede that she might—just might—have learned to curb her tongue in the course of growing up.
But so what? he asked himself. Did that mean that she thought of him any differently than she had when they were kids?
Probably not.
And given that, did he want anything more to do with her than he had when he’d been expecting that sharp tongue to fly out and cut him like a razor blade?
No, he didn’t.
Even if she was something pretty eye-popping to look at.
He’d still keep his distance, thanks just the same, he thought.
Because eye-popping or not, better behaved or not, there was one thing Eden Perry had made clear enough to him when she was sixteen—she thought he was an idiot.
And the last thing he needed—or wanted—was to be within a hundred yards of any woman who thought of him as someone dumber than a doorknob.
No matter how she looked.
But damn, Eden Perry did look good….
Eden had changed her clothes and gone right to work on her bedroom when she returned from the police station.
By about 8:30 that night she had located her mattress pad, sheets, blankets, pillows and quilt, and made her bed so she would have a place to sleep. She’d hung shades and curtains on both bedroom windows and put most of her clothes in the closet. She’d filled the underwear drawer of her dresser and unpacked all the toiletries she would need to start the next day.
And while it may have been only 8:30, she’d been up since before dawn, driven for two hours to reach Northbridge, overseen the three movers unloading her things, and then she’d had that unpleasant encounter with Cam Pratt before laboring all evening, too. She was tired and hungry and ready to drop.
So she went into the kitchen in search of food, grateful that her sister Eve had stocked it with a few things to tide her over until she could do some shopping.
Weaving through boxes stacked everywhere, including on her kitchen table, she opened the refrigerator. Eggs, butter and cream for her coffee were its sole occupants.
She hadn’t located her pots and pans yet but she knew where to find a bowl so she could scramble an egg in the microwave. But she decided to check the pantry first.
Bread, cheese puffs—her sister knew her well—and Chinese noodle soup already in its own microwavable cup.
She opted for the soup because it was the simplest of all to prepare.
With cup in hand, she went to the sink to fill it with water. When she reached the sink her gaze automatically drifted out the window above it and went instantly to the garages nestled so close together in back.
Only it wasn’t her own garage that caught her attention. It was Cam Pratt’s. Specifically, the light that was shining through the undraped window in the space over the garage.
She knew that that space in her own outbuilding was a makeshift apartment. She intended to use it as an art studio. But she didn’t know if it was also an apartment in the other garage and if that was rented out, too, to someone other than Cam Pratt.
So she stood rooted to the spot, staring at the large rectangular window that matched hers, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever was up there.
She didn’t have long to wait.
Within moments she saw Cam Pratt cross in front of the window and go to some kind of bar that seemed to be jammed into the doorway that led to what would have been the bathroom in her unit.
Because she was looking from a ground floor level through a second floor window, she could only see the top portions of the above-the-garage room and of the man who was in it. But that was enough to give her a glimpse of him from behind, reaching long, well-muscled arms upward and grasping the bar—palms towards him—in his huge hands.
As she watched, he began to use the bar to do pull-ups and with each one his full back and waist came into view.
Now that she knew she didn’t have yet another neighbor, what went on in that room shouldn’t have been of any further interest to Eden. But she couldn’t seem to tear herself away. Or so much as look at anything else. Instead, she stayed right where she was, eyes trained on that second floor window in the distance.
Cam was wearing a plain white T-shirt that clung damply to his broad shoulders and the V of his back where it narrowed to his waist. And although the shirt concealed the details of what it encased, the powerful swell of his arms from the short sleeves gave her a clue as to what was going on within the shirt, too. And it was noteworthy.
She was aware that cops were encouraged to keep in shape and apparently Cam Pratt took that seriously. Because he was in very, very good shape as he raised
