A Perfect Stranger. Terry McLaughlin
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laughed, charmed in spite of her resolve against it, and pointed to the door. “Out.”
He rose and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’re not still mad at me?”
“No.”
“Friends?”
“Let’s stick with friendly acquaintances for now,” she said, opening the door for him.
He strolled through it and turned to face her. “Dinner?”
“Not that friendly.” She shut him out, leaned back against the door and stared at the two sodas sitting side by side on the table across the room. There was no mistaking the mush-like quality in the sag of her spine.
CHAPTER FIVE
HARLEY MAXWELL arrived home from her day job dealing blackjack along Lake Tahoe’s north shore to find trouble in her usual parking spot and more of it across the street, sprawled on Norma and Syd’s front porch. Much more of it. Six feet, three inches of it, to be exact. Trouble in a three-piece navy-blue suit, striped navy-blue tie and serious navy-blue eyes.
She yanked the steering wheel of her tin-can car hard left and tickled the clutch through the familiar cough-and-shudder routine. Her car tried to roll over and play dead, but she stomped on the brakes before it could shimmy off the steep edge of the road. Big mistake. The little engine that usually could up and died.
She climbed out and slammed the compact’s door, hard, so it would stick. Had to stay on top of things, show that car who was boss. It might not last long enough to get her to Vegas, once she’d saved enough to make her move, but she was counting on it to get her to her second job that night. Tomorrow she’d have a heart-to-heart with the carburetor. Maybe threaten it with a tune-up from Dusty, the oversize mechanic with the sledgehammer hands and the scary-looking tools. It wasn’t much of a threat, really. Dusty was a pushover for down-on-their-luck autos and Harley’s apple tarts.
She took a deep breath and prepared to deal with the man lounging near the stairway leading to Syd’s attic apartment: Henry Barlow, the oversize attorney with the manicured nails and the nifty leather briefcase. It wasn’t going to be easy; Henry wasn’t a pushover for anything she could think of. It would take a hell of a lot more than an apple tart to ease her way around him.
She stilled a moment and waited for her heart to do that odd flippy thing it did whenever she saw him. She had no idea why the sight of the terminally repressed businessman with an undertaker’s fashion sense and a constipated outlook on life could make her heart stutter. Maybe her heart needed a tune-up, too.
Henry sure looked like he could use one. Someone had mussed his hair and loosened his tie. Not too much, or she might not have recognized him, though the sedate silver sedan parked in front of her house was a pretty big clue. The mussing couldn’t be Henry’s doing. He never mussed—er, messed up. Especially not his appearance. Razor-sharp, that was his personal style. Every tie knotted, every crease pressed, every hair perfectly—and predictably—in place.
She ambled across the narrow, rutted mountain road. “Hey, Hank, what’s up?”
“How many times do I have to tell you my name’s not Hank?” He struggled upright. “It’s Henry.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She dropped her canvas tote on the step below his feet. “Several hundred more, at least. It’s not that I forget your name, you know. It’s just that ‘Henry’ doesn’t go down as smooth as ‘Hank.’”
“That’s ridiculous.” He belched, and a whiff of whiskey-soaked misery floated her way. “Henry is meluf…meliful…it’s poetic. Hank is a truck driver in North Dakota.”
Hank Barlow drunk? In the middle of the afternoon? What was the world coming to? “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Checking to see if Norma needs any…” He waved a long-fingered hand in the air. “Anything. While Sydney’s gone.”
Anyone who knew Norma, Syd’s retired landlady who lived in the ground level of the Victorian-era house, knew she could take care of herself. Hank’s reason for being here was as flimsy as his hold on his dignity.
He dribbled an expensive single malt into the faceted crystal glass in his hand and took a loud, slurping sip.
“For cryin’ out loud.” Harley shook her head. “Ditch the Waterford and put the booze in the bag. You’re embarrassing me here.”
He stared at the glass. “I rang Norma’s doorbell to ask about Sydney’s plants, but she didn’t answer.”
“Today’s Wednesday. Norma’s bridge group meets on Wednesdays.” She settled beside him on the sun-warmed porch. “Why don’t you come over to my place? I can fix you some coffee while you wait for her. We can have a nice talk. About what’s bothering you, for instance.”
A jay swooped past with an annoyed squawk to fill the empty spot where Hank’s response belonged.
“Syd playing hard to get again?” asked Harley.
“It’s only a temporary setback. I’ll talk to her and straighten this out when she gets back.” He stared into his glass. “I have to marry her. It’s an investment in the future.”
Harley frowned. “That’s one way of putting it, I guess.”
“There are a number of important factors to consider. And I’ve considered them all, very carefully. It’s the logical thing to do.”
Harley noticed he hadn’t mentioned love. But she’d try to be supportive. He was a nice guy, even if he was a little stiff. “Being logical is important in a relationship, I suppose.”
“It’s good to have someone understand. You’re a nice woman, Harley.” He tossed back the last drops of whiskey in his glass and set it on the step. “Except when you call me Hank.”
“And you’re a nice man, Hank.” She patted him on the knee. There were some nice, lean muscles under those sharply pleated slacks. Who’d have guessed?
There was a nice, steady heart beating beneath that neatly pressed jacket, too. Hank Barlow was one of the nicest men she’d ever met. That wasn’t saying much, because most of the men she’d met were jerks. Even so, Hank wasn’t the kind of guy who deserved to get dumped just when he was closing the deal on getting Syd to the altar.
But Syd was a nice woman, too, and she didn’t deserve to be shackled to a guy she didn’t really love.
Why couldn’t life just work out sometimes? And why did Harley have to get stuck in the middle of this mess?
“Come on, big guy.” She reached out a hand, waited for Hank to take it, and then struggled to get him to his feet. “Let’s go.”
Hank belched again and mumbled an apology. “I don’t usually do things like this.”
“I kind of figured.”
“I’m usually more shir—more circumzz—”
“Circumspect?” Harley shook her head. It was a pretty sad state of affairs when a man’s drinking vocabulary sounded like something from a public affairs network.
“Circumspect,” he said. “It means—”
“I know what it means, Hank.”
He wobbled a bit and glanced down at her. “You don’t look like the kind of woman who would know what that means.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What kind of woman do I look like?”
“I can’t say.” He frowned. “I wouldn’t want to insult you.”
“Any more than you already have, you mean.”
“I do?” He swayed a bit, and she shoved him upright. “I did?”
“Don’t worry