STELLA
My hands were still shaking. At the stoplight next to Big Ed’s Super Pawn, I wedged my knees under the wheel, grabbed a little box of Nerds from my glove box, dumped the whole thing into my mouth, and tried to calm down. My heart was still banging against my breastbone, and I rubbed my hands on my thighs to dry my sweaty palms. I would never get used to the roller coaster of taking something that didn’t belong to me—the rush and the fear, the excitement and the thrill, the guilt and the justifications. The moment when I shouldn’t be doing this turned into I can do this and then I just did. As I waited for the light to change, I focused on the way the sweet globules crackled between my molars. I counted slowly back from five, took a deep breath that got caught in my throat . . . and dumped another box of Nerds into my mouth.
The light changed, but there was cross traffic stuck in the intersection, and my lane stayed frozen. I reached across the passenger seat and buckled in the Elvis lamp. The air filled with the noise of frustrated horns, but I was grateful to have another moment to myself. I let my head fall against the headrest and let the Nerds dissolve in my mouth as I looked up into the desert sky, pink and yellow with the sunset.
For me, stealing wasn’t about the rush or the thrill. Instead, it was a way to put things right. Stealing jewels was how I punched above my weight and fought back against a world that could be cruel, unkind, and unfair. It was how I bucked the system, with a smile on my face. Stealing gems made me Wonder Woman in jeans and Chuck Taylors.
But even Wonder Woman got jumpy. Hands still trembling, I dug through my purse to find my phone. My purse was like a black hole. As usual, I came up with an apple I hadn’t seen in six weeks, a bunch of smooshed packs of gum that I didn’t remember buying, a fistful of lipsticks, a bottle of Advil, and a huge wad of faded receipts. No phone, though. Of course not.
As I pawed blindly through my bag, I kept my eye on the stoplight. In my side mirror, I caught sight of the handlebar of a motorcycle two cars behind me. The guy was way off toward the center line, and I could just see the edge of a big, manly knee straddling the bike. For a brief and ridiculous instant, the thought of him made my heart bounce up and down like one of those rubber balls attached to a paddle.
It was silliness. The last thing I’d ever needed—or wanted—was a man by my side. Men, and especially a man who looked like that, all hunky and inked and oh-so-very . . .
Stella!
Men were a liability when it came to the fine art of jewel theft. They attracted attention, they took risks, they got greedy. And I couldn’t have some banana-studmuffin biker with bedroom eyes getting close to my racket. Too dangerous. Too cocky. Cock-y.
Oh, for God’s sake.
Pushing away the thoughts of Nick the Hunk, I made my way through the rush hour traffic and signaled to take a left on Habanero Drive. I passed my apartment and pulled into Mr. Bozeman’s driveway, next to his ancient truck with three flat tires and a thick layer of desert dust. I put my Jeep in park and got out, holding the Elvis lamp like we were about to start dancing. I set him down on the gravel drive and wrestled the wheelchair out of my Jeep. Unfolding it, I put the Elvis lamp on the seat. On top of the shade I put Mr. Bozeman’s old Stetson. I got his beloved toaster and his even-more-beloved cuckoo clock. The oxygen compressor was going to require a special trip. In the meantime, though, God knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, so I wheeled all the rest of Mr. Bozeman’s things toward his front door.
“Stella? Is that you?” His voice was creaky and barely audible above the shell chimes that hung from his front porch. Right on cue, a snout pushed into the drapes, and some paws got tangled up in the fabric too. The snout tried to find an opening but couldn’t. In retaliation, there was the obligatory drapes death-shake, which made them fly apart enough to create a gap. A small brown face then appeared between the sheers. Her eyes barely cleared the windowsill, and one of her ears had gotten flipped inside out. Her name was Priscilla; she was a miniature dachshund and the cutest little banana on the planet.
She didn’t have the best vision, so at first she wore her default I-hate-the-mailman-really-a-lot face. When she realized it was me, she hurled herself off the sill, gave a few excited barks, and smashed her muzzle through the hole in the screen on the front door, the one she’d created by trying to love the world senseless every chance she got.
“Hi, hi, hi!” I said as I opened the screen, holding it ajar with my hip. I maneuvered the wheelchair inside, and Priscilla danced in circles on two feet with her paws extended, one tutu shy of YouTube superstardom.
Mr. Bozeman was on his couch, as always. He was thin and frail and sat under a tattered afghan on his ancient green-and-brown plaid sofa. Columbo was on television. Peter Falk was acting strategically confused as he scratched his forehead and mouthed soundless words behind the mute icon on the screen.
When Mr. Bozeman saw the lamp, he dropped the remote onto the afghan. “Stella! How did you . . . Stella!”
Priscilla celebrated the return of Elvis with a delighted pounce on her stuffed frog, followed by a wet squelching of the squeaker. Mr. Bozeman’s eyes glistened with the reflection of Columbo, and I felt the instant sting in my nose of happiness tears too. It had been a tragedy that I had been able to stop; I’d seen it happening from my apartment that morning. Big Ed came in his old jalopy and offered surely next to nothing for all Mr. Bozeman’s most prized possessions, in exchange for just enough to get by this month. And I hadn’t been willing to stand by and let it happen.
His joy was contagious, but I knew it was only a Band-Aid on a much bigger problem. If I was going to help Mr. Bozeman in any long-lasting way, it was going to take something much bigger than a two-carat princess cut. And yet, the Band-Aid helped quiet my worry, at least a little. For now. Until Mr. Bozeman went and got tangled up gambling on horses again.
“Next time you need money,” I said as I put Elvis back on the side table where he belonged, next to Mr. Bozeman’s prescription bottles and glass of water, “call me, OK? Not Big Ed.”
“But how ever did you manage to pay for it all?” he asked, as bright and cheery as a kid on Christmas morning, hugging his toaster and beaming. I plugged in the lamp and switched it on, which brightened up the small, dim room a lot. It was still a bit frowsy, but the light did help. I took the Stetson off the lamp and handed it to Mr. Bozeman. Instantly, he went from a frail and somewhat feeble old man to the young wrangler who’d probably once swaggered across Texas, leaving dozens of Lone Star belles swooning in his wake.
I put a hand on my hip and smiled at him. “Promise me, cowboy.” Priscilla jumped up on the couch next to Mr. Bozeman and gave him a lick on the cheek. Her pink ID tag jingled against the side of the toaster.
For an instant, there was defiant shimmer in Mr. Bozeman’s rheumy eyes. I could almost hear him telling me, I never asked for anybody’s help,
Stella, dear! But we’d danced this dance a dozen times, and though I did understand what he meant, it didn’t mean I wasn’t always going to help him. And so finally, he tipped his hat, bowed his head, grinned, and gave me a long, drawling, “Yeeeeeeesssss, maaaaaaaaaa’am.”
I rehung the cuckoo clock over the cuckoo clock–shaped outline on the wallpaper, and Mr. Bozeman turned up the volume on Columbo. I refilled Priscilla’s water bowl, which was a little something I found on clearance a while ago at Marshalls. On the side it said THE QUEEN DRINKS FROM THIS CHALICE. While Mr. Bozeman was distracted by his show, and after I had bustled around the kitchen for a while, making dinner for Priscilla and a sandwich for Mr. Bozeman, I carefully removed the cigar box where he hid his money from the drawer underneath the oven. He kept it between two glass pans, held together by two enormous rubber bands. I’d seen it once when he tried to pay me for some groceries I had gotten for him after he’d had hip surgery. The cigar box was made of tin, with a dusky flamenco dancer on the lid, lifting her frilled skirt and showing her leg. She was old-fashioned but still delightfully saucy. Inside I found a few hundred dollars, along with a handful of change. To that, I added the extra cash I’d gotten for the ring, then carefully, oh-so-carefully, put the glass pans together, rubber banded them closed, and placed the whole contraption in the oven storage drawer. Taking the drawer handle in both hands and lifting it to minimize the noise, I slid the drawer shut with painstaking care so as not to let the pans rattle and give me away.
I poured Mr. Bozeman a glass of apple juice, placed it on a doily next to Elvis, and headed back outside to contemplate how exactly I was going to get the oxygen compressor inside. I slid my seat forward and popped it off the rails so that the headrest leaned against the steering wheel. The machine sat lopsidedly in the back seat, and I gave it a shove to get a sense of what I was up against. The thing was as heavy and cumbersome as an old tube television set; I was strong, but I wasn’t that strong. For the first time in ages, I thought to myself, Now this is when I could really use a man . . .
Which was when my thinking was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Heavy, confident ones accompanied by a metallic clinking. To my right, lo and behold, there was a man. Swagger, ink, and boots.
Nick.
“Hey, sunshine,” he said, with a flick of his chin. He took off his sunglasses and ran his palm through his thick, dark hair.
My first thought was, How can a man be that good-looking? Followed immediately by, Uh-oh SpaghettiOs. Because there was no good reason whatsoever that he’d be here, unless . . . “Did you . . . follow me?”
My plan for tonight, to celebrate a job well done, had been to pop a huge bowl of popcorn and watch the new season of Twin Peaks in my pj’s. But if he’d followed me, it meant he knew something. And if he knew anything at all, it was goodbye Twin Peaks and hello Bad News Bears.
“You bet I followed you,” he said, and slipped his sunglasses into his jacket pocket.
He must have seen me steal the ring. In my head, I saw our local five-o’clock news anchor—too much hair spray, too much foundation, and totally stationary eyebrows. Next to her unmoving face was a picture they’d taken off my Facebook profile, probably me kissing Priscilla. Or worse still, a mug shot. “Today in Albuquerque, thirty-four-year-old dog sitter Stella Marie Peretti was arrested on charges of felony theft and pawning stolen property. She is currently being held without . . .”
“What are you up to?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at me.
Cue the da-dun scene change noise from Law & Order, because this was it. I was a goner. It was orange jumpsuits and tube socks for me from now on. Goodbye Bad News Bears and hello Orange Is the New Black. Maybe he was an undercover cop, and the swagger was hiding a gun and a badge. My heart took a tumble in my chest. I’d been so close to being done with all this jewel thievery, and now I was going to get carted off for saving Mr. Bozeman’s bacon.
But the train hadn’t officially gone off the rails, not yet. When in doubt, I’d always found being myself to be a safe bet. There’s no story like a true story. “I’m just the girl next door.” I pointed to my apartment building.
He scoffed at that, like he really wasn’t buying it. “Oh yeah?”
“Absolutely!” I blurted, about ten notches too loud. “American as Dunkin’ Donuts and second mortgages!”
Oh, Stella. No. Just, no.
He nodded and slipped his hand inside his jacket. My heart plummeted even further. I could almost hear the clatter of the handcuffs already. “Well, Girl Next Door . . .” he said.
I tried desperately to keep the grimace off my face. This was it.
Instead, he pulled out . . . my phone! I reached out for it with both hands like a child reaching for a cupcake. “How in the world!”
“It fell out of your purse.” He turned it over in his hand and ran his rugged thumb over the pink rhinestone star, then put it into my palm. “And I wanted you to get it back.”
I pressed my phone to my chest. It was warm from being in his pocket. No, not warm. Hot. Like him. Hotcha, hotcha, hotcha. “Thank you. So much.” Yet relieved though I was, it didn’t explain everything. Or actually anything, really. “So wait . . . you followed me . . . on errands?”
Nick tipped his head to the side, like he understood that wasn’t exactly logical. “I’d have stopped you at Big Ed’s, but I was having too much fun watching that guard chase you around the parking lot. So I followed you here instead.”
Though I was grateful, I was just a teensy bit annoyed. I didn’t need a hero—never had and never would. But then again, if it hadn’t been for him, I’d have had to go back to Albuquerque Jewelers, which was never going to happen. So I lowered my drawbridge, just an inch. “Thank you,” I said once more, still clutching my phone in both hands like it was the Holy Grail. “I really appreciate it.”
He waved it off and smiled. He ran his hand through his hair, then reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his keys. “My pleasure,” he said, spinning his keys on his key ring, meeting my stare.
He stopped spinning his keys. For a long moment, eyes locked, we both stood there frozen. I hadn’t felt so tongue-tied in twenty years. He moved his eyes down over my body very slowly; then he bit his lip and shook his head.
It was the very same way I reacted to a second piece of flourless chocolate cake. I shouldn’t. But I really, really want to.
Gulp.
He laughed a little to himself almost and inhaled long and slow. I knew that one too—the inevitable surrender. Except all those lusty glances, all that hesitation, all that desire and turmoil . . . wasn’t about cake. It was about me.
Heavens. The drawbridge I’d lowered an inch felt like it was about to come flying down.
“Listen,” he said softly, and stepped a little closer. “My plan was to give you your phone and hit the road. But that’s not what I’m gonna do.”
My knees felt wobbly like they did on those days when I forgot to eat breakfast and consumed nothing but iced tea, banana Laffy Taffy, and watermelon jelly beans, only to realize at three in the afternoon that I was about to pass out. He was so close now that I could smell his cologne. It was woodsy, musky, and perfect. Mayday! He stepped into me and pressed me against the side of my Jeep. “I want to ask you a question instead.”
My gulp was so loud it sounded like a hiccup, and my mouth actually dropped open when I looked into his eyes. The sun was shining into them—a light brown, marbled through with flecks of green and rimmed in a brown so rich it might’ve been black. “OK,” I whispered. Actually whispered!
“No hesitation,” he said, dark and deep. “Like word association. Don’t think, just answer.”
I almost blurted out, Take me. But somehow, I managed to restrain myself. I pressed my lips together and felt a little woozy, looking at the gritty texture of his stubble. He wasn’t merely yummy. He was downright dreamy. “All right.”
“You ready?”
“I think so.” My voice was breathy, and my whole body was buzzing. He was so close I could feel the heat of his body spilling into mine.
“Don’t lie to me,” he said, raising his eyebrow. “You got it?”
Take me right now. A shiver ran from my tush to my fingertips. “Got it.”
He placed his hand on the roll bar of my Jeep, caging me in. He moved his eyes over my face, then down to my cleavage, before moving back up to my eyes again. The anticipation was literally killing me, and I planted my palm on the side mirror for support. “I’m ready.”
“Favorite food?”
“Indian,” I gasped, and sucked in a deep breath.
He beamed and let out a soft laugh, like he liked that answer a lot. “Let me take you out for tikka masala and a few beers.”
Be still my heart! It was banging so hard that I could feel it in my ears. It had nothing to do with tikka masala, either. Or beer. Being near him was like being on the downhill on a roller coaster. Whooooosh, and all the butterflies in my stomach took off at once.
I was just about to give him an enthusiastic Yes, please! when Mr. Bozeman’s voice came from inside the house, jolting me out of all this dinner-date flirtation. “Stella! That guy giving you trouble? Need a hand? Want my slingshot?”
“No trouble at all!” I called back to Mr. Bozeman, without looking away from Nick. Never in my life had a man looked at me with such unfiltered desire. But before we could saunter off to enjoy Indian food, there was still a little bit of work to be done. Of the heavy lifting variety. “He was just about to help me move the oxygen compressor,” I said loudly right in Nick’s face, so that Mr. Bozeman could hear me. Then I said more softly, “Weren’t you?”
For the first time, he really smiled. It was breathtaking—the most heart-stopping contrast to his tough exterior. It was a great big, warm, sincere, eye-crinkling grin. He stepped back, head slightly bent, long lashes brushing his cheeks. “Yep, I sure was.”
“Then we’re on for dinner,” I said, clutching my phone to my chest again and still steadying myself on my car. My drawbridge was down. He’d breached my walls. And I didn’t mind a bit. “Just don’t forget to lift with your knees.”