The Bride Next Door by Hope Ramsay (12)

Courtney stayed at Sid’s house until the early afternoon. His collection of girlfriends, all of them widows, tried to ease his worries. And by the end of her visit, Courtney had concluded that Sid’s annoyance at LL&K, while possibly misplaced, might be doing him a world of good. At least he had started to care about something again.

And he certainly wasn’t going to lack for attention and care. Courtney made sure that each of his girlfriends had her cell number and instructed them to call her right away if Sid needed anything or if they thought he was not taking care of himself.

Still, his situation depressed her. He had exactly thirty days to move out of his apartment. Where was he or Leslie or any of the other tenants going to live?

And it sure didn’t ease her mind to know that Leslie was thinking about moving all the way to Arizona, where she said a person on a fixed income could live in much better style than here in Virginia.

She hated the idea of Sid moving halfway across the country. But she had a feeling he might do just that, following after Leslie. And then she’d be alone. The last of Dad’s friends would be gone.

An aching loneliness settled over Courtney that afternoon. She called Melissa to see if she’d be interested in an evening at the Jaybird, but Melissa and Jeff were doing inventory at the store.

She called Arwen and couldn’t get her on the phone, even though it was Monday. What the hell was up with that anyway? Her cell phone had also been off for most of the weekend.

Finally, in the late afternoon, Arwen called back.

“Where have you been? I was trying to reach you all day on Sunday,” Courtney accused.

Silence greeted Courtney for a very long moment before Arwen said, “I got busy and let my cell phone die.”

“Busy with what?”

“I was finishing up that storage rack I started. You know the one out of reclaimed wood.”

“Oh. How’d it come out?”

Another long, suspicious pause. “Great,” Arwen said without much conviction.

“So, you want to meet at the Jaybird tonight?”

“No!” Arwen’s refusal was more than emphatic; it sounded almost panicked.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter. I just have work to do, okay?”

“Tonight?”

“Big case. I have to work late. And I really, really need to go. The senior partner just walked into my office.” Arwen ended the call without even saying goodbye.

Courtney stifled her irritation. Arwen was a good friend—her last remaining single friend—and she couldn’t afford to lose that friendship.

Oh well. It certainly looked like a Netflix and chill evening, in the original meaning of that phrase. Courtney decided to make the best of a lonely situation by spending some time in her kitchen. She headed off to the grocery store for the ingredients needed to make her mother’s lasagna.

An hour later, as she hauled groceries up the stairs, she ran into Pam and Julia Lyndon, who were standing in the hallway outside Matt’s apartment looking as if they’d stepped right out of the pages of Town & Country magazine.

Pam was dressed for a polo match in a powder-blue and white polka-dot dress with matching spectator pumps. Julia, on the other hand, would have fit right in at a fancy garden party in her vintage-look flowered sundress.

The only times Courtney had ever come face-to-face with Pam or Julia was at work, where she always dressed in a conservative, usually black, suit, which was basically like the uniform she used to wear as a nurse. But today she had on a pair of old cutoffs, a tank top, and flip-flops. It was three million degrees outside, and it was her day off.

Damn. If Matt’s family was going to drop by unannounced, she would have to improve her wardrobe. These women made her feel small and insignificant and…nerdy. The way she’d felt as a kid in high school, when, in addition to having braces and glasses, she’d worn a lot of hand-me-downs. Dad had been a wonderful man, but he hadn’t been a rich one, and he hadn’t had much of a fashion sense.

“Oh. Courtney, is that you?” Pam asked as her gaze traveled down Courtney’s legs and back up to her face, which was a little sweaty right at the moment because of the heat. Pam clearly never sweated and probably didn’t even perspire much.

“Hi,” she said. “I, um, live next door.” She continued up the stairway and edged around Pam and Julia.

It seemed odd that Matt’s mother and aunt would be here in the late afternoon while Matt was at work. What were they up to?

“Oh. That’s nice,” Pam said. Courtney interpreted her disinterested tone as a slap in the face. If these women knew what she and Matt had done last night…

A blush crawled up her face. Thankfully they would never know. And she’d have to be careful. They were busybodies. She jammed her key into her door, trying to make a quick escape.

“So, you won’t tell Matt that we were here, will you?” Julia asked.

Courtney turned around. “We’re just neighbors,” she said. It came out sounding exactly like the line: We’re just friends. Damn.

“Of course you are, darling,” Pam said. “Which is why we need you to keep the surprise.”

“Surprise?”

They nodded in unison. “We’re doing something about his apartment.”

“Is there something wrong with it?”

Pam chuckled. “He went off to IKEA and bought furniture. Can you imagine?”

Yes, she could imagine. She had a couple of IKEA pieces at her place because Ethan Allen was out of her price range. She thought back to last night. But Ethan Allen wasn’t out of Matt’s price range, was it?

Warmth spilled through her. Matt was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a snob.

She gave Julia and Pam a smile. “No, I can’t even imagine,” she said, trying to keep a straight face.

“So we’ve measured the place and we’re going to redo it for him. You won’t tell, will you?”

She shook her head. “No,” she lied. “We hardly know each other. And my lips are sealed. You ladies have a nice afternoon.” She turned back toward her door and escaped as quickly as she could.

Should she text him with this news? Or should she wait until she saw him again? She decided to wait and spent the rest of the afternoon making lasagna and weeping over The Notebook, a movie she’d seen at least twenty times.

After the movie, she dined alfresco on the balcony as the June sun slipped low on the horizon. It was still humid and warm, but the balcony was shaded and had a ceiling fan that cooled and kept the mosquitoes at bay. She sipped some Chianti and started a John Grisham book she’d been meaning to read while Aramis pounced at her feet.

She could do this. She thrived on being alone.

She swallowed the lump in her throat as twilight settled in. Who was she kidding? She’d come out here on the balcony hoping to catch a glimpse of Matt when he returned from work. But here it was, almost 9:00 p.m., with no sight of him.

Where was he? Arwen said they were busy at work. Maybe she’d been telling the truth. But Courtney couldn’t shake the idea that he was probably out with some other woman. Maybe she wouldn’t tell him about his mother’s plan to redecorate his apartment.

She hated herself for thinking like that. She’d crossed the hall last night knowing how things would end. In fact, now that she thought about it, cats were the perfect pets for guys like Matt. Cats weren’t needy, and it didn’t take much to commit to a cat. She stared down at the adorable Aramis.

Of course, it didn’t take much to fall in love with one either.

“I’m hopeless,” she said to the kitten as she put down her book. The days were long this time of year, but at nine o’clock, the light had faded to a deep purple-blue. It was too dark to read on the balcony, so she stood up and started collecting her dinner dishes.

The words floated up on the summer air from the sidewalk below in a voice that kissed her eardrums and wrapped around her chest like a warm, romantic hug. She leaned over the railing, and there he stood in the light of the streetlamp, wearing a wrinkled white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his tie undone. He carried his suit jacket over his shoulder, and his unruly hair curled over his forehead, making him look vaguely Byronic.

Her pulse jumped. Never in her life had any man quoted Shakespeare to her. She wished she could remember Juliet’s comeback line. It was something about the moon being inconstant. Something about Romeo’s love being untrustworthy. But she couldn’t quote it directly.

So instead she said, “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

His mouth quirked on one side. “Busted.”

His response disappointed her on some level. But she knew damn well that normal, twenty-first-century guys didn’t quote poetry…ever. They talked about the Redskins and UVA football.

Only a Hook-up Artist quoted poetry. And this particular Hook-up Artist seemed to have a plethora of Shakespeare to fall back on. “So, what? Did you memorize a bunch of quotes in order to impress the ladies?”

“You’d be surprised how impressive it can be when you quote Elizabeth Barrett Browning or Emily Dickinson.” His deep espresso eyes danced with amusement. He was teasing her.

“Wow, you know more than Shakespeare?”

“I do, actually.”

“Really? Why do I not believe you?”

He let go of a long sigh. “Oh. So you want only the truth?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Okay, I’ll give you the truth but on one condition.”

He was such a player. She cocked her head. “And that is?”

“That you tell me the truth first.”

“What is this? A game of truth or dare?”

“No. Just honesty. Are you ready?”

She nodded.

“Okay, so…were you sitting out here waiting for me?”

She should have known this was coming. Thank goodness it was almost full dark. Otherwise he might have seen her blush. “Absolutely not. I was reading this John Grisham book.” She held up the book.

“Really? In the dark?”

“It’s the third week in June. The sun just went down.” A semi-truth. “Besides, I answered your question. Now you answer mine. Did you specifically memorize that line from Romeo and Juliet in order to impress the ladies?”

“I memorized a great deal of poetry to impress one special lady in particular.”

A frisson of pain knifed through her. One lady? Since when had he cared about one woman? “Really. Who?”

“My grandmother,” he said, his smile widening into a grin. “I was a little boy, and she was a very old lady whose eyesight was fading. I had a date to read to her every afternoon. And I’m afraid my grandmother loved romantic poetry.”

A tiny bit of mortar crumbled from the wall around Courtney’s heart. In her mind’s eye she could see a young Matt, with a head full of wild curly hair, sitting beside his grandmother, reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning. “That’s sweet,” she said.

He shrugged, and for a tiny moment he looked slightly uncomfortable. It had cost him something to share this secret.

“To be utterly honest,” Courtney said, “I did kind of hope you might walk by while I was reading.” And then she took a wild and crazy leap off a very tall precipice. “Are you just getting home from work? If you haven’t eaten, I have a ton of homemade lasagna.”

“Homemade lasagna?”

“Yeah.” It struck her then that she was having her own balcony scene with a very handsome man, but instead of talking about the moon and the stars, they were talking about lasagna. “What if I bring you a plate?” She almost cringed. Was she going to become that neighbor? No. She would not.

“Okay. You can bring Doom back too.”

“His name isn’t Doom. It’s Aramis.”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “The cat formerly named Aramis is still at my house. You’ve got Doom, the cat formerly named Porthos.”

“Does it matter which is which? And for the record, I’m trying to square the guy who quotes Shakespeare with the guy who names his cats after comic book villains instead of the Three Musketeers. The inconsistencies worry me.”

His eyes twinkled. “I guess that makes you like Juliet, then.”

Damn. He knew about Juliet’s comeback line. “You mean that line in the balcony scene where she talks about the moon being unreliable?”

“You don’t remember the specific words, do you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, but I’m not a player either.”

His voice was low and deep, but it carried up to the balcony and swept away her carefully placed barriers.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” she said, trying to keep her heart from racing away with her. She needed to stop this. Now. She’d take a plate over to him, tell him about his mother’s plans for his apartment, and turn right around and come back home.

Yes, she most definitely would do just that.

Matt shouldn’t have told her about Granny Artzen. Courtney was the kind of woman who might use that knowledge against him.

Why had he done it?

Easy answer: When he’d seen her sitting out on her balcony reading a book with her bare legs propped up against the railing, something eased inside him. He’d had a truly awful day at work. The Dogwood Estates case had ended in disaster. All those families would have to find new homes and Matt couldn’t do one thing about it. Instead, he spent the day following David around while he dealt with no less than four divorces. And then he’d had to sit in Dad’s office for a full forty-five minutes while he pontificated about the law.

The only good thing that had happened was Arwen’s news that her contact in the Jefferson County Building Permits Division wanted to meet with them. Arwen was excited about this. She thought she could find them a client.

This made him a little nervous. For one thing, Dad had practically prohibited this sort of thing. And for another, Matt didn’t have the skills to bring a property rights case. He’d have to win David and Dad’s approval. And that seemed remote.

Or barring that, he’d have to go to August Kopp, the managing partner, who would probably eat him for lunch.

So when Courtney knocked on his door for the second time in two days, he welcomed the diversion. She stood on his threshold like a voluptuous angel of mercy, holding a plate of lasagna that smelled deliciously of cheese and marinara. Her cutoffs exposed her shapely legs, and her tank top clung to her breasts.

Instant hard-on. Especially with her hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun with tendrils falling down around her ears. His fingers itched to take that hair down one bobby pin at a time.

Damn. He should send her back across the hallway. He wanted her too much, and nothing good had ever come from wanting a woman too much. But the aroma of the lasagna did him in. He was starving. “That smells amazing,” he said.

She grinned like the proverbial casserole-bearing neighbor. “It’s my mother’s secret recipe. I used to make lasagna for my dad all the time.”

Wow, that seemed like an odd detail. But her reference to her father made him suddenly curious about her parents, a scary thought. He didn’t want to get in too deep.

“Enjoy,” she said, handing him the plate. She stood on the threshold, either waiting for an invitation or preparing to make a quick escape. He should send her back across the hall.

“Come on in,” he said, backing away from the door. Damn. He was not thinking with the head on his shoulders.

She hesitated a moment, as if considering her options. As if she was having second thoughts about the game they played. She understood the rules better than most.

That should ease his conscience, but it didn’t.

She didn’t move. “Um, I need to tell you something.”

Uh-oh, was she about to have some long-winded talk about last night? “Okay,” he said, bracing himself.

“I caught your mother and aunt coming out of your apartment this afternoon. They think you need a decorator. I got the impression they were going to redo your apartment behind your back.”

“Goddammit,” he said, turning to head toward his dining room table.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your problem. Thanks for warning me.” He looked at her over his shoulder. “Are you coming in or not?”

She finally crossed the threshold and closed the door behind her.

He placed the lasagna on the table and said, “I’ve got some silverware somewhere, in one of these shopping bags.”

“Let me help,” she said, as she started peeking into one bag after another.

Damn. His mother was meddling in his life, and now the girl next door was sticking her nose into all his stuff. He almost told her to stop, but she found the package of knives and forks before he did.

“Here you go,” she said, handing him the package.

He retrieved a fork and sat down at the table, but before he could dig into the lasagna, she said, “Aren’t you going to wash that first?”

She plucked the fork from his fingers and walked into his kitchen as if she owned the place or something. His skin started to itch. She returned a moment later. “All clean,” she said, and then sank into the chair facing him.

Their gazes met across the table, and all his blood went south. Forget the lasagna and the silverware and his misgivings about the women in his life. Maybe he could tackle her like a cave man and drag her back to the bedroom and bury himself in her.

“About last night,” she said, just as he lost himself in her incredible blue-eyed stare.

“Yeah.” He almost grunted the word as he tore his gaze away and focused on the lasagna. He took a bite, closing his eyes to savor the mouthwatering taste. Holy crap. Courtney Wallace could cook.

“I think it would be better if we were friends, and not lovers,” Courtney said.

His eyes sprang open, and he swallowed down the pasta. What the hell? Hadn’t she admitted that she’d been hanging out on her balcony waiting for him? Hadn’t she come across the hall with food? Then it occurred to him that she might have been waiting all day just to tell him that his mother had been sniffing around, meddling in his life. Maybe she’d been waiting to tell him she just wanted to be his friend.

Did he have any female friends?

Sure he did. He had women friends in Washington. Work colleagues and the girlfriends of guys he knew. And Arwen was becoming a friend too.

Could he be friends with Courtney?

No way. On the other hand, being friends with her might be better than letting her get too close.

“Okay,” he said, looking back down at the lasagna.

“Good. Now that we’re friends, I need to ask you a question.”

He ground his teeth. She was poking him sort of the way he sometimes poked her. “Sure. Whatever. I might not answer it though.”

“Fair enough.”

“So?”

“Who are you? I mean, you’re rich but you bought furniture at IKEA. You have a cat named Doom after some comic book character, but you also quote Shakespeare. You’re a player with cats.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t I fit into your man classification system?”

She shook her head. “No. That’s not it. You actually fit the definition of a Hook-up Artist perfectly. But for some reason I still like you.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. And I’m trying to figure out why a guy like you, from a wealthy family, who has had everything in life, ended up becoming a player. I mean players are guys who have low self-esteem. And you’re not like that.”

Whoa. That came way too close to the truth. He gave her an intent and sober stare. “First rule of friendship: no psychoanalysis.”

She snorted a laugh. “Sorry. That’s fair. But for the record, just so you feel comfortable with your insecurities, I’m pretty sure they won’t ever rival mine. See, I was the girl no one loved in high school. I had zits, braces, a slightly crossed eye. So I’m naturally defensive. Especially after what happened at senior prom.”

His hearing faded away as blood rushed through his veins. He had the strong, almost overpowering urge to give her a hug. A hug! “What happened?” he asked instead.

“A guy I really liked asked me to the prom. I was over the moon, and then he turned out to be the high school equivalent of a player, or something. He took me to the dance, but he didn’t sit with me, he didn’t dance with me, and he didn’t take me home. He sat with the popular kids, pointing at me and laughing.”

Matt blew out a long breath. “I’m so sorry.”

She pushed up from the table. “I wanted you to know that because I think that prom incident warped me in some deep way. It’s not that I don’t like guys. It’s not that I push them away on purpose. It’s just that I don’t quite trust any of them. I guess I never have. So really, I think it would be best if we were friends, because I do like you, Matt, and that’s a huge surprise.”

Before he could say another word, she turned and walked with an astonishing amount of dignity out of his apartment, leaving him stunned and utterly adrift.

“So, I’ll see you later, at the open mic?” Rory tucked a strand of Arwen’s hair behind her ear, the gesture so kind, so surprising.

She sat on the edge of his bed, in the apartment he shared with Steve, one of the Jaybird’s other bartenders. It was four in the afternoon, and she needed to get back to work. Her life would be so much simpler if Rory didn’t work nights, and if he didn’t live here, at Dogwood Estates.

For the last four days, she’d been skulking around, leaving the office for a few hours every afternoon, sneaking in here, scared to death that someone would see her.

How had she missed this essential fact about Rory? All these months, visiting with Leslie and the tenants, never once had she come face-to-face with him. But then, most of the tenants association meetings had been held in the evenings when Rory was working. And Rory’s name wasn’t on the lease. He was Steve’s subtenant.

“I can’t make it tonight,” she said in answer to his question.

“Why?”

“I have something important I need to do tonight.”

“Really? What’s more important than your songs?”

She stood up, moved to the grimy window, and looked out on the weed-choked parking lot. The coast was clear right at the moment. “It’s none of your business,” she said, trying to infuse her voice with conviction. In truth, what she had to do tonight was his business in a roundabout way.

She let go of a long sigh and turned around. Rory reclined in the bed, his dark hair tumbling across his forehead in a ridiculously romantic fashion. He was also gloriously naked, and every fiber of her body wanted to climb back into bed with him.

“You’re fooling yourself, love,” he said with a knowing spark in those deep blue eyes.

“About what? You? I already know that.”

He chuckled. “No. About your songs. You’re running away from them.”

“How?”

“By doing whatever it is you think you need to do tonight instead of showing up for the open mic.”

“No one listens to me at the open mic.”

“That isn’t true. I listen. Courtney listens. Juni listens. Ryan listens. A lot of people listen. And even more people would listen if you would do something about those songs. We should get on the bike right now and go to Nashville. What do you say? I’m going to have to leave soon anyway, now that everyone here is being evicted. Let’s go today. Right now.”

“I can’t. I have things to do.”

“Things that aren’t as important as your songs?”

She turned away and hauled in a huge breath redolent with his scent: smoke and whiskey and something else that made the crazy part of her come alive. How easy it sounded, to pick up and move, to bet her future on a handful of songs no one ever listened to. It was seductive.

And it was a pipe dream.

She turned toward him. “I have to go. I won’t be back.”

He sat up in bed. “But—”

“I mean it. I won’t be back. I won’t be back to the open mics either. I need to get my life back together. I can’t go on lying to people at work. To my friends. To myself. I know it’s only been four days, but honestly, I’m not cut out for this kind of life. I need structure. I need routine. I need habit.”

She turned and raced out of his apartment, down the rusty iron stairs, and out into the parking lot, where her worst nightmare awaited her. Just as she reached her sensible Honda Civic, Leslie Heath pulled her classic red Volkswagen Bug in to the adjacent spot.

There was no escape this time. Leslie climbed out of her car with a smile. “Arwen, I wasn’t expecting you today. Do you have news for us?”

Oh crap. Now what? “I, um, I—”

“She wasn’t here to see you, Leslie,” Rory said from his apartment’s concrete stoop. He’d thrown on a pair of jeans, but no shirt or shoes. He looked gorgeous and romantic and dangerous all at once. He was an addiction Arwen could not afford.

Leslie’s gaze snapped from Arwen to Rory and back again before a big smile spread on her face. “Oh, I didn’t know you two were acquainted.”

“You should come down to the Jaybird some Wednesday,” Rory said. “Arwen is an amazing songwriter.” Rory’s deep-set blue eyes pierced Arwen like a pair of twin lasers.

“It’s not true,” she said. “I’m a much better paralegal. And, um, I, uh, really need to get back to the office.” Arwen pulled open her car door and escaped before Rory tried to convince her to stay. She needed to keep away from that man. He was not good for her. He was messing with her mind.

She peeled out of the parking lot, but instead of heading toward the office, she turned left onto Route 7 and drove toward Winchester. She hadn’t been lying to Rory about the open mic tonight. She had a meeting with Tom McClintock, a clerk in the Jefferson County Building Permits Division.

But even if she hadn’t been busy, she would have begged off the open mic. It was stupid to believe anything Rory said. After all, he was hardly a success in life. He tended bar in a small backwater café, and he lived in a room he subleased in a rundown apartment. He wasn’t living a dream life.

In fact, he was wasting his life on cigarettes and weed. Where did he get off telling her what to do about her life?

But then again, did it make a difference if your cell was gilded or rusty? Either way it was still a cell.

Tears formed in her eyes as she drove. She wanted to be wild and adventurous, but four days of sex with Rory had done nothing except make her crazy. The hours of lost sleep. The deep questioning of her beliefs. The yearning for something she couldn’t even articulate.

Damn. It wasn’t healthy. She needed to get back on track. And tonight’s meeting was the first step back. After that, she’d find some other bar where she and her friends could hang out. There were a few chain restaurants up at the highway interchange not far from downtown Shenandoah Falls. She would get over this momentary lapse of judgment.

She forced herself to focus on tonight’s meeting. Tom was a good guy and an old friend from high school. And in true whistle-blower fashion, he hadn’t wanted to meet in the county offices. In fact, he hadn’t wanted to meet anywhere within the boundaries of Jefferson County. So at 5:30 p.m. Arwen pulled into the parking lot at Jim Barnett Park in Winchester and waited until Matt joined her twenty minutes later.

Then the two of them hiked to a remote picnic area, where they sat down with Tom, who had a lot to say about the Jefferson County Council, and its chairman, Bill Cummins.