Her Special Charm Page 7

  She was going to wash them, he could tell by the look in her eyes. Where did she get off, making herself comfortable in his life?

  To underscore his protest, James reached for the plates she was holding.

  “Yes, I do.”

  Her voice was soft, but firm. Was her body the same way? The thought came out of nowhere, shaking him up. He didn’t give a damn if she was hard, soft or in-between. He just wanted her out of here.

  Sidestepping him, she went toward the sink. “If I don’t, you’re not going to have a single thing to eat off of tomorrow morning.”

  “I don’t eat in the morning.”

  After opening the cabinet door beneath the sink, she denuded each plate of the scraps that were left. He didn’t care for the way she nodded her head, as if she were privy to something about him that he wasn’t. “Starting the day on an empty stomach could be why you see the world in shades of gray.”

  The condition of his stomach had nothing to do with the way he saw the world. He’d arrived at his view a long time ago. “There’s a hell of a lot more reason for it than that.”

  Constance rinsed off the first dish and looked at him. “I’m willing to listen if you feel like talking.”

  There was compassion in her eyes and a manner about her that could have induced a clam to open and yield up its pearl. But he had decades of keeping his own counsel and he wasn’t about to begin spilling his innermost feelings to a stranger—even if he could, which he didn’t think was possible. You walk a certain way all of your life, you don’t know how else to walk.

  “Lady, the last thing in the world I want to do is talk about it.”

  “Maybe you’d feel better.”

  He’d been as polite as he was prepared to be. “What would make me feel better is not having my space invaded.”

  After rinsing off the second dish, she held out her hand out for the dish that Stanley had used. It was still on the floor. “Not invading, just visiting.”

  “Same difference.” Biting off another curse, he picked up the plate and handed it to her.

  Because there was nothing else left, Constance used a little of the hand soap and applied it to the dish, rubbing it in with her fingers. Stanley had licked the plate so clean, there was nothing to remove except for the sticky residue left behind by his tongue.

  She raised her eyes to James’s face. “Don’t know your history, do you?”

  He knew as much history as the next person and didn’t see where this was going. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “An invasion means you stake out a place and stay for the duration, making that place yours, like a conquering army.” She shook off the last dish, placing it on the rack. She was surprised he actually had one of those. “Visiting means just that, you’re a tourist, passing through. Leaving.”

  He eyed her. “Anytime soon?”

  She laughed and shook her head. If he meant to put her off, she gave no indication that he’d succeeded. “Don’t exactly go out of your way to make a person feel welcomed, do you?”

  Something akin to guilt pricked at him, although he wasn’t altogether sure just why. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d asked her to do any of this. He’d specifically tried to talk her out of it. But she had, and he supposed he could attempt to be marginally gracious about it.

  James made a valiant attempt to hold on to his temper. “Look, I appreciated dinner.” He waved at his dog, who was no help whatsoever. If Stanley had been true to his colors, he would have been barking at her, making her want to leave. “Stanley appreciated dinner. We probably ate better tonight than we have in a long time, but there was no need to do any of this.”

  She went toe-to-toe with him, although her voice was far less strained than his. “There was no need for you to put that ad in the newspaper.”

  He could feel his temper fraying by the moment. “I already told you. I’m a cop. It’s what I do.”

  Her smile remained. As did she. “And I like to show my gratitude. It’s what I do.”

  He sighed. Maybe if he waved a white flag, she’d leave him alone and go. “Consider it shown.”

  Well, she’d tried, she thought. And technically, she was under no obligation to take on whatever seemed to be troubling him. It was just that she hated seeing anyone in pain and whether he knew it or not, Detective James Munro was in pain.

  Still, there was only so much she could do.

  With a resigned sigh, she picked up her small purse. “Then I guess I’ll be going.”

  Because he didn’t trust her to actually make her way across the threshold once she reached it, James walked her. Sure enough as he opened the door for her, she turned and said, “Oh, wait.”

  He braced himself for anything. “Now what?”

  She pointed toward the case she’d brought from the restaurant. “I forgot the thermal carrier.”

  The last thing he wanted to do was let her back in now that he had her so close to the door. “Hold it, I’ll get it.” Long strides took him to the kitchen counter and back again in a few seconds. He handed the carrier to her. “Here.”

  Constance felt as if she were being given the bum’s rush. She wondered if that was because, in some minor way, she’d gotten to him and it made him nervous. The thought took root and she smiled to herself, knowing in her heart that she’d hit upon her answer.

  What was he afraid of? she wondered. Had he been hurt like she had? Was that what made him afraid to allow another human being to come close?

  Lord, she could certainly relate to that.

  But she wasn’t trying to get close to him in that manner. She was just trying to be a friend. And the more time she spent around him, the more she was convinced he really needed a friend. Someone to talk to who wouldn’t judge him.

  She paused in the doorway. “Call me if you find that you need a friend with less than four feet.”

  “What makes you think I don’t have friends?”

  Constance didn’t answer. She merely smiled up at him. The knowing look in her eyes was getting to him. Irritating the hell out of him.

  He blew out a breath. “Okay, thanks for dinner.”

  “You’re welcome. Thank you for finding this.” She lightly touched the cameo at her throat.

  Then, before he realized what was happening, she’d risen up on her toes, brushed her lips against his cheek and was gone.

  In body.

  In spirit, however, she was still there, lingering on after she’d turned the corner. After he’d heard the stairwell door open and close behind her. After he’d closed and locked his own door.

  It was as if she’d left a part of her essence behind. Not just the light perfume, which seemed inexplicably to expand so that it filled his apartment, but also the feel of her lips against his cheek.

  Damn, but he could swear that he could still feel them on his skin, stirring up a restlessness within him he had no idea how to conquer.

  He threw the second lock into place and looked down at Stanley who was staring intently at the closed door. As if willing the woman to return.

  “What the hell was all that about?” he asked the dog.

  Stanley had no answer.

  And neither did James.

  The air continued to be hot and sticky the next morning. That was the only reason he could think of why the scent of her perfume hadn’t abated within his small apartment. Either that or the woman was a witch. He wasn’t completely sold on the fact that she wasn’t.

  The previous evening and his inability to shake off its effects were responsible for putting him in a mood that caused the faint of heart to stay as clear of him as humanly possible. Nobody wanted their head handed to them.

  Rather than risk losing his temper, James became quieter than usual. So much so that even Santini, accustomed to doing ninety percent of the talking, commented on the fact as they drove back from the scene of the first robbery. They’d gone there to see if they’d overlooked a possible link between the robberies.

/>   Not finding anything added to James’s overall dark mood.

  Having lapsed into a two-second silence, Santini eyed his partner’s chiseled, stony profile. “Trouble at the Batcave this morning?” he asked.

  James gave him a look that would have sent Santini into the depths of self-imposed silence when they’d first teamed up. But Santini had learned how to roll with the punches, which was why they were still together after three years. Santini had outlasted all James’s previous partners by at least two years.

  When James made no answer, Santini began to play his own brand of twenty questions. “Last night?” he guessed. When James raised a brow in response, Santini figured he was on to something. “Okay, last night, then. What happened last night?”

  Because bits and pieces of last night had been hovering around in his mind the better part of the day, nagging at him like a song that refused to go away, James’s response somehow slipped passed his normal tendency to censor his own words. “She came over.”

  The female pronoun had Santini immediately coming to life, Pinocchio responding to a wave of the Blue Fairy’s wand.

  “She? Who ‘she’?” And then his eyes widened to the size of coffee coasters. “That ‘she’? The drop-dead gorgeous cameo ‘she’?” Given James’s answering glance, Santini grinned wide enough to slip his face. “You dog, you. You had her over.”

  The mention of dog made James think of Stanley. And the betrayal he’d suffered at his pet’s paws. Stanley should have barked at her, making her want to leave, not all but lie down at her feet.

  “I didn’t invite her.”

  Santini looked baffled. “If you didn’t invite her over, how did she know where you lived?”

  Pressing down on the gas, James sailed through the yellow light before it could turn red. He had to watch himself. When he was annoyed, there was this crying need for speed in order to vent. He had to keep it in check.

  “She calls the former chief of police ‘Uncle Bob.’ He got the address for her.”

  Santini took it all in like a kid listening to a bedtime story. “Looks like you made quite an impression on her.”

  “No impression,” James denied. “She just wanted to show me how grateful she was.”

  Santini eagerly shifted in his seat, turning his body toward James as if that would somehow make him hear better. “And how grateful was she?”

  James glanced over to see the look on Santini’s face. It didn’t take an FBI profiler to know what he was thinking. “Not that grateful. She brought dinner.”

  “Home-cooked?”

  “Restaurant-cooked,” James corrected. “From the Greek Isles.”

  Santini whistled, impressed. “Who did she have to kill to get dinner from there?”

  “Nobody.” James changed lanes. Where had all this traffic come from? This was worse than so-called rush hour, when nothing moved. “She knows the owner.”

  Santini did a quick head count. “The owner of Greek Isles, the former police chief.” He nodded, pursing his lips. “Handy lady to have around.”

  James gave him a withering look. “I don’t have her ‘around.’”

  “Why the hell not? C’mon, Munro, the woman’s a knockout. What’s wrong with you?”

  Times like this, James fervently wished that the car came with an ejector seat. His or the passenger’s, he didn’t care which as long as one of them was gone. “I don’t have time for that.”

  “‘That’ is all there is,” Santini insisted. “The rest of it is what we do in order to have ‘that.’” The precinct came into view. “C’mon, Munro, tell me you’re seeing her again.”

  James gave his partner a steely look meant to shut him up. He had little hope of attaining his goal. But there was no doubt in his mind that he was definitely not going to live up to Santini’s fantasy. “No, I am not seeing her again.”

  He took the long way home. His route took him by Eli’s Deli. He told himself that he needed to make the stop because there was nothing edible in his refrigerator and he’d never cared for shopping in supermarkets where you needed a roadmap just to find a six-pack of beer and a loaf of bread.

  But the truth of it was he wanted to see the old man’s craggy face, to hear his raspy voice. Eli had seemed old to James when he’d first met him over ten years ago. He still looked the same. It was as if the man had reached a certain age and then time just stood still. That was okay by James.

  Eli Levy was the reason James was who and what he was instead of some ex-convict or worse, which was the route he’d been heading on that night he’d stopped in the deli, broke and desperate.

  At eighteen, he’d moved out of the house where he’d grown up because he’d been unable to remain any longer, listening to the recriminations between his parents. They had only gotten progressively heated, more venomous over the years. The acrimony had exploded like a bleeding wound when his brother, Tommy, had killed himself. Each of his parents blamed the other. He blamed them both and left. It was just as well. Word had gotten to him that they’d divorced shortly thereafter. He knew that neither one of them would have welcomed him into their house.

  He bounced around, taking odd jobs, living from hand to mouth. From moment to moment. The night he walked into Eli’s Deli was the lowest point of his life. With nothing in his pocket and less in his belly, he contemplated a life of crime in order to get by.

  He was standing in the back of the store, seriously considering stealing the food he couldn’t pay for. A strangled cry of fear at the front caught his attention and he crept up an aisle to see what was happening. A husky thug, twice as wide as he was, was brandishing a weapon, shaking it at the old woman behind the counter. Eli’s wife, Sophie, he learned later. The thug was taunting her, pretending to decide who he was going to shoot first if they didn’t give him the money he demanded.

  At that point, angered by the gunman’s audacity to threaten two old people and feeling as if he had nothing to lose, James uttered a subhuman cry and hurled himself at the gunman. He grabbed his arm, pointing it upward so that the gun discharged into the ceiling. The thug was bigger, but James had picked up a few martial-arts moves along the way. It was all he needed to use the man’s size against him. He had the thug pinned down and bleeding within moments.

  It was Eli who pulled James off, saying that the thug wasn’t worth getting into trouble over. Sophie cried, thanking him over and over again for saving their lives even as she dialed 911.

  The realization that he had actually saved them, that he’d had the power of life and death in his hands and had chosen life, hit him with the force of a well-aimed punch to the gut. It was the first time he’d felt alive since he couldn’t remember when.

  After the police had come and gone and the furor had died down, Eli and his wife looked him over and came to their own conclusions. He remembered seeing a silent form of communication between the old married couple and Eli asked him if he wanted to have something to eat. Sophie, in poor health at the time, was already shuffling off to prepare what he always thought of as a feast when he looked back on it.

  They invited him upstairs. They lived above the store.

  And for a time, so did he.

  The old couple quietly took him into their home and their hearts, encouraging him to make something of himself. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he were actually part of a family. He enrolled in a junior college, then went on to get his diploma from Queens College, getting a degree in criminology. When he graduated, Eli attended the ceremony alone because Sophie was too ill to come with him. Shortly thereafter, Sophie had died. And James had felt as if he’d lost a mother.

  He looked in on Eli from time to time, worried because the man refused to sell his store and retire.

  “Retire to what?” Eli would demand. “To watch my bones get old? Not me. They’ll find me dead someday, still behind my counter.” James knew he was serious.

  When he walked in, the ancient bell that hung against the door tinkled. A flood of memori
es came back to him and it took a second to shake them off.

  Eli looked up from the counter. “Well, look who’s here, Duchess,” he called to the dog in the corner. “He looks vaguely familiar, am I right?” He pretended to scratch the few wispy white hairs on top of his head that kept him from embracing the term bald. “But I just can’t place the name. Maybe if he came around more often, I’d remember.”

  James was familiar with the game. “I was here last week.”

  “Two weeks.” Eli held up two thin fingers. “You were here two weeks ago. And three weeks before that. How slowly do you eat these days?” Eli looked him up and down, a critical expression on his face. “Too slowly, I’d say. You’re getting skinny, boy.” He shook his head in disapproval. “Girls don’t like skinny. They like muscles.” He flexed his own, which were nonexistent.

  James’s expression was tolerant. He loved the old man the way he never had his own father. “I’m not interested in what girls like, Eli.”

  Eli waved a hand at the statement, brushing it aside. “Sure you are. Don’t let that one bad experience sour you on the species, boy. She had problems, that one.” He seemed to note the look in James’s eyes. “Okay, we won’t talk about that.” He spread his hands wide, to encompass the store. “What can I get you?”

  The list was short. A few cold cuts, some bread and a jar of mayonnaise. It took Eli less than five minutes to prepare everything. He shook his head at the items on the counter. “You don’t eat enough.”

  The subject of food made James think of Constance and her theory about breakfast. She would have gotten along beautifully with Eli. “I eat fine, Eli.”

  Eli made a face. “What? Bread and water like a prisoner?”

  “Prisoners eat better than that these days, Eli,” he told him patiently.

  “See, even prisoners eat better than you.”

  In self-defense, James recited the components of his last decent meal. He should have known better. “I had keftedes, spanakopita and dolmadakia just last night.”

  Eli scoffed at the menu. “What, in your dreams?’

  “On my plate.”