Smitten (5 page)

“I thought if I got all the men in the neighborhood together, I might recognize the flasher.”

Elsie's eyes sparkled in approval. “You're from the Hawkins side all right. We don't just sit around on our butts. No sir, we go out and get the job done. You think we need to have a gun on hand in case he gets unruly? I'm real good with a gun.”

“No guns!” Lizabeth stood at her seat, palms flat on the table, and leaned toward Elsie to make her point. “I don't want any guns in this house.”

Elsie bit into her doughnut. “I suppose it wouldn't be neighborly to shoot him, anyway.”

“And the police would frown on it,” Lizabeth said. “They're not fond of vigilantes.”

Elsie turned her attention to Matt. “Did you come over here just to plan a barbecue?”

“No. It's supposed to rain tonight, so I thought I'd take a look at the roof. I might be able to patch some of the worst spots.”

“You don't have to go up on the roof to do that, do you?” Lizabeth said.

“Worried about me?” Matt asked, looking pleased.

“Of course I'm worried. The roof is a mess. The shakes are loose, and the wood is probably rotted. If you fall off and get hurt, they'll raise the rates on my homeowner's insurance.”

He drained his coffee cup and rose. “I'll keep all that in mind.”

“Do you need help?”

“You bet. I need someone to hold the ladder.”

He slung his arm around Lizabeth's shoulders and dragged her out of the kitchen. “Holding the ladder is a very important job. Not just anyone can do it. It has to be someone you trust.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And if you turn out to be good at holding the ladder, later on I might let you hold something else.”

Lizabeth's stomach did a rollover. “I'm not sure I want to hear this.”

He turned and pinned her against the front door. “Lizzy Kane, you have a dirty mind.”

He was silently laughing, and his mouth was just inches away.

“You set me up,” Lizabeth said.

His face was a study in offended innocence. “Not true. I was thinking you could hold my shirt if it gets too warm on the roof, or you could hold my hammer while I carry the shingles.”

He leaned even closer. “You were the one who thought about holding more intimate objects,” he whispered. “You want to know what I think? I think you want to hold my—”

Lizabeth made a strangled sound in the back of her throat.

“Something wrong?” Matt asked. “I thought talking was okay. I thought everything was allowed except the ultimate act.”

He was seeing how far he could push, she thought. Well, that was great. Two could play that game. “Fine,” Lizabeth said. “You want to play hardball?”

He was close enough for her to feel the laughter rumbling deep in his chest.

“No,” he said. “There's no doubt in my mind that I'd lose.”

“Really? Scared of me, huh?”

“Yup. I'm in love with you, and that makes me vulnerable. If you wanted, you could squash me like a bug. You could trample my ego flat.”

“I bet when you were a kid you got away with murder,” Lizabeth said.

Matt finally broke the embrace, moved away and propped the ladder securely against the house. “What makes you think that?”

“You know all the right things to say to disarm a woman. You probably had your mother wrapped around your little finger.”

“Hardly. I was the fifth kid in a family of seven. Half the time my mother couldn't remember my name.”

To Lizabeth it seemed like a bitter statement to make, but there was no bitterness in his voice. In fact, there was no inflection at all. The tone had been flat. Matter-of-fact. His eyes, usually so filled with feeling, were blank, and his face held the sort of vacuous expression that came with denial or followed unbearable pain. There'd been a tragedy there, Lizabeth thought. And it had been dealt with and filed
away. She didn't want to drag it out and open old wounds.

She searched for something to say, but found nothing. She wanted to hug him, but she wasn't sure if he'd like that. It was so much easier with children, she thought. You could ease their hurt with a kiss and by holding them close. You could tuck a little boy under your arm and read him a book and chase all the dragons away, but men were much more complicated. From her limited experience she realized men had a strange ego that one had to contend with. And they had weird ideas about what represented weakness. Her ex-husband had detested her protective instincts. Not that she wanted to judge all men by Paul, but it was all she had to go on.

Matt watched her slim hands nervously twisting the hem of her T-shirt. Great, he thought, good going, Hallahan. He had made her feel bad.

“Look, don't worry about it. It's no big deal. My childhood left something to be desired, but it's behind me.”

“I didn't mean to pry.”

He took her in his arms and held her close, pressing a kiss into the curls at the top of her
head. “It's okay if you pry. You're allowed. When you grow up in a family of seven kids you get used to people prying. Privacy was an unknown quantity in my life.”

“Wouldn't that make you want to guard it all the more?”

Matt's mouth twisted into a wry grin. “No. Mostly what I guarded was my underwear. I had four brothers who all wore the same size.”

“I guess that pretty much puts things in perspective,” Lizabeth said. “It always helps to have your priorities straight.”

“You have any brothers or sisters?”

She shook her head. “No. I was the pampered, overprotected only child.”

Matt squatted while he opened a box of shingles. “These aren't going to match exactly, but at least they'll keep the rain out.” He looked up at her, his lopsided grin giving his features a rakish quality. “Did you wear pretty dresses and bows in your hair and white socks with lace on the cuffs?”

Lizabeth laughed. “Yes, but the effect was usually marred by skinned knees, unruly hair, and grass stains on my skirt. I was a completely unmanageable child. One time I tied a tablecloth around my shoulders and
jumped out of a tree Superman style and broke my leg.”

“But mostly you wanted to be a fairy.”

She was surprised he had remembered. “Yes. Fairies were my favorites. A fairy isn't afraid of anything,” Lizabeth said. “A fairy just grabs life by the throat.”

“That's not what I heard. I heard fairies were outrageously promiscuous. I heard they grabbed life about two and a half feet lower.”

“Hmmmm. Well, I suppose there are all kinds of fairies, just as there are all kinds of carpenters. Some are undoubtedly more sexually oriented than others.”

Lizabeth snatched her clock in the darkened room and held the luminous dial close to her face. One-thirty. And Elsie was still sitting in the rocking chair by the window.

“Aunt Elsie,” Lizabeth said. “If you're that desperate to see a naked man, I'll rent you one. I swear, if you'll just go to bed, I'll thumb through the yellow pages first thing in the morning. I might even be able to find one that dances or makes balloon animals.”

Elsie rocked with her feet flat and her knees spread. She got a good push off that way. “You know what's wrong with these damn perverts?” she said. “You can't count on them. No consideration for other people.”

She rocked forward in front of the sheer white curtains and back into the black shadows. She rocked steady as a metronome.
Grrrch
, the chair went back.
Slap
, her feet hit the floor coming forward.
Grrrch
,
slap
,
grrrch
,
slap
,
grrrch
,
slap
.

Lizabeth buried her face in the pillow and groaned. She had to go to work tomorrow. She needed sleep. She needed peace and quiet. She wasn't used to old ladies rocking the night away in a corner of her room.

“He's flashed for two nights now,” Lizabeth said. “Maybe he's tired. Maybe he's taking a night off.”

“Damn pervert,” Elsie said. “He should be locked up. He should be ashamed of himself for going around terrorizing defenseless women.”

“You don't seem very terrorized,” Lizabeth observed.

“Yeah, but I'm a Hawkins. You know us Hawkinses are tougher than most. It takes more than a naked man to terrorize a Hawkins.”

A stone pinged at the window, and Elsie stopped rocking. There was silence in the room while both women held their breath, waiting for another stone to hit. Lizabeth crept from her bed and pulled the curtain aside. A spot of light slid across the window, briefly illuminating
Lizabeth. There was darkness for a moment, then the flasher turned the light on himself.

Elsie let out a small gasp. “Well, will you look at that!” she whispered. “The man's standing there just as bold as could be in his birthday suit!” Her eyes narrowed. “The nerve of that man! Don't this beat all.” She moved a fraction of an inch closer to the window. “Is that all he does? He just stands there?”

“Yup.”

“Don't it get boring?”

“Yup.”

Elsie watched him for a moment longer. “I suppose it's a good thing he's not dangerous. If he were dangerous, I'd feel like I had to get my forty-five and blast him one.”

“Don't even think about it. Nobody's getting blasted from my window.”

“Nothing to worry about. I don't shoot to kill. I always aim for the privates. Nothing a pervert hates more than to get shot in the privates.”

“Yeah,” Lizabeth said, trying not to smile. “That'd put a crimp in his style.”

Elsie mournfully shook her head. “I'm a pretty good shot, but I'd have a hard time with this guy—he hasn't got much of a target. No
wonder the poor man wears a bag over his head.” She looked hopefully at her niece. “Don't it ever get more exciting?”

“Not so far.”

“Well,” Elsie said, “thank heaven for small favors.” She grasped the screen and slid it up into the top half of the window so she could lean out.

“Hey, you damn pervert,” she yelled at the man. “You should be ashamed of yourself, going around showing everybody your business. Haven't you got anything better to do than to stand there looking like a damn fool?”

There was an audible gasp of breath from the flasher, the light blinked out, and the man ran off, crashing through the juniper and azalea bushes that bordered the backyard.

“Ow,” Elsie said, “that's gotta smart.”

 

“I should never have told you,” Lizabeth shouted after Matt. “You're making a mountain out of a molehill.”

Matt looped a length of electrical cable over his shoulder. “That's what Elsie said. But I don't care what body proportions this flasher has, I don't want him coming near you.”

He handed a two-hundred-watt floodlight to his electrician and pointed to the large oak at the rear of Lizabeth's property. “I want a flood installed there and the cable run underground. I want one at either end of the house.”

“This is
my
house,” Lizabeth said, running to keep up with Matt. “You can't just come into my yard and take over. You can't tell me what to do with my house.”

“When's your birthday?”

“November 3.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her to him. He kissed her long and hard and released her. “Happy birthday,” he said. “It wouldn't be polite to refuse a birthday present, would it?”

“I don't like being bullied.”

“You're not being bullied,” Matt said. “You're being protected. And if this doesn't scare him off, I'm moving in.”

Lizabeth glared at him. “I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

Matt handed the cable to the electrician. “I want a switch installed in her bedroom and in the kitchen.” He looked down at Lizabeth and grinned. “Damned if you aren't cute when you get all riled up like this.”

“And another thing: You kept calling me ‘honey' at work today. What will the men think?”

“I wouldn't worry about it. None of those men think while they're working.”

“And it was very nice of you to have that fancy restaurant cater lunch for me, but I felt a little conspicuous.”

“I swear, I didn't order the violin player,” Matt said, raising his hand. “They threw him in as a bonus.”

Lizabeth shot him an intensely peeved look.

“All right, all right. I admit, I've gone off the deep end. I have this horrible compulsion to do things for you. I can't control myself. Boy, I tell you, love is hell.”

“Oh yeah? If it's such hell, why don't you sound more miserable? You've been looking absolutely smug all day. And predatory. I have a cat. I've watched
Wild Kingdom.
I know predatory when I see it.”

“I have a plan,” Matt said.

He was wearing a navy T-shirt with the sleeves cut out, and it tucked into jeans that were almost white from wear. The jeans had a frayed, horizontal slash across the knee and were perfectly molded to masculine bulges
and hard, muscular thighs. He smelled like pine sawdust and spice aftershave, and Lizabeth thought he was the sexiest thing she'd ever seen. If his plan was half as enticing as his perfect butt, she was in big trouble. “What's the plan?”

“You might not want to hear it. It involves sweaty, naked bodies…ours. And there's this part where you're on fire—internally, of course—and you're begging me to make hard, passionate love to you.”

“That's not a plan. That's a fantasy.”

Matt smiled. “Not the way I see it.”

Elsie pulled into the driveway in her big blue-and-white Cadillac. She levered herself out of the car, took a grocery bag from the front seat, and started across the lawn. “What's going on here?” she said. “What's all the fuss about?”

Lizabeth took the bag from her. “Matt's having lights installed around the house for security purposes.”

Elsie smiled broadly, creasing her face. “Good idea. It was a shame we had to miss that guy bashing his way through the azalea bushes last night.”

“It's a waste of time and money,” Lizabeth
said. “He'll probably never come back. And besides, it's supposed to rain tonight. No one would be dumb enough to flash in the rain.”

Eight hours later, Lizabeth admitted she'd been wrong about the flasher. There seemed to be no limit to his stupidity. Rain softly pattered on the windowpane and ran in narrow rivulets down the screen while Lizabeth and Elsie peered out at the bedraggled exhibitionist. His paper-bag mask sat limp and wet on his head, his tie was plastered to his chest, and his Docksiders were sunk a good inch and a half in mud.

Elsie slowly shook her head. “That's pathetic.”

“He seems a little compulsive about this flashing stuff,” Lizabeth said. “I really didn't think he'd show.”

“Yeah, you gotta give him something for hanging in there. The man's no quitter.”

Lizabeth gnawed on her lower lip. “You think we should throw an umbrella out to him?”

“No,” Elsie said, “I kinda like watching him drip. Let's see what he looks like with the floods on him.” She reached over and flipped the switch, and the yard was bathed in an eerie wash of white light.

For the first time, the man's arms and legs and shoulders were clearly revealed. Lizabeth thought he seemed much more naked and sadly vulnerable. He took a step backward, then turned and ran around the far side of the house.

“This was mean,” Lizabeth said. “I think we scared him.”

Elsie closed the curtains and stepped back from the window. “You know, as far as perverts go, he isn't much.”

 

Lizabeth smeared joint compound over the last nail in the drywall and stuffed the wooden handle of her six-inch taping knife into her back pocket. Rain thrummed on the roof of the half-finished house and beat against the newly installed Thermopanes, and the cloying smell of wet wood and joint compound mingled with the pungent aroma of freshly turned earth. It was three o'clock, and the light filtering into the upstairs bedroom was weak. It would have been a dismal day, Lizabeth thought, if she hadn't been working side by side with Matt. He had a way of filling a room so that even the most barren space seemed snug and inviting.

“So what do you think about drywall?” Matt asked. “Is this intellectually stimulating, or what?”

Lizabeth smiled. Four hours of slathering white goop over nails was not intellectually stimulating, but it was just fine for her purposes. It gave her a lot of time to think about other things. Not the least of which was the flasher.

Ridiculous as it seemed, she felt sorry for him. Undoubtedly, flashing was some form of aggression, just as rape was, and she had to always keep that in mind, she told herself. And this wasn't a random flashing. That made it all the more frightening. So why wasn't she afraid? Why did she feel like a crumb for turning the lights on him?

And then there was Matt. Thinking about Matt had become a full-time job. She thought about him at night when she was alone in bed, and she thought about him first thing in the morning when she brushed her teeth. Lizabeth burst out laughing, because in a moment of insight she realized she was much more frightened of Matt than she was of the flasher.

Matt raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”

“I was thinking of the flasher,” Lizabeth said.
“And it occurred to me that I'm much more frightened of you than I am of him.”

Matt stomped the lid down on the can of joint compound. “There's all kinds of fear,” he said. “Some kinds of fear are much more fun than others.”

It was true, Lizabeth thought. Matt was a ride down a white-water canyon. Danger had its upside, she decided. There was nothing like an occasional shot of adrenaline to spice up your life.

Lizabeth, Lizabeth, Lizabeth, a small voice whispered, those are fairy thoughts. Better watch out, the voice continued; before you know it you'll be eating Swiss chocolates for breakfast and wearing silk underpants.

Hah! Lizabeth answered. Fat chance, on my salary.

Matt reached out for her, but she slipped away. “So, why are you afraid of me?”

“First of all, there's sex. It makes me nervous.”

“Everyone's a little nervous in the beginning.” He grinned.

“No,” Lizabeth said, “you don't understand. I mean
really
nervous. The truth is, I'm not especially good at it past a certain point.”

The grin widened. “Bet I could fix that.”

Lizabeth didn't doubt it for a second. “Maybe we should continue this conversation some other time.”

Matt looped an arm around her. “How about I take you home and check on the roof to make sure there are no leaks. Then I can say hello to the kids and investigate the contents of the oven to see if I want to stay for supper.”

“You think you can get an invitation?”

“Elsie likes me. She growls a lot, but she's a sweet old broad.”

Lizabeth giggled. “I'm going to tell her you said that.”

“You wouldn't dare! I'll give you five dollars not to tell her.”

They both stopped at the door and looked out at the rain. Boards had been laid, from the small cement front porch, across the quagmire that would one day be a lawn, to the curb where Matt's truck was parked. Matt walked across without thinking, as surefooted as a mountain goat, and Lizabeth tiptoed behind him, using her arms for balance, feeling like a high-wire act, wondering at what point in her life she'd lost her sense of daring and balance. When she got to the end of the board Matt was waiting for her with his hands on his hips.

“Lizzy,” he said, “you walk like a sissy.”

“I know,” Lizabeth wailed. “I'm not good at this.”

“You lack confidence. You have to grab life by the throat. Be a fairy! Besides, what's the worst thing that could happen? You could fall off into the mud. It's not like it's life-threatening.”

Rain was beginning to soak into the back of her shirt. “I'm getting wet!”

“Ignore it. Go back and walk on the board like a fairy.”

Lizabeth swiped at the water that was dripping from her nose. “A fairy wouldn't walk. A fairy would fly.”

“Fairies can't fly in the rain. It's not good for their wings.”

“Get out of my way,” Lizabeth said. “You don't know squat about fairies, and I don't want to walk on this dumb board anymore.”

Matt flapped his arms and made chicken sounds.

Lizabeth squeezed her eyes shut. “Uh! Okay, okay, I'll do it.”