The Man Next Door

“Got big plans for the weekend?” he asked in the tone of someone making polite small talk.

She kept her eyes on the closed doors in front of her. “Not really.”

“Me, either,” he said, even though she hadn’t asked. “I was thinking about going to a club or something tonight.”

She knew he worked a lot, just from those casual observations of his activities. She doubted that he’d had a free Saturday night in the past month or more, since she’d occasionally seen him coming in late in the evenings looking as though he’d just put in a rough twelve or fourteen hours on the job. Certainly not giving the appearance that he’d been out clubbing or socializing.

Though she avoided clubs like the plague these days, she couldn’t blame him for wanting an evening out on the town. He was youngish—early thirties, maybe? Only a few years older than herself. Certainly attractive. Looked healthy enough. He shouldn’t have any trouble at all finding companionship for the night. It occurred to her only then that she’d never seen him bring anyone home with him. No one. Not that he was home that much, really, but she’d have thought he’d have a friend over. A date. Someone.

And then she realized that in the past year she’d lived in her apartment here, she’d rarely invited anyone inside, either. She hadn’t made many friends since she’d moved to Little Rock. Didn’t date very often, and usually chose not to extend those dates past her doorstep. Her apartment had become her refuge. Her sanctuary. Maybe Teague McCauley felt the same way about his place?

She wondered if this conversation was leading up to him asking her out. Maybe to join him for an evening in the clubs. If so, she hoped she would be able to politely decline without making it awkward when they ran into each other in the hallway from now on.

The elevator stopped on the third floor and she stepped out, bracing herself for him to try to delay her. Instead, he turned toward his own apartment without looking back, saying over his shoulder, “See you around.”

“Um, yeah. See you.” Suddenly aware that she was staring after him, she hurried to her own door, chagrined at her behavior.

Wouldn’t her brother have laughed if he’d seen that exchange? She closed herself into her tidy, if inexpensively furnished living room with a frown of self-derision. She’d honestly thought Teague McCauley, aka Agent Sexy, had been angling to ask her out. She’d wasted several minutes mentally practicing polite rejections and it turned out he hadn’t been interested after all. In fact, she thought he’d made it fairly clear that she didn’t ever have to worry about that from him. Apparently, she wasn’t his type.

Clay, her twenty-one-year-old brother, had often accused her of vanity. Of thinking she was “all that,” as he had put it. And at the time he’d said it, he’d been right. That was back when she’d been a pampered daddy’s girl. Before her doting father dropped dead just over three years ago of a heart attack at forty-five. And before Kurt Ritchie had taken away almost all of Dani’s pride and self-respect.

God, she’d thought she was special. Pretty. Talented. Popular. Privileged.

What she had really been was spoiled. More needy than she’d realized. And so foolishly, dangerously gullible.

Maybe she’d been unknowingly slipping back into her old habits. Maybe the safe, ingratiating men she’d dated lately had made it easy to gravitate back into her old ways of thinking. If so, Teague McCauley had actually done her a favor with his lack of interest in her, she decided as she changed out of the blouse and slacks she had worn for work and into a comfortable pair of black yoga pants and a long-sleeved pink T-shirt.

Let him have his noisy clubs and eager women. She planned on a delightfully quiet evening with a good book, her favorite music and her own company. Which was exactly what she wanted, she assured herself firmly.

Someone tapped lightly on her door just as she headed for the kitchen in search of a light dinner. She froze, deciding immediately that Teague had come to ask her out after all. Maybe he’d just been giving her time to stew about his apparent indifference.

Very clever, she thought with a frown. If he thought playing hard to get was the way to pique her interest, he would just have to think again.…

“Oh. Mrs. Parsons,” she said, blinking at the little woman in the hallway outside her apartment. And didn’t she feel like a fool for the second time in twenty minutes? “Is there something I can do for you?”

The petite, white-haired woman, whom Dani had always guessed to be somewhere in her early seventies, nodded. “I’m trying to rearrange some furniture and I wonder if you’d mind giving me a hand with my bookcase. It’s a bit heavier than I thought.”

Dani had helped her neighbor before, a time or two. Bringing in groceries. Reaching something on a shelf that was over the little woman’s head. Changing a lightbulb. She never minded, figuring the woman asked as much out of loneliness as necessity. Mrs. Parsons had only one son, and he was a busy business owner who lived in Arizona, visiting only a couple of times a year. To her very vocal disappointment, he hadn’t bothered to provide her with any grandchildren.

“I can try to help you, Mrs. Parsons, but if it’s very heavy, we’ll have to find someone else to help. The maintenance guy, maybe.”

Mrs. Parsons nodded. “I think we can manage it. It’s just a matter of getting it started in the right direction.”

Still skeptical, having seen the woman’s heavy furnishings, Dani followed her neighbor to the apartment next door.

Teague was rather pleased with himself when he walked across his living room an hour after he’d arrived home, headed again for the door. His hair was still wet from his shower, and he’d donned a plain white shirt and jeans, nothing fancy for tonight. He’d considered staying in once he’d gotten there, thinking an evening of crashing in front of the TV with a sandwich and a beer sounded pretty good after such a strenuous couple of months on the job. Instead, he’d talked himself into going to meet Mike. He’d gulped the sandwich, substituted soda for beer and then made himself change and shave for an evening out.

He was too young—and too sexually deprived—to keep living like some sort of workaholic monk. When riding an elevator with his uppity-but-good-looking neighbor was the high point of his social life, it was definitely time to do something drastic. He supposed hanging out with his friend in a singles’ club, hoping to meet someone interested in a no-strings evening of fun, was better than nothing. Marginally.

Still, he couldn’t help being amused by the way Dani had looked when he’d walked away from her in the hallway. He’d known very well that she’d more than half expected him to ask her to join him at the club he’d mentioned. When he hadn’t asked—when he had, instead, walked away as if doing so had never even crossed his mind—she’d been more than a little piqued, despite her efforts not to let her reactions show.

Now that had been fun.

He suspected it was past time someone rattled the princess a little. Showed her not all men were eager lap puppies hoping for a crumb of attention from her.

He was just reaching for his keys when someone suddenly pounded on the other side of his door.

“Teague? Mr. McCauley? Are you there? We need your help!”

Dani, he thought immediately, all but leaping for the door. What the…?

She stood in the hallway, her dark-blue eyes wide, her long brown hair tumbled around her shoulders. “We need your help,” she said.

And despite everything he had thought about her earlier, he merely nodded and followed as she turned to rush away.

Chapter Two

Rather than leading Teague to her apartment, as he had expected, Dani rushed to Mrs. Parsons’s open door across the hall from him. Following, he stopped in the doorway, looking in amazement at the mess inside. “What on earth happened here?”

Wondering why he hadn’t heard the crash—he must have still been in the shower when it happened—he scanned the room from the heavy bookcase lying facedown on the floor to the broken knick-knacks scattered across the carpet. A fragile-looking straight-backed chair had been knocked over when the bookcase fell, and books and magazines were tumbled all around.

Mrs. Parsons stood in the middle of the chaos, wringing her hands. “I can’t even get to my bedroom,” she said. “The bookcase is blocking the door.”

“She wanted to move the bookcase a few inches to the left,” Dani explained in a low voice. “I tried to tell her it was too heavy, but she just grabbed it and pulled.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No, thank goodness,” Mrs. Parsons said with a mixture of gratitude and sheepishness. “Dani pulled me out of the way just in time. I should have listened to her.”

“If you could just help me lift the bookcase so she can get to her bedroom, I’ll help her clean up the mess,” Dani said to Teague. “She and I can’t lift it by ourselves. We took everything off the shelves before we tried to move the case, but wouldn’t you know we set them on the floor right where it fell. There’s no telling what all is broken under there.”

Relieved that they were unharmed, he nodded. “Mrs. Parsons, stand over there, where you won’t be in any danger of being stepped on or bumped into. Dani and I can handle this.”

“All right. I’ll, um—I’ll make coffee,” she said, and bustled toward the kitchen before Teague could stop her.

“I’m sorry,” Dani said with an apologetic expression. “I know you have plans for this evening, but it scared me so much when the bookcase fell. I thought for sure it would land on her. Then afterward, I couldn’t think of anyone else to ask for help in lifting it.”

“Not a problem,” he assured her, kneeling to take one corner of the heavy oak case. “Can you handle that side? Just to keep it steady while I lift.”

She nodded. “Right here?”

“Yeah. Lift with your knees. You don’t want to hurt your back.”

“I know.”

The princess obviously didn’t like being given instructions, even for her own good, he thought, judging by her rather curt tone.

With Teague doing most of the heavy lifting, they managed to set the case upright. “Where do you want it, Mrs. Parsons?” he asked. “I’ll slide it into place for you.”