Czytaj książkę: «Hoodwinked»

Chapter One

Maureen Harris was already an hour late for work. One thing after another had conspired to ruin her morning. The washing machine in her small duplex in the suburbs had flooded, her last pair of hose had run just as she put them on, then she’d misplaced her car keys. She ran into the offices of MacFaber Corporation bare-legged with her long black hair threatening to come down from its braided bun on top of her head, her full skirt stained with coffee that she’d tried to substitute for breakfast in a drive-through place on the way.

A tall, burly man was just coming around the corner as she turned it, coffee cup still in hand. She collided with him with a loud thud, fell backward, and the coffee cup seemed to upend in slow motion, pouring its contents all over the carpet, splashing him, and splattering her skirt even more.

She sat up in the ruins of it all, quickly retrieving her wire-rimmed, trendy new glasses from the floor and sticking them on her nose so that she could see. She stared up blankly at the taciturn, very somber man in gray coveralls, her green eyes resigned. “I didn’t pay my phone bill on time,” she said, apropos of nothing. “The telephone company has ways of getting even, you know. They flood your washing machine, put runs in all your stockings and cause you to spill coffee and trample strange men.”

He cocked a heavy eyebrow. He wasn’t handsome at all. He looked more like a wrestler than a mechanic, but that was definitely a mechanic’s coverall he was wearing. His dark eyes ran over her like hands, narrowing, curious, and a faint smile touched the mouth that seemed carved out of stone. It was a nice, man’s mouth—wide and sexy and deliberate. He looked Roman, in fact, right down to the imposing nose and brooding brow. Maureen knew all about brooding brows; she had once taken an art class and spent long hours dreaming of imposing Romans. That had been years ago, of course, before she discovered reality and settled down to being a junior secretary in the MacFaber Corporation.

Since he didn’t speak or offer a hand, she scrambled to her feet, staring miserably around at the coffee splatted all over the champagne-colored carpet. She pushed back her hair. “I’m very sorry that I ran into you. I didn’t mean to. I really don’t know what to do.” She sighed. “Maybe I ought to quit before I’m asked to.”

“How old are you?” the man in the mechanic’s outfit asked. He had a gravelly voice—very deep, like rich velvet.

“I’m twenty-four,” she said, faintly surprised by the question. Did he think she was too young for the job? “But usually I’m very competent.”

“How long have you been here?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

“Just since the month before last,” she confessed. “Well, I’ve been here in this new building since it opened, that is. But I’ve worked for the corporation for six months.” Since just before my parents died, she could have said, but she didn’t. “I was chosen out of the typing pool to take one of the old secretaries’ places. I’m very fast. I mean, my typing is very fast. Oh, dear. Do you suppose I could rush out for some sand and toss it over this stain in the carpet before someone sees?”

“Call the janitorial staff. That’s what they’re paid to do,” he said. “You’d better get busy. MacFaber doesn’t like idle employees. Or so I’m told,” he added in a cold, steady tone.

She sighed. “I don’t think he likes anybody. He never sticks his nose in here, anyway, so it’s a good thing the company can run itself. He never comes here, they say.”

Both bushy eyebrows went up. “Do tell? I thought he worked in this building?”

“So did we,” she agreed. “But then, we all came up from the old engineering building when this new building was completed three months ago and they added so much new staff. The secretaries, I mean. Even Mr. MacFaber’s secretary, Charlene, is new, so none of the secretarial staff has ever laid eyes on him. And Charlene gets her work through the vice president in charge of production, kind of secondhand from the big boss,” she added, leaning close. “We suspect that he’s disguised as the big chair in the boardroom.”

“Fascinating.” He cocked his head to one side. “He sounds like a figment of someone’s imagination, doesn’t he?” he mused, and almost smiled.

She studied him for an instant. He didn’t look like a man who knew how to smile. He was big—huge, in fact. He was tall and streamlined for a big man, very commanding, with a broad face and deep-set dark eyes. His hair was straight and thick and jet black, and his wrists had a feathering of dark hair, too. She felt that he probably was that way all over, and then wondered at her sudden curiosity. She wasn’t all that comfortable with men as a rule. She was rather plain, for all that she had a budding sunny personality and dressed neatly. Men hardly noticed her, even now that she had fifty dollars’ worth of new makeup.

“Are you new here?” she asked shyly. “You’re a mechanic, aren’t you?” she added, pushing her slipping glasses back on her nose. Really, she thought miserably, the frames she’d chosen were outrageous; they sat way down on her cheekbones. If only she didn’t wear glasses. If only she was beautiful and sexy…

“I’m relatively new—” he answered her earlier question “—and I’m wearing a mechanic’s coverall, so that should answer your second question.”

“Then you must be working on the new Faber-jet design,” she said excitedly, curious at the sudden stillness of his big body when she mentioned that.

“Yes,” he said noncommittally. “You’re familiar with it?”

“Sort of,” she said, sighing. “Nobody can figure out why it’s such a lemon. The computer people ran one of those very expensive design graphics, and according to it, the modifications should produce a big improvement on the old Faber jet design. But it performed very badly on its first test flight. That’s too bad. I guess it will give Peters Aviation the edge on us.” They were the competition and were trying to outmaneuver MacFaber by producing the new design on their own small jet first.

“It might appear that they have the edge, but don’t count on it,” he said coolly. “Hadn’t you better get to work?”

She flushed a little. He sounded full of authority somehow. Probably he was married and had children. He was old enough. How old? she wondered, glancing at him as she picked up her purse and the coffee cup. Middle or late thirties, definitely. He had a few gray hairs and there were lines on his face.

“I’m Maureen,” she said. She shifted her feet and peeked up at him through her glasses, wishing she had Charlene’s gift of gab. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Jake,” he said shortly. “Excuse me. I’m late.”

Jake. He didn’t look like a Jake. She stared after him. He was pretty dishy—big and capable looking. And he’d made her feel different. Almost reckless. Imagine her talking to a man like that and being bold enough to ask his name. She grinned to herself. Maybe she wasn’t totally helpless. It was like a milestone in her life, and she was glad that she’d decided to stay in Wichita. She’d thought that a change of scenery might bring her out of her shell and help her become independent and capable. It still might. But her newfound male co-worker hadn’t seemed too interested. Not that she was surprised. She had so little luck in attracting men. Maybe it was the glasses. If she hadn’t been so nearsighted without them, she might have put them back in her purse and risked talking to hat racks and potted plants.

She dashed into Arnold M. Blake’s office breathlessly and sat down behind her desk. She glanced at the phone. One line was open. Thank God. Mr. Blake was at his desk. Maybe he wouldn’t realize how late she was. She punched the second of the four lines and rang the janitorial department.

“Someone has spilled coffee all over your spotless carpet in the entrance,” she reported with blithe innocence. “Could someone attend to it, please?”

There was a world-weary sigh on the other end. “Miss Harris?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“No problem,” came the dry reply. “Late again, are you?”

She flushed. “My washing machine flooded.”

“Last time,” the man’s voice drawled, “it was a strawberry milk shake.”

“I’m sorry,” she groaned. “It’s my karma, you see. I must have been an ax murderer in a previous life.”

“We’ll get up the stains, don’t you worry. And thanks for that bag of pralines you brought us from New Orleans,” the voice added. “We all enjoyed them.”

She smiled sadly. She’d had to go home for a few days to approve the sale of her parents’ home. It was her last link with the old life. They’d planned to move to Wichita, Kansas, with her, but a tragic car wreck just before the move had taken their lives. She’d almost gone back herself, after that, but she had decided that a new start might help ease the pain. So she’d invested the money she’d received from the sale of her parents’ home in half of a duplex in Wichita and stayed there. Since she’d already gotten her job with the MacFaber Corporation, at least she didn’t have to worry about living expenses. The pralines had been an afterthought, and she was glad now that she’d thought to bring the harried janitorial staff a little sack of treats.

“Thanks.” She hung up and dabbed again at her skirt. It would have to be light blue. Nothing was going to take that stain out.

“So there you are,” Mr. Blake said from the doorway, smiling at her. “I need you to take a letter, Miss Harris.”

“Yes, sir.” She grabbed her pad and pen. “So sorry. I was late, and I’ve spilled coffee…Everything’s gone wrong…”

“No problem,” he said easily. “Come in, please.”

She took several letters in a row, all pertaining to the new Faber-jet design. She never paid much attention to what they contained, which was so much gibberish when he started using technical terms. She had to ask the spelling of one or two of them, but Mr. Blake was very patient and never yelled.

Joseph MacFaber, it was said, could rage like a wounded bear when he was in a bad temper. But then he was filthy rich and used to getting his own way. He spent most of his life trying to commit suicide in a variety of dangerous hobbies, from what Maureen could gather, and left his subordinates in charge of the MacFaber Aircraft Corporation in his absence. He was in Rio now, she’d heard. He’d been away for the better part of a year, getting over the death of his mother—or so they said. Mrs. MacFaber had died in a car wreck in Europe, gossip said, and MacFaber was still grieving. They said he’d been driving the car, so perhaps he was running away from his conscience. It would be a hard thing for a man to live with.

Mr. Blake finished his dictation and Maureen went back to her desk to transcribe her notes on the electronic typewriter. That was a signal for the phone to start ringing nonstop and two other secretaries to come in and ask questions that she had to ask Mr. Blake to answer.

It was almost time for lunch before she got enough of her backlog cleared away to even start on the mail. By then Mr. Blake was leaving, and she was left with a handful of letters that she could do nothing about until he came back.

She usually went to lunch herself at noon, but she felt guilty because she’d been late. So she went along to the canteen and got herself a soft drink and a chocolate bar and sat by the window alone, eating it. It wasn’t nutritious, but it was filling. She was finishing the soft drink when the new mechanic sat down at a table near the middle of the room and opened his lunch pail.

Without meaning to, Maureen found herself watching him. He was so big. She wasn’t used to particularly masculine men, and she usually didn’t stare. But he was a dish. A real dish. She sighed, just as he looked up unexpectedly and caught her in the act. He glared at her as if he found her interest infuriating, and she flushed furiously as she quickly turned her eyes back to the window. This was absurd. Probably she’d been working too hard and her mind was disintegrating. She finished the soft drink, put the bottle up, and smiled faintly as she passed the mechanic. She meant the smile as a kind of apology, but his dark eyes only glittered more angrily.

He dropped his eyes to his coffee cup and ignored her completely. He was still wearing his cap and kept it pulled down over his face. She felt uncomfortable. He made her feel like a man chaser, and she wanted to crawl off into a corner and hide. His anger had actually hurt her.

She put thoughts of the mechanic at the back of her mind and doggedly spent the rest of the day answering the mail. Mr. Blake had a long conversation with some official, and at the end of it he wandered around, preoccupied, for the better part of an hour.

“Is something wrong, sir?” Maureen asked gently.

He glanced at her, running a hand through hair he hardly had on his balding head. “What? Oh, no, thank you, Maureen. Just a knotty problem. There’ll be a government inspector here in the morning, by the way. Do try to be on time, will you?”

“Is it about the Faber-jet design change?” she asked.

He smiled grimly. “I’m afraid so. We may be in for some stormy weather from the aviation people trying to get this thing approved.”

She nodded. He left for the day shortly afterward. It took Maureen until six-thirty to finish answering the mail. By the time she had put away her typewriter and straightened her desk, most of the other employees had vacated the building. As she passed MacFaber’s office on her way to the time clock, she heard noises and paused.

There was a voice behind the door, a solitary voice—it was muffled, but it sounded deep and hard and demanding. Its owner was apparently talking to someone on the phone. Maureen wondered if it was the venerable J. MacFaber himself in there. Perhaps he’d returned early from Rio. She’d have to ask Charlene tomorrow. She walked on by. It wouldn’t do to be caught spying outside the big boss’s office. She punched her card, left it, and went out of the building.

It was a delicious spring day. A lush, green lawn stretched from the streamlined building with its glass front, and she liked the smell of young buds breaking on the trees. The parking lot was almost deserted. There was a rather beat-up-looking red-and-rust pickup truck sitting nearby. Just that and Maureen’s little yellow Volkswagen. The pickup had seen better days, like her poor, battered beetle. It ran beautifully when it wanted to, but it was tempermental.

With a long sigh she got in behind the wheel. It had been a difficult day. She put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened.

“Oh, Yellow Plague,” she moaned. “Why today of all days?”

She got out and opened the hood at the back of the car, kneeling down to glare at the small engine. And there was the trouble. A gummy battery terminal, eaten up with acid. She wondered if she could hit it hard enough with the heel of her shoe to unclog it.

She was considering that when she noticed the big dark mechanic standing a little distance away, studying her with what could only be described as a calculating stare.

She glanced toward him, but before she could even speak, he moved closer. “Isn’t this a little obvious?” he asked with faint amusement. “First you spill coffee all over me. Now your car stalls right next to my pickup.”

His pickup? She felt as if fate were out to get her. It really had been a horror of a day. And now here was this big, dishy mechanic under the impression that she was putting on an act to get his attention. It was her own fault, she supposed. To someone who didn’t know her, her behavior might have seemed come-onish. And she had stared at him in the canteen.

“It’s all right,” she said quickly. “I know what to do.”

“Why don’t you just crank it?” he asked, eyeing her curiously. He folded his arms across his broad chest. “For future reference, I don’t like come-ons. I don’t have much trouble attracting women, and I sure as hell don’t want you lying in wait for me every day. Clear enough?”

That was insulting, uncalled-for and surprisingly painful. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away hurriedly. She got to her feet, staring at him numbly. She wasn’t quite her old, feisty self. Losing both her parents at once had been a terrible blow, and she still wasn’t quite recovered. Too, she’d always been sheltered. She simply didn’t expect cruelty from people. It was shocking to find that, and mocking contempt, in a total stranger.

“I suppose you’re justified in what you’re thinking,” she said quietly, “but you’re quite wrong. I’m not trying to come on to you. This morning was really an accident. And I have a bad battery connection that I meant to see about earlier, but I had some distractions. All I have to do is beat on it with a shoe, and I can crank it. So please don’t let me detain you.”

She turned back to the engine, her hands trembling with mingled hurt and confusion, took off her shoe and slammed it against the battery terminal with a sharp, angry blow. She stood up and almost collided with the mechanic.

“There does seem to be a little corrosion there,” he said slowly, obviously surprised.

She didn’t answer him. She didn’t even look at him. She closed the hatch, got in behind the wheel and tried the key. This time it cranked.

She didn’t look back as she drove off, fighting tears all the way. Horrible, arrogant, conceited man, she thought furiously, and wished she could call him what she was thinking he was.

Maureen had an active mental life. In her mind, she could be and do anything. But in real life, she was only a shadow of the person inside her. The inner Maureen could engage in verbal battles and give people the devil. But the outer Maureen, the one who seemed always to blend into the background, was a different proposition. She fumed and muttered, but she was too softhearted to argue with people. She walked away from fights. She always had.

Back at the small duplex in which she lived, she kicked off her shoes and flopped down on her worn sofa. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d been as weary. Everyone had bad days, she reminded herself. But hers seemed to go from bad to worse.

That ill-mannered mechanic’s sarcasm had been the last straw. So he was dishy. That gave him no excuse to accuse her of chasing him, for heaven’s sake. Who did he think he was? Nobody who really knew her would ever think her capable of such a thing. She smiled ruefully when she remembered that there wasn’t anybody who really knew her. Only her parents, and she’d lost them. She had nobody anymore. She didn’t make close friends easily because she was basically shy and introverted. She waited for other people to make the first move. But no one ever had. And that was too bad, she thought sadly, because the inner Maureen was as vivacious as Auntie Mame, as outrageous and outgoing as any comedienne, as sexy as a movie star. But she couldn’t get out of Maureen’s mind to tell people that she was. The reckless, devil-may-care person inside her needed only a catalyst to bring her out, but there had never been one. She dreamed of doing exciting things, and she admired people like the absent Mr. MacFaber who weren’t afraid to really live their lives. But Maureen was a slow starter. In fact, she’d never really started anything, except her job.

She put on jeans and a T-shirt, brushed out her long, dark hair and went barefoot into the kitchen to cook herself a hamburger. On the way she almost tripped over Bagwell, who’d let himself out of his cage and was having a ball with her measuring spoons.

“For heaven’s sake, what are you doing down there?” she fussed, bending over. “Did I forget to put the lock on the cage again?”

“Hello,” the big green Amazon parrot purred up at her, spreading his wings in a flirting welcome. “How are you-u-u-u?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” She extended an arm and let him climb on, pausing to pick up his spoons and put him and them back into the big brass-toned cage he occupied most of the day. “I’ll let you out again when I’m through cooking. You’ll singe your wings on the stove if you come too close.”

“Bad girl,” Bagwell muttered, running along his perch with the spoons in his big beak. He was a yellow-naped Amazon, almost seven years old, and extremely precocious. Her parents had brought him back from a Florida vacation one year and had quickly learned that Amazon parrots were very loud. They’d given him to Maureen two years ago for company and protection, and so far he’d done well providing both. The one man she’d invited over for supper had barely escaped with all his fingers. He hadn’t come back.

“You’re ruining my social life,” Maureen told the big green bird with a glare. “Thanks to you, I’ll never get a roommate.”

“I love you,” he said, and made a purring parroty noise behind it.

“Flirt,” she accused. She smiled, cooking her hamburger. She was using an iron pan, not her usual coated cookware. There had been an article in some bird magazine that warned bird owners about using nonstick cookware; it had said that the fumes could kill a bird. So now she cooked in enamel or iron pans. It was much messier, but safe for Bagwell.

“How about a carrot, Bagwell?” she asked the parrot.

“Carrot! Carrot!” he echoed.

She got him one out of the crisper and heated it just to room temperature in the microwave before she put it in his food dish. He took half of it in his claw and stood eating it contentedly.

“You’re company, at least.” She sighed, turning the hamburger one last time before taking it up. “I’m glad you’re good for seventy years or so, Bagwell. If I can’t have a husband, at least I’ve got you.”

Bagwell glanced at her with green disinterest and went back to chewing his carrot.

There was a commotion out front followed by a yelling voice giving instructions. It was usually a quiet neighborhood, but that was an ominous sound. Maureen left Bagwell and went into the living room to peep out from behind the curtain. Two men were at the other half of her duplex, the one that had remained unoccupied for the past six weeks since the music lover had moved out. People tended to come and go there, because the man who owned the other half of the duplex traveled and rented it out. The last occupant had been a hard-rock fan, and Maureen hadn’t been sorry to see him leave. But now she was wondering who would take his place.

She got her answer almost at once, and it seemed like fate, sure enough. A bad end to an even worse day. A big, dark man in a red-and-rust-colored pickup truck had backed into the second driveway, with what was obviously a small load of furniture.

She closed the curtain before he saw her, thanking providence that her small yellow VW was out of sight so that he wouldn’t realize who his nearest neighbor was. There were other houses and apartments in the neighborhood, but none close, and there were a lot of trees separating the small duplex from the other dwellings. Maureen had liked that when she moved in, but now she was beginning to feel uncomfortable. She didn’t like that big man anymore, even if he was dishy, and she was frankly irritated that she wasn’t going to be able to avoid him at home. Well, maybe he’d stay inside. That way she could do her precious gardening in the plot outback without having to be observed at it.

“AAAHHH!” Bagwell screamed. “AAAHHH!”

She rushed into the kitchen, putting her finger against her lips as she tried to quiet the screaming bird. It was almost dark, and Bagwell had to do his thing at sundown. Some Amazons purred themselves to sleep, she’d heard. Bagwell wasn’t one of them. He did a whole routine, from screaming to hanging upside down from the ceiling of his cage, and he wouldn’t stop until he was covered.

Terrified that her unwanted new neighbor was going to burst in the door any minute to find out who was being beaten, Maureen rushed to get a cloth and threw it over the cage. When Bagwell stopped yelling his parroty head off, she’d clean out the remains of his carrots and put in fresh water and papers.

She leaned against the wall with a sigh of relief. That was when she saw the shadow against the window. She felt her knees going weak. It had to be him. The shadow was huge, and if he was at the kitchen window, that meant he could see her yellow VW, which was parked just behind the duplex.

She waited there, frozen, to see what he did. But the shadow went away almost instantly, and nobody knocked.

Maureen remained immobile for another minute. Then she went and peeked out the curtain at the back door, but there was nobody in sight. Thank God, he wasn’t going to give her any trouble.

But if he was a peace-loving man, Bagwell might give him some. The last occupant, while loud, had at least not complained about Bagwell. Maureen had a feeling that this new lodger wasn’t fond of noise, musical or otherwise. It could present some problems.

She made herself a sandwich and some coffee and finally uncovered Bagwell. He was nodding off, his eyes closed, his feathers ruffled, one leg pulled up under him.

“Loudmouth,” she muttered.

He was purring to himself, making little singing noises that had amused her last boyfriend until Bagwell had tried to make dessert out of his fingers.

She sipped her coffee, wondering what she was going to do now that her new enemy had become her neighbor. What a horrible turn of events. It was such a wild coincidence, to have him living next door, out of all the apartments and houses vacant in the city. For just a minute, she thought about going next door and accusing him of chasing her. But she knew she’d never have the nerve. Still, how had he known about this vacant house, and did he know that she lived here? It was so curious.

She cleaned Bagwell’s cage and covered him back up before she went to watch television. There wasn’t much on, and she was tired. She made an early night of it, stretching lazily as she put on the long, men’s pajama jacket that was all she wore to bed. It had been on sale at a department store and looked loose and comfortable. She didn’t like frilly, lacy things that scratched, and she never could find a pair of women’s pajamas that felt right. But this item did. She loved it, even though it brought back some bittersweet memories of a time when her parents had still been alive. Her mother had teased her about what man it belonged to, and they’d all laughed. Her parents had known that she was far too fastidious for love affairs. She was an unawakened twenty-four, a plain girl who didn’t appeal to most men. She’d learned to accept that, and now she lived for her work. She had a good job and made good money, thanks to the MacFaber Corporation. She must be adept at her job, because her last boss had recommended her to Mr. Blake. She felt fortunate to be so highly thought of, when there were typists with more than her six months’ experience who’d lost out on the junior secretary’s job she held.

She turned out her light and lay back on the double bed, listening to the night sounds: traffic, and the occasional dog, and jets flying overhead. Closer, there was a different sound, like someone moving heavy objects around. She flushed as she realized that it must be her new neighbor. She’d never been in the other house, but probably his bedroom was right through that wall. She moved restlessly and decided that the very next day she was going to move her bed against another wall!