He barreled down the stairs and jerked open the door, only to be nearly knocked over by a streak of overly-perfumed blonde shrieking "Bathroom!" on her way past.

"Straight back, first door to the--"

"Found it!" 

The bathroom door slammed hard enough to shake the whole house. 

Steve and the dogs stood in the open door, staring down the hall, waiting until the aftershocks died down. The blonde wasn't the only thing that had to go. So did that perfume. Whew.

"Hey!" 

Distracted, Steve finally noticed the taxi waiting at the curb, the mastiff-like driver glowering at him from his window. In what could only be called a daze, Steve wandered out onto the porch, allowing an oblique, disinterested glance at the stuffed shopping bag and canvas tote lolling against one of Mr. Leibowicz's Kennedy rockers. "You payin' the fare?" the driver asked.

But before he could answer, the blonde whooshed back past him and down the porch steps, trailing the scent of about a million flowers in her wake. Shoot, Steve didn't know a woman could use the bathroom that fast.

"Of course he's not paying the fare! Keep your shirt on!" 

For some reason, Steve became transfixed with the way her short hair, like feathers, shifted and twisted in the breeze as she sailed past. The way the soft, sparkly sweater and black pants molded to her figure without strangling it. 

The way she was about to fall off her shoes. 

She glanced over her shoulder at Steve, then blinked a pair of the deepest blue eyes he'd ever seen on a human being, the color of the evening sky just before it swallows the sunset. . . 

"Miss?"

"What?" Her head jerked back to the waiting driver. "Oh, right." She shifted, clumsily, to balance the tote on her knee -- when had she picked it up? -- in which slender hands, tipped in ruby red fingernails, rummaged for several seconds before extracting a wallet. 

Hel-lo. . .major ephinany time: long red nails made him hot. 

He felt his brows do that knotting thing again.

For crying out loud, she wasn't even pretty, not in any conventional sense -- deeply set eyes with thick, natural brows, a high forehead, squarish jaw with a dimpled chin, a wide mouth. But what Steve saw -- underneath several strata of makeup -- were the unapologetically strong lines of good, solid peasant stock, a handsomeness he'd seen innumerable times in the faces of the women with whom he shared a common ancestry. He told himself the hitch of interest in his midsection stemmed purely from aesthetic considerations, a desire to photograph her, to catch the light playing across those compelling features. 

She yanked out a wad of bills, then crammed the purse between her arm and her ribs. "Now. . .how much did you say?"

The driver glanced at Steve, then the blonde, knuckling up the bill of his ball cap. He cleared his throat, then mumbled something. Unfortunately, the man hadn't counted on Steven having hearing like a hound dog. 

"A hundred?" Steve was down the stairs in two seconds flat, in full macho protective mode. "Where'd you pick her up? Cincinnati?" 

"It doesn't really mat--" whatever-her-name was began, but the suddenly obsequious driver stepped in with, "Ya know, come to think of it. . .it wasn't as hard to find the place as I thought. Whaddya say we make it--"

"Fifty," Steve supplied, just for the hell of it. For all he knew, maybe the man had picked her up in Cincinnati. Judging from the driver's reaction, however, he'd apparently called the man's bluff. There were, at times, definite advantages to having been a linebacker in a previous life.

A bunch of folds rearranged themselves into something like a smile. "Just what I was gonna say. How 'bout that?"

The woman looked from one to the other, her mouth open. When it finally snapped shut, Steve noticed her narrowed gaze had come to rest on him. 

Huh?

Her mouth twisted, she peeled off five tens and handed them to the driver, who, with a wave and a impressive squeal of the tires, left.

Steve turned to introduce himself, extending his hand. "Hi, I'm--"

"Excuse me, but do I strike you as being a complete airhead?" 

Somehow, Steve figured pointing out that she wasn't exactly dressed like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company wouldn't go over so good. "Hey -- that guy was about to take advantage of you!"

"And you don't think I knew that?" One hand swiped back a feather. Underneath five-pound eyelashes, heat smoldered. And what was with that accent? "I knew what the taxi should cost."

"Then why--?"

Oh, he'd seen that look before. His mother was a master at it. 

"Look, Mr. Liebowicz--" 

Steve shook his head. "Koleski. Steve Koleski. Mr. L. had to go to the store. I was doing some electrical work for him."

A flicker of what Steve could only assume was relief passed over her features before she wagged one hand, dismissing his unwanted explanation. "Look, Mr. Koleski, it was no easy feat finding a taxi willing to come all the way out here, so when I finally got this one, I would have bloody well promised the man my first-born child if it meant getting me where I wanted to go. But I'm not stupid, believe it or not. The plan was, I'd pretend to agree with this man's ridiculous fee, wait until I was here, then tell him he was full of it."

The laugh fairly burst from his lungs. "Full of it?"

She glared at him for a millisecond before twirling around, unsteadily, then taking off toward the house, feathers bobbing, fanny twitching. 

"Hey!" Steve bounded after her and up the porch steps just as she made a grab for the listing shopping bag, inertia propelling him into her as she attempted to shoulder her way inside. Bodies and bags tangled for a sizzling two or three seconds, during which Steve found himself seriously reconsidering his earlier position on women and loneliness and aggravation.

"Do you mind?" she said, wrenching herself, and the bags, inside. 

"I was only trying to help, for the love of Mike! Why on earth are you so fired up about this?"

The woman's gaze glanced off his, as fleeting as an electric spark, before she twisted around and noticed the dogs. With a soft oh!, she dropped the bags and fell to her knees in one motion, burying herself in unbridled canine euphoria.

Steve, on the other hand, was doing well to simply catch his breath.

"Oh! Aren't you the most wonderful things!" she said to the panting, licking creatures, laughing as each one in turn tried to crawl into her lap. After a moment, she hauled herself back up, wiping dog spit off her face with the heel of her hand as she took in the high-ceilinged entryway, the sunlight-drenched living room off to the left. She wasn't exactly smiling as much as she simply seemed. . . pleased. 

"So -- Mr. Liebowicz isn't here?" she suddenly said, not looking at him.

"Uh. . .no." At some point, he was going to have to figure out why watching this overly-cosmeticized, perfume-marinated, smart-mouthed stranger wallowing in dog slobber was doing all the wrong things to his libido. "He had to go to the store. He didn't expect you until later."

She shrugged, but there seemed to be something oddly nervous about the gesture. "I wasn't sure, when I talked with him, what my. . .schedule would be like." She hesitated, as if about to say something else, then turned, picked up the bags again. "Do you know where my room is?"

Eyes locked. Bad move.

Bad, bad move.

"Uh, yeah," Steve said at last. "Upstairs."

She nodded, then clomped up the stairs, chattering to the dogs. Steve followed, frowning at the sea of undulating dog butts in front of him. "First door to your left," he said when she paused at the landing. "What did you say your name was?"

"Lisa Stone," she said after a beat or two, then disappeared inside the room, followed by her entourage. "Oh. . .were you working in here?"

"Oh, right." Steve hustled inside the room and squatted to gather up his things, clanking them into the metal toolbox. "I'd just finished up when you knocked on the door. Since it sounded urgent--" he glanced up at her, fighting the urge to grin, not fighting the urge to tease "--I figured cleaning up could wait."

A blush swept up her neck. Then that generous mouth stretched into a breath-stealing smile that was completely at odds with the globbed on makeup and the awful perfume and the hideous shoes. And something snapped between them. What, he didn't know, didn't want to know, but damned if the tension didn't just evaporate. 

"I, um, didn't realize I had to go until I got into the taxi."

One kind of tension, anyway. Another kind -- more insidious and five times more deadly -- mushroomed between them so fast he nearly choked.
Ordering everything to back off, cool down, and generally get a grip, he stood, letting the grin win out. "Bet that was the longest ride of your life, huh?"

Something like startled delight lit up her eyes before she laughed, and if he thought the smile knocked him for a loop, the laugh just about sent him into another realm entirely.

Psst. And she likes dogs, too.

Right. And maybe he should check his head for faulty wiring. For one thing, he had no idea who this woman was, where she was from, why she was here, or when she was leaving. For all he knew she was married. Or had a boyfriend. Or was on the lam. 

And the perfume was making him dizzy.

And -- and -- for another thing, his life was more crowded than a Tokyo subway. He had kids to raise. Crises to avert. Gardens to tend and chickens to feed and about a million photos to develop and wounds to help heal.

If his heart were a neon sign, it would be flashing NO VACANCY.

Lisa was holding out her hand. "I do apologize for my earlier behavior. I get cranky when I'm overtired." And Steve, not wanting to be rude, heaven knows, took her hand into his, grateful that -- their brief, earlier tango notwithstanding -- electricity didn't shoot up his arm from her touch. That only happened in those books his sister used to hide in her sweater drawer, anyway. But it had been a long time since he'd held a woman's hand in his, and he had to admit, it felt pretty damn good. Warm and soft and all that nice stuff.

And, boy, did he like that smile.

And, boy, did he have to get the hell out of there. 
 

Copyright 2001 Karen Templeton-Berger Reprinted with permission of Harlequin Enterprises, S.A. All rights reserved