Chapter 8

Nana stood in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. She had been there for not quite a minute. She’d shifted her weight and sighed heavily four times already. At my dining room desk, I sat typing out my recent activities and thoughts on my laptop. Writing it all down helped me keep it straight in my head, and suddenly there were so many threads in my life that I needed a visual. This kind of exercise had blossomed into the column that now provided my income.

Pointedly, Nana cleared her throat, but I didn’t stop typing.

“Aren’t you going to cook any dinner?” she finally said.

I glanced up from my computer screen and, even though I didn’t intend to stop typing, I couldn’t help it. Nana wore a white sweatshirt and white sweatpants. Her irritated, hands-on-hips pose accentuated her snowman body shape. Her white beehive was still ruffled in the back from an afternoon nap she insisted was only a few minutes of resting her eyes. I knew better—her snoring had greeted me when I arrived home from meeting Mr. Kline. It was a struggle not to let my amusement show.

“Well?”

“Not today.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Nope.” I paused to rethink how to spell “discipline.” Nana always said it dis-li-pline. A lifetime of hearing that pronunciation made me have to stop and think when I had to write that particular word; otherwise I’d put an extra l in it.

“Well, for your information, it’s after six. It’s dinnertime.”

“So?” A smile slipped onto my face. For all the hang-ups my childhood had provided, teasing her equaled the mildest retribution.

“So? I’m hungry! Poopsie’s hungry.” He loped in when she said his name. “I’m not eating out of a box again.”

“Chubby’s dog food is in the garage. And don’t you dare start feeding him table food!”

“His name is Poopsie,” she said defiantly, patting his head.

I saved my document, closed the laptop, and got up. “All right. I’ll feed him. But he’s going to be too big to be called ‘Poopsie.’” He followed me eagerly into the garage and across the cracked cement floor to his metal crate. I scooped his puppy chow into the bowl and placed it deep inside the cage, just like the puppy book said to do. “There you go.”

He didn’t move from his spot by the garage door.

“Go on. Your dinner’s in there.”

He sat and gave a whine.

“Okay. I’ll make her get you a cooler name.”

Another whine.

“And it won’t be Chubby.”

He barked and leapt into the cage and started to eat just as a motorcycle roared up my driveway, throwing gravel. I stepped back to the kitchen in time to see Nana slam the cupboard door in disgust and shuffle out. I announced, “Dinner’s here.”

“Delivery?” she asked, turning.

“Yup. You should smooth your hair down in the back.”

Her hands shot up self-consciously. “Who delivers out here,” she grumbled, heading for the living room as she spoke, “besides that grumpy paperboy who couldn’t hit a driveway if it were the size of Texas?”

“That paperboy isn’t tossing out papers while riding a bicycle, Nana. This is the country, not the suburbia you’re accustomed to. Out here, paperboys are grown-ups driving cars, and usually they’re going about sixty. If the paper’s on the property at all, he didn’t miss.”

From the living room, she’d have a good view of our guest coming in. Wanting to avoid her having a conniption, I started my warning as I jogged down the hall to the door. “His name’s Johnny.”

“The paperboy?”

“No, Nana. The man bringing dinner. Now Nana, don’t freak. He’s—”

Nana was already peering out the window. “By the lunar crone’s eyes, would you look at that!”

“Nana—”

“I thought they quit making handsome deliverymen back in the sixties!”

I stopped. She thought Johnny was handsome? Her inflection hadn’t been sarcastic; her words hadn’t been confirmation of a suspicion, but a surprised observation. His tattoos made him seem disturbingly scary to me. I stared at her as she stood at the window with the curtains parted, smiling out at the porch. Johnny’s boots thumped across the wooden boards. He was knocking before I could open the front door.

“Hello, Red.” Johnny smiled, his low voice warm and rich. His tone said so much more than “hello.” Behind him, the golden leaves rained down from my pair of oaks. Wind whipped over the porch and through the screen to chill me as I stood staring up at him, ensnared like a cat in a cage.

Johnny wasn’t the kind of guy I flirted with. Remembering how we’d talked on the phone, embarrassment clenched my stomach. I forced my attention to neutral space—the floor—catching details of his jacket and black T-shirt beneath, the leather pants he wore. Where did guys over six feet find leather pants? Johnny was at least six foot two. His motorcycle boots, with silver-plated chains clinking, oozed utter bad-boy coolness that no red-blooded female could deny—and added another inch to his height. His presence screamed power and danger.

Everything he wore enhanced his dangerous look, and all of it was on purpose. Didn’t that justify my fear? Did that mean I didn’t have to beat myself up for being shallow, since I was only reacting the way he wanted people to react to him?

My hand shook as I tucked my hair behind my ear, bit my bottom lip, and looked up again.

He wore his black hair pulled back as usual, leaving the tattoos on his face strikingly exposed. Black lines surrounded and decorated his eyes like the Eye of Horus or Wedjat. My heart beat more slowly and my blood felt colder in my veins. Multiple tiny, white-gold loops adorned each brow, each ear. Little diamond studs glistened on either side of his nose.

He smiled and, strangely, it was as fearsome as it was friendly. “Food’s getting cold, Red.”

“Oh. Yeah.” You can do this, I told myself. He just seems scary. Ask him in.

I swallowed and put on a fake smile of certainty as I reached for the latch. “Come in.”

Johnny stepped inside. This was my personal space; allowing him in here felt completely different than opening the cellar, which wasn’t accessible from the house.

“I got Chinese. Might have to nuke it a bit. It stays hot pretty good except when it’s on the back of a bike in October. There’s nothing out here, you know. Not even a gas station. I got this in Cleveland, at one of my favorite spots.”

He paused, taking in the living room’s deep red walls, the chocolate-brown-corduroy-slipcovered furniture, the worn tan pillows. I felt my insides shrinking. I hoped he wouldn’t say anything cocky about all the Arthurian artwork and books being inside an old saltbox farmhouse.

“I’ve never seen your inner sanctuary before,” he said. “You’ve got style, Red.”

I managed to say, “Thanks.” He wasn’t too choosy if he approved of an aging farmhouse with creaky floors and little in the way of modern decor. I hoped we would make it through the evening without him catching on and cracking jokes about my weakness for Arthur.

He sniffed. “Did you get a dog?”

“I did,” Nana said as if she were sharing a secret. She stepped away from the window and was actually smiling. It made her look like someone I didn’t know.

“Really?” He turned to Nana. “What kind?”

“A Great Dane puppy,” I said unenthusiastically. “He’s huge.”

Over his shoulder, Johnny said, “Me too,” disguised in a cough. He did it so quickly that I almost didn’t catch it. Silently, I prayed that Nana had missed it. “I brought these especially for you.” He held a picnic basket out to Nana, complete with red-and-white-checkered cloth. He was going all out for the Red Riding Hood thing. I couldn’t imagine sinister-looking Johnny going into a basket-and-candle shop, but I guessed he had.

Across the basket’s top, wedged under the handles, was a carton of Marlboros. “For me?” Nana asked sheepishly.