A few days later, I was making a salad for dinner when I happened to glance out my kitchen window and noticed three very big, extremely muscular men walking up the stairs to the guest apartments. Were they from the police department, coming to clean up the rest of Wendell’s apartment? Were they friends of Mac’s? Or maybe enemies? They were awfully big and potentially fearsome.
I dried my hands quickly and jogged out to the garden. “Hi, guys. Can I help you?”
The biggest one, who was leading the pack, leaned over the railing and smiled politely. “No, ma’am, but thank you. We’re here to see Mac.”
Don’t hurt him, I wanted to say, but didn’t dare, for fear of him turning on me. The guy was huge and bald and wore a skintight black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He could’ve been a world wrestling champion for all I knew. Or a paid assassin. He pounded on Mac’s door and stood back to wait.
The other two men weren’t quite as large, but they were still intimidating. One wore a black bomber jacket and looked like he might’ve been part of a motorcycle gang. The third was dressed sedately in a pressed shirt tucked into blue jeans. He didn’t look particularly mean, but you never knew. Maybe he was the brains behind the muscle.
I worked up my courage and called out to them, “I don’t know if he’ll answer the door. He’s been very busy lately.”
Just then, Mac swept the door open and the three men greeted him with hoots and howls. There were manly hugs with a lot of backslapping and arm punching. But the truly surprising thing was Mac himself. He looked wonderful. His beautiful thick hair was brushed back neatly. He looked rested and clean and handsome, and completely straight-arrow in a navy pullover sweater and khakis. This was no longer the eccentric writer yanking his hair out for the sake of his art.
“Dude, what is this place?” the motorcycle guy said, glancing around.
“It’s a little piece of heaven,” Mac said, then noticed me watching them and grinned. “See? There’s an angel.”
I shook my head and walked back into the house.
A few minutes later while I was finishing up my salad, I saw Eric Jensen walk up the stairs to Mac’s place.
I’d heard some loud laughter and raucous voices coming from his apartment, but I couldn’t believe that one of my neighbors would’ve called the police so soon. I didn’t expect a confrontation, but I watched from the safety of my kitchen, anyway, and pushed open the casement window a few inches in order to hear the conversation as Eric knocked on the door.
Mac opened the door and grinned. “Hey, glad you could make it, Chief. Guys, this is Eric Jensen. You’ll all want to watch yourselves since he’s the chief of police of this fine village and won’t take crap from any of y’all.”
“At least he won’t cheat,” one of the guys shouted from inside the apartment.
“That’s what you think,” Eric said, chuckling.
Mac closed the door behind Eric, leaving me mystified.
But a minute later, I saw Hal bounding up the stairs. What the hell? I ran out to the garden and waved at him. “Hal!”
He glanced down. “Hey, Shannon. What’s up?”
“What are you doing here? Where’s Lizzie?”
“She’s at home with the kids. I’m going to Mac’s.”
“But why?”
“It’s his monthly poker game.” He rubbed his hands together in excitement. “See you later, kiddo.”
? ? ?
The poker game broke up around two in the morning—not that I’d stayed up watching and waiting to make sure everyone left at a decent hour. I didn’t care. I was a little surprised that Jane and I hadn’t been rudely awakened by any shouting or drunken laughter in the middle of the night. No, I just happened to wake up to get a glass of water and saw Mac walking with the other guys down the stairs and out to their cars. They were talking in low tones and I must say I appreciated their courtesy.
I had grown up playing card games with my dad and Uncle Pete, so I’d never considered poker some sort of esoteric ritual among men. But some of my girlfriends did and they were always peeved when they weren’t included. I had joined in plenty of poker games with my crew guys, and while I liked to play, I didn’t like to lose.
The one time I had put up a quiet stink about not being allowed to play in a big poker game was when a new builder came to town from Mendocino. He invited all the local contractors except me and another woman, a friend who was co-owner of a local plumbing company. I found out later that I had also not been invited to bid on a job he was about to start. That pissed me off and I let people know it. Not that I was all that powerful, but I was a firm believer in fair dealing, so suffice to say it never happened again.
In the case of Mac’s poker party, though, I was just happy he was making new friends in Lighthouse Cove and also inviting his old friends to be a part of our town.
And didn’t I sound like Little Miss Sunshine working overtime for the Chamber of Commerce? I finished drinking my water and went back to bed.
? ? ?
Jane had made coffee and was gone by the time I woke up the next morning. I walked outside with my coffee mug in hand to pick up the mail I’d forgotten to get the day before. As I strolled back to the kitchen door, I saw Mac waiting at the gate.
“Hello.”
“Morning, Irish,” he said, pushing the gate open. “I hope we didn’t keep you up last night.”
“Not at all,” I said. “You guys were pretty quiet. Did you have a good time?”
“Sure did.”
“Who was the big winner?”
“Hal.” He shook his head in disgust. “The guy’s got a computer inside his head.”
“I hope you didn’t lose too badly.”
“I never do,” he assured me. He grabbed something off the picnic table and handed it to me. “I wanted to return this to you.”
“My basket.”
“Yeah. Thanks for putting all that stuff together for me. You saved my life.”
I laughed. “I doubt that, but I’m glad you were able to use it.”
“No, I’m serious, you saved my life. The chocolate, the vegetables—everything. It was really thoughtful of you. Sometimes I get into a zone and forget to eat, forget to sleep, barely remember to breathe.”
“I’m not very creative, but I can see how that could happen when you’re really into the story.”
“Yeah, it happens.” He took a step closer and touched my arm with the tips of his fingers. “But you’re wrong. When I look around here, I see creativity in everything you do.”
“Oh.” Self-conscious now, I glanced around at the garden, the house; tried to see it through his eyes. “I guess you could look at it that way, but it’s nothing like what you do.”
He laughed softly. “You have no idea.”
I smiled. “Anyway, if you’d ever like to take something from the garden, you’re more than welcome to—”
“I’m dazzled by you, Shannon Hammer.”
“You are?”
“Yeah,” he said, moving closer. His fingers skimmed up and down my arm and brushed my hair back off my shoulders. “I forgot to eat and sleep and breathe because of you. I dreamed of your green eyes.”
“Oh, dear.”
“It’s all good,” he said, smiling as he leaned in and kissed me. It was such a surprise that I held my breath for a few seconds. But then I relaxed and gave in to the sweet excitement of having a man’s lips on mine. Something stirred inside me. Attraction, of course, but more than that. Electricity. Happiness. Wow.
When he stepped back, he was still smiling.
“Well. Um.” Apparently I had forgotten how to speak.
He chuckled. “I know what you mean.”
I shook my head. “It’s just . . . well, that was unexpected.”
“But kind of awesome, right?”
I laughed, charmed by him. “Definitely awesome.”
“Good.” He grabbed my hand companionably and walked me up the steps to my kitchen door. “I’m going back to work. I’ve got a great new character in this book. Jake Slater has finally met a woman who befuddles him completely.”
“Really? That sounds like fun.”
“It is,” he said, sounding gleeful. “They’ve just met because her bicycle brakes failed.”
“Oh,” I said, baffled that he would use the story of how the two of us met in one of his books. “Isn’t that sort of a low-tech complication for Jake Slater?”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “But it’s such a refreshing twist on the tired cliché of car brakes failing, I couldn’t resist.”
“Well, I hope he solves the mystery.”
He opened the kitchen door, caught me in a quick embrace, and kissed me again. While my head was still spinning, he said, “I’ll keep you posted.”