Keeping a serene façade for him while she watched him die, slowly, inch by inch, was eating her alive.
Her entire life revolved around her father’s illness, as she tried to keep them afloat.
There was no time for a man, for a love life. The only things she could allow into her life were caring for her father and work.
Sam needed to know that, as soon as possible. That look he’d given her meant business. He had to know that there was no possibility of anything between them.
He stood, bent over her father and briefly held his hand, pretending not to notice that her father’s hand shook in his.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Ambassador Pearce. I look forward to talking to you again.”
Her father’s cheeks were pink again with pleasure.
“The p-p-pleasure was a-all m-m-mine, I assure y-y-you.” Pops was tired. When his scarce physical resources ran down, he started stuttering. Nicole went quietly into the kitchen and signalled to Manuela that it was time for dinner and then bed.
Manuela came into the room with a broad smile, wiping her hands on her apron.
Sam waited until Manuela was bent over her father and, with a nod of his head and a murmured “ma’am” to Manuela, he took Nicole’s elbow and walked her out the door.
They descended the stairs and walked down the driveway in unison. Nicole realized he was shortening his strides for her. He seemed to be somehow attuned to her movements, though he wasn’t looking at her at all. He was scanning the street ahead. Still, she got the distinct impression that though his attention was focused on the road ahead, he’d catch her if she were to trip on her very pretty and very impractical sandals.
Across the street, the curtains of the window of the living room opened and Creepy peeped out, then Creepier. She suppressed a shudder.
When her grandparents had bought this house in the early sixties, it had been an upper-middle-class area, the perfect place for a couple to bring up a family during the Kennedy years. Safe and ordered and prosperous. Nicole had heard her mother talk often and affectionately about life on Mulberry Street, among families that knew one another and socialized often.
But something had happened to the street after Meredith Loren grew up to marry Nicholas Pearce and spend the next thirty-five years abroad. Nicole didn’t know whether it was because of demographics or economics or whether someone had put a hex on the area. Whatever had happened, it had turned the whole area into a receptacle for the lost and the hopeless, people on the last rung before falling into the void.
The big house across the street where her mother’s best friend had once lived had changed hands twenty times and was now a run-down rooming house owned by an absentee landlord and inhabited by the saddest people imaginable. Poor single mothers barely scraping by, shabby middle-aged divorced men who had just lost their tenth job in a year, the odd illegal immigrant keeping his head down.
And, worse, it seemed to be Club Drifter—a place where angry, unbalanced young men congregated and spat their rage at the world. There were two in particular, one black and one white, both dreadlocked and heavily pierced, both with pant crotches down to their knees, both either high or drunk at all hours.
Both fixated on her.
If they happened to see her, it was like some inaudible signal had been beamed to dogs. They’d stiffen, start whistling, calling out obscenities. Nicole’s only defense was to get into her car as quickly as possible, hit the locks, and pull out, fast. The other day, horribly, the blond had moved fast and knocked on the passenger-side window of her car just as she was getting in. She’d closed the locks with awhumpand taken off as quickly as she could, heart pounding.
The whole thing was incredibly…unpleasant, to say the least.
And there they were, both of them. Just her luck. As if the door closing behind her were a secret signal, Creepy came out on the porch followed by Creepier.
Sam felt her stiffen, followed her gaze, and tightened his hand on her elbow.
They started with the cat calls and whistles, loud enough to pierce eardrums. Nicole watched her feet and walked as fast as she could. Experience had taught her that looking at them, acknowledging their existence, only made things worse.
She and Sam walked down the street together as he calmly escorted her to his car, a late-model, dark blue BMW. He seated her in the passenger seat and walked around to the driver’s side. He stopped for a second before getting in, looking out over the roof at the two creeps grinning and whistling from the porch.
She knew what they were seeing. A guy dressed like a businessman who…wasn’t. When he’d seen the two, he had instantly morphed into the soldier he’d been. Amazing. She’d been standing next to him, thinking he was so verybigwhen the air around him became supercharged and he grew even bigger.
The man had been a Special Forces soldier, a Navy SEAL, for God’s sake, and had won a chestful of medals. He beat Creepy and Creepier on the male scale, hands down.
All she saw was a chunk of male torso through the driver’s window but the two creeps must have seen more, because the whistling and cat calls stopped, as abruptly as if someone had put a hand around their throats and squeezed.
Males are, above all, animals. Herd animals, with a very keen instinct for the alpha male and when to keep out of his way.
Just a minute’s look, and the creeps’ eyes were on the ground in subconscious submission, another minute and they sullenly turned and slouched back inside, slamming the front door closed.
Never, ever, in a million years could Nicole have achieved that, not even with a gun in her hand, let alone with a look.
Sam got into the driver’s seat, jaw muscles jumping. As soon as he was seated, he activated the locks.
