Asking for Trouble - Leslie Kelly [38]
He had to laugh. Mortimer was an eighty-year-old millionaire who liked to dress up in sheik robes and camp out in an enormous tent in his backyard. If that wasn’t a statement about how radically Simon’s life had changed, he didn’t know what was.
“What’s funny?”
Startled, he swung his head around and saw Lottie standing a few feet away from him. He hadn’t even heard her approach in the damp grass.
Apparently an early riser, too, she was dressed in running clothes—sweats and sneakers—with her thick, dark hair swept up in a ponytail on top of her head. Her breaths came in shallow pants, as if she’d been jogging already, though it was only seven-thirty.
“Don’t run along the cliffs,” he said, barking out the first words that came to his mind.
“Well, good morning to you, too.”
He cleared his throat. “Good morning.” Then he repeated his warning. “The cliffs are uneven along the edge. You don’t want to be running within ten feet of the drop-off, especially not when it’s dark out.”
She walked over, still panting. She’d apparently been out and about for quite a while. He wondered if her night had been as restless as his. And what the two of them might have done about that restless night, had they happened to be sleeping in the same room.
“Simon?”
Seeing her eyeing him curiously, he cleared his throat. She’d obviously said something to him but his mental imaginings had made him deaf to whatever it was. “Sorry?”
“I asked if you were all right. You don’t look well. Have you eaten this morning?”
“Got a second career as a nurse going, have you?”
“Got a second career as a vampire I don’t know about? You’re pale enough,” she said, her tone just as sarcastic.
After a pointed look up at the sun, which cast a few rays of light between the morning clouds, he glanced at her and quirked an eyebrow.
“Okay, you’re obviously not a pile of vampire ash in the sunlight,” she admitted, sounding grumpy. Cute. “But if you keep starving yourself and hiding away in that office, you’re going to look like Dracula.”
“I thought you were here to research the history of the house, not harass me into eating.”
Her fists hit her hips. “Harass? Please. You haven’t seen harassed yet. You want to know what real harassment is, ask my brothers.”
There she went being cute again. So tough and bossy. He wanted to know more about her. “Brothers? Big family?”
She nodded. “Five of them. All older.”
Ouch. Five older brothers. If he hadn’t already known he couldn’t get involved with this young woman, that would have driven the point home.
“Fortunately,” she added, as if sensing his immediate reaction, “they’re all back in Chicago, not here watching my every move. How about you, any siblings to torment you throughout your childhood?”
He shook his head.
“Cousins? Anything?”
“No. No one.”
She frowned. “Wow, I’ve often wished I had about twenty or thirty fewer males bossing me around but I can’t imagine not having any.”
“Twenty or…”
“With the cousins and second cousins, yeah. My parents each come from huge families and they all took that Catholic ‘go forth and breed’ thing a little too seriously.”
He smiled, liking her frankness. As usual. “My father was an only child, and my mother’s brother…” He glanced down the mountain. “Uncle Roger never married. He spent his whole life here.” Lowering his voice, speaking almost to himself, he murmured, “And he died here.”
Her hand touched his arm—lightly, offering comfort, warmth. “I’m sorry. I still regret barreling in and mistaking you for him the other night.” Clearing her throat, she added, “How did he die?”
Simon remained silent for a moment, though the story certainly wasn’t any big secret. Still, it wasn’t easy to talk about. Even at the funeral, when most of the town had come up to offer him their condolences, he’d barely managed a word to anyone.
Which probably explained why they all