Asking for Trouble - Leslie Kelly [45]
“If you’re so concerned, what are you doing here?”
Shrugging, the woman bent to her pail again, dumping her rag into it and then straightened, rubbing her back as if it pained her. “Good pay. I come up once a week to tidy up.” She jerked her head toward Simon’s office door. “He stays in there the whole time, leastwise I think he does. I wouldn’t be able to do a lick of work if he was watching me with those cold, sinister eyes of his.”
I wanted to slap her. I also wanted to laugh. Because Simon’s eyes were heated and intense, nowhere near cold and certainly not sinister. “You obviously don’t know him very well.”
“I’ve been cleaning this place and bringing him fresh groceries every week since he showed up. I guess I know him as well as you do,” the woman replied as she opened the front door and walked out on the porch. I followed.
“The whole town knows all about him,” the woman said as she tossed the dirty water from the bucket over the rail onto the lawn.
I wasn’t sure the soap suds would do much for the flower beds but I was fuming too much to pay attention. “I don’t think any of you know him at all. Not a single person has called or come up here all week. He could have fallen over dead and no one would even know.”
“Which is exactly the way he wants it.”
She did have a point there, but I wasn’t going to admit it.
“You listen well, miss. If I was you, I’d get out of here right away.” The woman looked around, rising on tiptoe to try to peer past me into the shadowy recesses of the house. I knew she was trying to make sure Simon wasn’t around to overhear. I also knew I was about to hear something new about my host. “He’s a killer.”
Uh, yeah, I’d definitely been right. And I damn sure didn’t like it. So I, uh, sort of went Lottie on her. Yelled a little, told her to take her mop and ride it back down to wherever she came from. Or shove it somewhere. I don’t remember exactly all I said.
I only remember one thing. That when the woman was gone, scurrying away to her station wagon and tearing out of the parking lot with a rattle and a belch of smoke, I realized Simon was standing right inside the doorway.
He’d obviously heard every word.
“I don’t need you to defend me,” he said, his voice soft, his tone even. Impossible to gauge.
“She’s an idiot.”
He didn’t budge. “I repeat, you don’t have to defend me.”
“Well, you’re sure not doing a very good job of it.” Transferring my anger onto him, I strode back into the house. “Sitting up here, all locked away and glaring, you’re just feeding the imaginations of narrow-minded people like her.”
“You think I care?”
No. I supposed he didn’t. But it bothered me that people thought so poorly of him.
This man might be moody and temperamental. He might even have an aura of danger and mystery.
But a killer? Ridiculous.
One thing was sure. Until Simon joined the land of the living—let himself come to life—he wasn’t going to make any effort to change people’s minds. He hadn’t been lying—he just did not care. He was like a man emotionally dead, completely and utterly alone and adrift from the rest of the world.
I wasn’t going to stand for that any longer. Whatever had happened, I would help Simon Lebeaux get past it, open himself up again and let go of the bottled anger and coldness he tried so hard to hide behind.
I was running out of time to let him slowly come to rely on me as a friend while secretly lusting for my hot bod, so it was definitely time to step up the pace. There was only one way to do it. Frankly, I couldn’t think of a better way to bring a man’s emotions to life than by awakening his libido.
It was for his own good. I intended to seduce the man out of his darkness if it was the last thing I ever did.
8
Simon
SIMON DIDN’T KNOW exactly when he realized Lottie was trying to seduce him, but by the time they finished dinner, he had no doubt that was the case. His first hint had been her feet coming down the stairs for dinner.
She’d been wearing those hot, sexy black boots with high heels