The Belle and the Beard Read online

  2

  Jasper

  "I'm Jasper-Anne Cleary. How do you do?"

  I marched down the porch steps, eyeing this great bear of a man intent on helping. The last thing—I mean, the very last thing—I could handle today was another person complicating my plans, let alone a brute who felt welcome to tromp all over my front yard and tell me where I belonged.

  All I wanted to do was get inside, plug in my toaster oven, and sleep for twenty to thirty hours. Forty if my need for sustenance didn't win out in the middle. That was it—toast, sleep, and solitude, and not a single reminder that I'd ignored this cottage since Midge died two years ago.

  I stopped on the second step from the bottom because if this guy planned on arguing with me over my rightful claim to the cottage, he'd need to haul himself on over here and give my hand a proper shake first. I wasn't about to close the distance for him.

  He glanced at my hand from his position on the lawn, muttered something to himself, and charged forward like he and his beard had some serious doubts as to whether women were allowed to own property.

  It was a damn good thing I'd stayed on the steps. He would've towered over me otherwise and we simply could not have that when it came to holy wars between homeowners.

  He gave my hand an irritable glance before swallowing it up inside his for a quick shake that was substantially less aggressive than I'd expected from him. "Linden Santillian. That's my place." Dropping my hand, he pointed to the twin cottage next door. "Like I said, I didn't know Midge had a niece."

  I offered Linden the most practiced smile in my arsenal. This smile never failed me. It'd charmed crusty old politicians and bulldog-belligerent donors. It'd greased the wheels with incessant reporters, errant mistresses, and more than a few strict security details. It was going to work on this guy too. It always did. "I didn't know she had a guard dog for a neighbor."

  "Excuse me but it looked like you were breaking and entering."

  "It's not breaking and entering when it's your house. It's just opening a stuck door with the help of some tools."

  His only response was a hard stare which I would've interpreted a million different ways if I had the energy. I really didn't.

  I hit him with the smile again. It had to work this time. It was all I had left. "Thanks for checking in. It was real nice visiting with you."

  I scooted back up the steps to the front door. The blasted thing stood as one last mile in the most unpleasant marathon of a week in my whole life, and much like me, it was both falling apart and standing stubbornly firm.

  As I collected the crowbar from the porch floor, I heard, "Wait just one second."

  "Sorry. Can't. Won't." I attacked the door again, going for the splintered wood between the lock and the jamb where there seemed to be a bit of wiggle. Just as I started to feel some give, the bar flew out of my hands. I whirled around to find Linden glowering at me. "May I ask what you think you're doing?"

  "That's not the right way to do it," he said.

  "Certainly not," I replied. "Not when there's an excessively helpful neighbor man here to do it for me." He gestured for me to step aside. I didn't. "You've mistaken me for someone who requires assistance. You've also mistaken me for someone who can put up with even a minute of nonsense after the week I've had. Here's what you need to understand. I don't care whether I do this wrong so long as I do it."

  "The side door is boarded up."

  That easy, jocular tone cut through the last of my patience. Maybe it wasn't patience or people skills or any of the other things that usually held me together like a corset of strings. Maybe it was the recognition that I couldn't get where I needed to go by mowing this man down and I'd have to go around him instead.

  "I noticed that." Since I wasn't about to beg him to return my crowbar, I tried the key again. It slid into the lock easily enough and turned without too much trouble but the deadbolt caught and the door wouldn't budge. "Let's save that issue for another day, shall we? As I'm sure you would agree, we've covered a good deal of ground today."

  He bobbed his head while he turned the bar over in his hands. I didn't want to care about his hands but I couldn't help but notice they were huge. With paws like that, he could rip my door clear off its hinges.

  Honestly, I could live with that approach. I needed to be alone with my toast, and I didn't care how I got there at this point.

  "I mention the side door because it needs to be replaced before it's operational. If you continue with this"—he tossed the bar up in the air, catching it as it flipped end over end—"you'll bust the lock and damage the frame. That will leave you with two doors you can't use and several thousand dollars in repairs." He tossed the bar again, catching it by the opposite end this time. "But you don't care if you do it the wrong way, right?"

  On any other day, I would've dismantled that little analysis of his. I would've countered a circle around him and done it with so much southern-girl sweetness, he wouldn't realize he'd been bested until long after he'd left me blissfully alone. Any other day. I was all out of sweet and fight, and the only card up my sleeve was the belief that I had this under control. I always had it under control. Even in chaos and calamity, I always knew what I was doing. I couldn't lose that right now and I could not fall apart in front of this guy.

  I'd shed enough tears over men who didn't deserve them from me.

  "Old doors stick when it's muggy like this." He waved like he could gather up the late summer humidity and hand it to me. "I have the same problem. Sometimes it just needs one helluva shove."

  "Mmhmm. Yes." I tapped my finger against my chin. "Pushing did come to mind. I tried that before you rushed over here with your alarm for women using tools."

  "I have no problem with women using tools. I do have a problem with anyone using them incorrectly, Jasper-Anne."

  "Jasper will do, thank you," I replied. "And it is possible your definition of correct is too limited in its scope."

  "That might be, but Midge would haunt my ass if I minded my own business while someone broke into her house."

  "Your knee-jerk assumption about me being a burglar lacks both imagination and reasoning. Kindly stop suggesting it."

  "If the crowbar fits." He shrugged. "Let me take a look at that key."

  "Are you still under the assumption I'm some sort of criminal? Because it's getting old."

  "And so is your attempt at breaking into this house. Let me see." He beckoned for the key. Since I was making no progress, I handed it over. "Sometimes they need to be polished off. Warmed up, you know? Like dollar bills in a vending machine. You have to smooth them out a few times, breathe on the corners. Or video games from those old-school consoles where you had to blow on the prongs."

  He buffed the key on the hem of his heather gray t-shirt, pulling the fabric up just enough for me to catch a glance at the dark, fuzzy trail of hair running down his belly. His jeans hung low on his hips, revealing a glimpse at the hunter green waistband of his boxers. As he rubbed his shirt against the key's every edge and notch, it occurred to me Linden was as thick as a redwood and nearly as tall. His sun-kissed skin only made his deep brown hair and beard shine darker.

  I'd noticed he was a big, burly guy when he'd stalked across the yard but I hadn't put all the pieces together until right now. Hell, I'd barely noticed my surroundings in this white-knuckled sprint to get away, to disappear.

  I'd left at two in the morning and driven through the night to keep a low profile, and it'd worked beautifully until the hot neighbor insisted on helping me open my door.

  In truth, it was rude. It was downright disrespectful for all those brutish good looks to be wasted on this know-it-all, mansplain-my-life-to-me, uninvited knight in ripped denim. Where were the drop-dead sexy guys who didn't appear out of nowhere to announce a woman shouldn't use a crowbar to open a door? Where were the ones who asked if they could assist, and when refused, offered to simply hang out and serve as eye candy? What about the ones who didn't automatically assume
I was a criminal? Why couldn't they be my neighbors?

  Not that I had the room in my life for anyone but me and my steamship of homemade problems. There wasn't a human being alive who wanted a piece of my mess.

  "All right. Give it a try."

  Linden shifted, his arm extended in my direction and a fierce smile stretching his lips. His shoulders spanned the width of the door and I had to talk myself into glancing away rather than eye-fondling him.

  Taking the key from him, I dropped my gaze to the lock. Broad shoulders didn't matter. Wolfish grins didn't matter. Insanely meddlesome neighbors didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the next move.

  I gave the lock a few tries, twisted the knob several times, and thumped my shoulder against the door as hard as I could but nothing happened. I was ready to call this experiment off and return to my method of beating and bashing until I got my way when Linden said, "Stop eyeing the crowbar. That's not going to help."

  "Then propose an alternative solution," I replied, now fully exasperated at this man and his presence. "Otherwise, I'll take care of this on my own, thank you."

  "Go another round," he said, tipping his chin up toward the door. "You work the knob, I'll add leverage on the door."

  "That sounds—" I really wanted to argue with him. I wanted it so much and not even because I disagreed with him on this issue but because my frustration and anger needed a place to go right now. It was supremely unfair to unload any of it on this guy and I knew that. I knew better. "Okay. Fine. I'll try it your way this time."

  He ran his hands along the panel of the door, thumping with his fist every few inches. "This is the spot," he murmured like some kind of deranged door whisperer. "Come on. Let's do this."

  I hooked a glance over my shoulder at him as I closed my hand around the knob. He was right there, his body crowded up against mine. We were close enough that I could pick up the scent of coffee lingering around him. Under normal circumstances, I would've preferred some polite distance from the rude dude I'd just met but I'd been awake and wearing the same clothes for a day and a half, my life was stuffed into the back of a station wagon, and my career died in a grease fire. There were no normal circumstances and there was no other way to do it.

  "I can feel the deadbolt sliding out of the lock," I said. "It's almost there."

  "Hold on," he murmured.

  Before I could ask what and how I was to hold on, Linden rammed his shoulder against the panel, the door swung open, and we stumbled inside.

  He recovered quickly, pushing to his feet and saying, "Like I told you, sometimes these old doors stick."

  Sticky old doors and the beastly men who break them down.

  "I appreciate your efforts," I replied, ignoring his outstretched hand as I gathered myself up and stood. It was the best I could do. I was in too much of a miserable snit to properly thank him for his help.

  "Don't mention it." Then, leaning into the open doorway, he frowned. "Do you hear that?" He set his hands on his hips—which required me to study both—and glanced from side to side. "It sounds like—" He suddenly pushed me to the floor, one hand on the back of my head as a sudden burst of high-pitched squeaks exploded from somewhere inside the cottage. "Bats. Stay down. Stay out of their way and they'll ignore us," he said, his words warm as he spoke them against my ear.

  All at once, the noise was upon us, a long-rumbling roll of thunder punctuated by squeals and slaps. All told, this exodus lasted less than a minute but every second pressed facedown on a dirty porch floor while a swarm—flock? who knew?—of startled bats passed overhead was a series of increasingly ridiculous eternities.

  As for the hot neighbor who didn't know how to mind his own business, he was doing a fine job of shielding me from the bats with that girth and muscle of his. Whether he needed to cup my breast to accomplish this was debatable but he wasn't taking advantage any more than I was with my elbow cozied up between his legs.

  The accidental intimacy wasn't his fault though I was reminded once again I could've managed all of this on my own. That included the bats. Surprising? Yes. Incapacitating? Absolutely not.

  "I think that's the last of them." He unhanded my breast and peeled himself off me. Not even a thank you, ma'am for the groping. "But let's get away from the door in case there are any stragglers."

  I didn't know when this had evolved from an I endeavor to an us, though it bothered me enough to once again ignore the hand he offered to help me up.

  Help was the last thing I wanted from anyone. Help was an unclosed loop and it never failed to cost me more than I could afford.

  Help was off the table but I didn't mind common sense, which was why I marched down the porch, Linden following behind me. My nipples, after the pleasantly rough treatment received, were one step ahead of us.

  "I'll call my bat guy. He'll be able to tell us how they got inside and where they nested," he said when we reached the driveway. Again with the us. "Whether they left any friends or family behind too."

  There was a snicker and I blinked hard at the man beside Linden, the one I hadn't noticed until now. The one who looked strikingly similar to him but also completely different. They had to be brothers.

  "Of course you have a bat guy," he said.

  "Yeah, I have a bat guy," Linden replied. "Just like you probably have a tax fraud guy."

  The other man consulted his watch and bobbed his head. "I have a tax fraud lady but I get where you're going with this." He glanced at me. "Hi. Ash Santillian."

  "Hello." I shook his hand, which was nearly as large as Linden's. They were like copycat versions of each other, one light, one dark, and varying shades of severe. "I'm Jasper-Anne Cleary and I assure you, I wasn't attempting to break into this house."

  "I can see that now," Ash replied with a laugh. It was easy to joke with him. He didn't seem poised to rip a door off its hinges or a tree clear out of the earth for the simple pleasure of proving he could.

  I offered Ash a pleasant smile as Linden strolled inside the cottage, phone pressed to his ear. I didn't recall inviting him to wander around but the recurring theme of this morning seemed to be Linden's general disinterest in such niceties.

  "You both live next door?" I asked.

  "No, no," Ash replied. "My fiancée and I live in Boston."

  From somewhere beneath all of this exhaustion and stress, my social graces switched on. I was nothing if not a robot when it came to chatting people up. "Oh, what do y'all do in Boston?"

  "I'm an accountant and she's in grad school for archaeology." He peered at me for a moment, his eyes narrow as he studied my face. "You've visited before, right? You look so familiar."

  I grinned around a gulp of panic. "Not in a long time," I said. "I just have one of those familiar faces."

  He tapped his cheek near the corner of his mouth, in the exact spot of the thumbprint birthmark on my cheek. "I swear I've seen you before. Do you happen to work in financial services?"

  I couldn't cover up the birthmark without a gallon of stage-grade concealer which meant I needed to adopt a hat-and-sunglasses disguise if I wanted an ounce of anonymity. That was a nightmare, considering my head was all wrong for hats but there was no way in hell I was coloring my hair. I'd just hide it. I'd hide everything. I was appallingly good at it. "No, not in finance," I said. "I don't believe we've met."

  That much was true.

  "What do you do?" he asked, still studying me with far more interest than I needed right now.

  "Mmhmm. Consulting, mostly," I managed. That was somewhat true. "I'm taking a break to see to my aunt's estate."

  This would've been a fine time for another battalion of bats to emerge. Anything to keep Ash from connecting my face to the disasters in my wake.

  "Does that take you on the road a lot?"

  I managed a mild "Mmhmm" as I watched Linden descend the steps. Still couldn't get over him roaming about my property. The boy just didn't require an invitation for anything.

  "The bats are the least of your p
roblems," Linden announced as he joined us.

  "Such a ray of sunshine you are," Ash said.

  They traded brotherly expressions for a moment and the plain authenticity of it almost drew a laugh from me. Almost. Laughing was for people not dead on their feet and thinking up clever disguises to avoid being recognized by anyone with cable news access or an internet connection.

  "Listen," Linden started, "my guess is the bats came down the chimney. They fucked up the living room. It's a disaster in there."

  I waved a hand. "It's fine. I don't need a living room right now. There are plenty of other rooms for me."

  He chuckled. "You can't stay in that house."

  I peered at him, my emotions and exhaustion fighting to get the better of me, and I knew I had to politely end this conversation. Thank you for the help. Thank you for the fondling. I should be getting on about it now. Instead, I folded my arms over my chest and said, "Remind me again why the hell you're still here?"

  3

  Linden

  The lady asked a damn good question. What the hell was I doing here? I could've called up my bat guy and left her to it. I didn't need to supervise. I didn't need to stay. I didn't have to care about any of this.

  It wasn't any deep, lingering loyalty to Midge. She was a nice neighbor, always up in my business, but I didn't owe it to her to look after the niece she'd never once mentioned.

  I didn't have to care. I didn't know why I did.

  It annoyed the hell out of me.

  "All things equal, I'd rather not have your bats looking for a new home next door," I replied. It was a weak response seeing as bats did not behave that way and nocturnal pollinators were pretty much essential for the ecosystem but it was better than grabbing this woman and shaking some sense into her the way I wanted to.

  "Are you going to reach up and pluck them from the sky? Maybe you'll just shout at them until they decide it's not worth the trouble. Is that how it's going to be? Unless that's your plan, I can't see why you need to park yourself in my presence."