Secretive Stranger Read online

  Hillary, usually so quiet, seemed to perk up under the stranger’s attention. “Hi. I’m Hillary Smythe. I’m a doctor, on a research sabbatical at George Washington U. I met your brother almost the first week I moved here. We talked quite often. You must be the brother who’s the ultra brain?”

  Sophie was amazed. Apparently, a terrific-looking man could coax Hillary out of her normally quiet mode.

  “Thanks, both of you,” Cord said to the first two who’d introduced themselves. “I appreciate the chance to meet people who knew Jon. I hope you can find some time to tell me more, sometime over the next few weeks. I have to say, his death was a real shock.”

  He had one of those sexy Josh Groban voices, Sophie realized, so it was perfectly natural that she couldn’t think straight. Any female old enough to walk would be mesmerized by that voice. Again, though, she noticed his attention zoomed past Hillary, and suddenly settled with dazzling concentration on Penelope. “You must be Sophie,” he said to Penelope. “So you’re the one who lived across the hall from my brother-”

  Sophie was startled to hear her name-even more startled to see how fast he’d forgotten Hillary. No man in his right mind forgot Hillary.

  She might be a little quiet, but she was both brilliant and stunning.

  Since Cord had specifically spoken her name, though, she felt an obligation to pipe up, “I’m Sophie. And yes, I live upstairs, across from your brother.”

  Penelope’s jaw dropped. She was clearly astonished to be passed over, and undoubtedly thought the grief-stricken man had made a mistake, because she homed in in front of Cord faster than a GPS. “And I’m Penelope Martin. I was friends with your brother, too. We all live within a few blocks of each other. You know how Foggy Bottom is. Jon and I loved to talk about the political scene after work on Fridays…and a bunch of us would have coffee early mornings at The Beanery, just down the street-”

  Sophie wondered whether Cord needed glasses. Or bifocals. He completely ignored Penelope, too, almost pushing Pen aside to squint down. “You’re Sophie?”

  Sophie could smell an insult from a hundred paces. She just couldn’t figure out what the insult was, exactly. For unknown reasons, he seemed surprised to identify her. Shocked, even.

  Before she had a chance to respond, he echoed, “You’re sure you’re Sophie?”

  As if she wouldn’t know who she was? She cocked a fuzzy-gloved hand under her chin. “Oh, yeah, I’m reasonably sure. And now I can see the family resemblance between you and Jon.”

  Now he got the insulted look. Even though he couldn’t possibly know what the insult was, exactly.

  Close up, Sophie’s hormones not only perked up, but suddenly stood at military attention. He didn’t just look like Jon. He was about a thousand, million times sexier than Jon. On a scale of one to ten, he scored somewhere around four hundred.

  My God, those eyes.

  That mouth.

  That butt.

  Not that his sexiness was relevant to anything.

  But at least, for the first time in days, she wasn’t thinking about dead, naked bodies.

  Chapter 3

  Cord stomped up the stairs behind that tight little butt, well aware he’d completely failed to charm Ms. Sophie Campbell, but hell, he was expecting a looker. A brunette, buxom looker, definitely not a blond, much less a flyaway blond with stick-up cowlicks, an oversize jacket and fresh pink cheeks like a country girl.

  Cord kept wanting to shake his head. Obviously, a player came in all sizes and shapes. Honest eyes and baby-soft skin were no measure of character.

  It was just really, really challenging to imagine his brother with Sophie-not just as a blackmailing cohort, but as a sexual interest. Particularly when the whole neighborhood seemed crammed with exceptionally attractive brunettes who were everything Jon ever panted after.

  “Mr. Pruitt…Cord…you might have heard me say I loved Caviar.”

  Yeah, he’d heard a bunch of the women’s chitchat. Initially he hadn’t even seen Sophie, because she was hidden on the stair steps. But he’d heard the other woman identify her, and directly heard that butter-soft voice talking about loving caviar and tomcats and how she preferred her bodies “rich and soft.”

  Cord wasn’t passing judgments. He was just hearing exactly what he expected from one of his brother’s sex partners-a shallow, all-about-me personality, with liquid morals. It wasn’t just his opinion, for Pete’s sake. Those were the same personality flaws that made the cops, private and public, believe Sophie was part of his brother’s blackmail schemes…and was likely directly involved in Jon’s murder.

  Only, now that he’d seen her, he couldn’t believe it. The soft blue eyes showed no sign of guile. The outfit was as attractive as a potato sack. She dropped one of her multicolored mittens on the fifth step-they looked like something a kid would wear.

  He picked it up. The second mitten slipped out of her jacket pocket somewhere around the tenth step. He picked that up, too.

  Then she dropped a book.

  Then her scarf pooled on the floor when she rummaged at the top of the stairs for her apartment key.

  Cord thought her performance was Academy Award winning. Who would ever guess that she was a mercenary, manipulative bitch? Anyone would be fooled into thinking she was an absentminded, sweet soul without a greedy bone in her entire body.

  “Cord.” She repeated his name again, and then took a big, brave breath-as if he were falling for this act.

  “I realize you have a right to your brother’s things. Totally. But I honestly don’t think it’s a fair thing to do, to take Caviar. It’s not about ownership. It’s about love. I spent more time with him than Jon ever did. So I’m just asking if you’d consider letting me keep him. Or at least, if you’d give me a chance to show how happy he is with me.”

  “Huh?”

  She opened her door about the same time Cord unlocked his brother’s. Light flowed from windows in both flats. His brother’s place-Cord only glanced for a millisecond-looked like a gadget-lover’s techno paradise.

  Hers looked like a fire sale for ruffles.

  She peered up at him, waving a hand. “Are you awake?”

  He didn’t bat her hand away, but he was as annoyed as…well, as if she were a pesky little sister. “Of course I’m awake. I just didn’t understand your question.”

  “The cat…This cat…is Caviar.”

  “Caviar,” he echoed, as the lightbulb finally dawned. She’d been referring not to the expensive salty stuff you put on crackers, but to a cat.

  And not just any cat. The scrawny, skinny, ugly, huge-boned feline hurled toward Sophie the instant she unlocked the door. It was a motley blend of black and white and orange, all run together like spilled paint. It wound around Sophie’s legs like a fuzzy snake, purring louder than thunder.

  Sophie crouched down to pet it, dropping everything in her wake-purse, mittens, hat, book and all. Even the first stroke made the cat’s purr rise another decibel level.

  “Your brother, as I’m sure you know, was no animal lover. Caviar just showed up one day and refused to leave. Jon opened the door and the cat just shot in and hid, couldn’t be found. Jon fed it, but every time he tried to put the cat outside, Caviar would find another hiding place, until Jon finally gave up. Anyway, whenever Jon was going to be gone overnight-which was a lot of nights-he’d put a note on my door so I’d feed Caviar. Or take him in with me.”

  This thrilling story almost put Cord to sleep. He had stuff to do. All of it unsettling, none of it pleasant. And yeah, he hadn’t forgotten the cops wanted him to grill Sophie. In his life, he’d done plenty of tough things, but so far, that never included kicking a puppy.

  She seemed to think he was hesitating because he wanted the cat himself. “Look,” she said. “Just come in for a minute. Have a cup of coffee or tea. You’ll see what Caviar is like, how he is with me. And maybe I can help you with some of your brother’s things. I don’t know what you might need, but…”

/>   Hell. Maybe he’d misjudged the puppy thing. The cops had sure led him to expect she’d offer some way to get into Jon’s stuff. And like it or not, Cord couldn’t see how he could turn down the chance to find out more information.

  He took a step inside her place, wary as a fox in coyote territory.

  Besides the ruffles all over the curtains and pillows and all, she seemed to decorate in old furniture and messes. A hanging birdcage held a giant fern. Open magazines and books blanketed a coffee table, and the floor, and a chair or two. A window seat had been covered with somewhere around thirty pillows. The couch looked saggy, the kind of couch that swallowed up a body and never let it out again. The wallpaper was flowers, the couch cover was flowers and the jammed bookcases, spilling over with books, had vases of flowers on top of them.

  Cord felt momentarily light-headed. It was close to a toxic dose of estrogen. Two martinis on an empty stomach didn’t pack this much of a wallop.

  “Cream or sugar in your coffee?” She showed up in the far doorway.

  “Just black. But you don’t have to…”

  She disappeared before he’d finished refusing the coffee. Cord reminded himself that he was a proven tough guy, a Marine with honors, an athlete who’d come damn close to an Olympic win, a man who’d survived some impossible challenges in his overseas project years. But he was afraid to take off his coat.

  She was one scary cookie.

  He wound his way around the clutter slowly, and then parked in the kitchen doorway. It wasn’t much of a kitchen. Typical of an old house, the woodwork had been painted a hundred times. The walls were sun-yellow, plants stealing what little counter space she had, and the appliances dated back to the dark ages. A computer and books and heaps of paper covered the entire surface of the kitchen table, so it was a cinch she didn’t try eating there.

  “I take it this is your desk.”

  “Yeah, no choice, there is no other place. Now, I know this looks bad. It’s not like I want cat hair near the food.” She motioned with her head toward the cat, who was perched on the counter like a god overlooking his realm. Sophie handed Cord a mug, took one for herself. “Caviar was always a little like your brother. He’s so good, if you just let him do what he wants. And it’s not as if there’s a point in arguing with him, because he’s not going to listen to you anyway.”

  “You knew my brother pretty well.”

  “In certain ways, yes.” There was something in her voice. A message, but he couldn’t read it.

  She led him back to the living room, shunted papers and magazines aside to give him a seat. The cat followed them in, perched on the high edge of the sofa, clearly determined to chaperone the pair.

  Although, how the word chaperone popped into Cord’s mind, he had no idea.

  “You work at home?” he asked her.

  “I’ve worked in Italy, Peacock, Georgia, the Isle of Man, Luray, Virginia…and I’d probably work in a ditch, if that’s where Open World sent me-that’s the name of the company I work for. Right now, I’m doing a long-term translating project, and I should be in Foggy Bottom for over a year. Although I hope they find more projects here after that, because I’d like to settle down. The traveling’s fun, seeing new places, experiencing new cultures, but I’m just really sick of renting. I’d like to have a home base.”

  She’d spilled more information than he’d asked-times ten. A chatterbox would hardly seem a common character trait in a woman who had a ton to hide. Cord found himself intrigued. Not that he was about to tell her about his State Department or service background, but he was definitely startled to hear more about her background. Who’d guess they had any similarities? “So, what’s the long-term translating project you’re working on?”

  “It’s really pretty fascinating. I’m interviewing women who survived WWII. European women who lived in countries directly affected by Hitler’s domination back then. Eventually, all the stories will come together into an intensive research project. Anyway, ‘my’ ladies are a Russian, a German woman, and my first was a Danish lady. I just finished her story. It was fascinating. She was only nine when the U.S. joined the war. She remembers her dad, a sailor, fishing our American pilots out of the sea, night after night. Everyone hid the American soldiers-in fruit cellars, under beds, wherever they could. She remembers…” Sophie suddenly laughed. “I know, I know, I can go on all night. I can’t help it. I love my job. But you don’t want to hear all this.”

  Confounding him completely was that he did. Want to hear more. Maybe her ditsiness was contagious. “It sounds interesting,” he said stiffly, “but actually, right now-”

  She finished his sentence for him. “You have much more serious things on your mind.” She’d just perched on a chair arm and now bounced up again. “I almost forgot. I’ve got piles of your brother’s mail for you. I don’t know what the authorities did with Jon’s mail when they were investigating. But once they stopped coming…well, the box got overstuffed almost right away, and I had the key to Jon’s box, so I just started bringing it in. I’d done it for him before. I knew someone would come sooner or later about the apartment, all his things.” She hesitated. “You’re going to need some help.”

  “You sound sure of that.”

  Whatever she answered, Cord missed. He wasn’t used to feeling thrown off balance, but she was sure as hell doing it to him. Nothing about her was what he’d been led to expect-particularly once he saw her moving around with her jacket off.

  She was still wearing clothes that would work on a nun’s runway. Baggy blue sweater, hanging way past her hips. Skinny jeans. Sloppy socks. Her blond hair was clipped out of the way, wisping all over the place. But…when she walked, when she moved, he could see there were no extra pounds under the sweater.

  She had a slim waist. Serious breasts-not huge, not blatant, but she couldn’t totally conceal a downright arresting figure, even under those clothes. The legs weren’t long-she was shorter than a shrimp-but the proportions were right. And maybe she wasn’t into face paint and all, but her skin was irresistibly soft, her mouth as kissable as any he’d ever seen, her eyes expressive and gorgeous-at least until she smashed a pair of black-rimmed glasses on her nose.

  She wasn’t Jon’s type of woman, for damn sure. There was no shine, no dazzle, no trimmings on the surface. She clearly wasn’t remotely embarrassed about her cluttered place, nor was she running around to fix her hair or smack on lipstick.

  She just seemed…real.

  Cord wished he could shake off the foggy confusion in his head. He hadn’t thought of Zoe in over a year, but now he did-because she was such an elegant example of his poor judgment of women. He’d thought she was the real thing once upon a time, too.

  He knew better than to trust anyone too fast-much less to trust his own instincts.

  “Cord?” Sophie had clearly been trying to snare his attention for a good minute or two.

  “I’m sorry. I was thinking about my brother.”

  “Of course you were.” Her eyes softened in sympathy. “I’ll quit babbling, just give you the box of mail. And you can tell me what you decide about Caviar, whenever you get around to it. Right now I assume you’re going across the hall to Jon’s-”

  “Yes.”

  “So bang on the door if you need anything.”

  Sophie started humming the minute she closed the door. That had gone well, she thought.

  For a few moments there, Cord had made her feel uneasy. He just seemed to, well, look at her. Really look. As if he were interested. As if he saw something beyond the black-framed glasses and sisterly smiles and ordinary person.

  She retrieved her coffee and plunked herself down at the kitchen table, determined to get an hour or two of translating work done. Naturally, Caviar immediately leaped onto the tabletop and sank, purring, on top of the files she was trying to read. She stroked him absently, musing that probably her restlessness around Cord had an entirely different reason.

  Cord was a hunk. Naturally, he’
d made her blood spin a little. He had that all-guy walk, the biceps, the crooked smile. He was way beyond adorable. He was sharp, smart, dangerous-looking.

  As worrisome as that observation should have been, she yawned as she batted Caviar’s paw from the computer screen. Her avatar shot up with the familiar adage: “There’s no such thing as being too safe.”

  Her sisters claimed it was her mantra, which was true. It wasn’t that she didn’t like men. One of the reasons the traveling in her job had started to nag was that she really wanted a chance to find a guy, settle down, have some kids. But she wanted a man like…well, like her dad. Too many men out there today were all about themselves, treating sex with the casualness of an after-dinner brandy.

  She grabbed a pen, scooched Caviar another inch off the papers and heard the phone ring. She picked it up.

  No one there, just a hangup.

  She settled back down for a solid twenty minutes, when the landline rang again. Again she picked it up.

  Again, there was no one on the other side.

  Abruptly she stood up, rubbed her hands down her thighs. Not that she spooked easily…but she spooked easily. She had from the time of her parents’ death, but her next-door neighbor’s death had certainly brought her nerves out of storage. No matter how certain the police were that Jon’s death was an accident, Sophie still felt something more had happened.

  As if to punctuate her edginess, she jumped when she heard the sudden rap on her front door.

  Cord stood on the other side. “I’m sorry to bother you, but…” Caviar shot between her legs, through his and into the open door of Jon’s apartment. Cord stared after the loose feline, then back at her, frowning at her expression. “What’s wrong? I mean, besides the cat.”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re white as a sheet.”

  “Too much rain. Not enough sun.” It was a dumb thing to say, but abruptly she realized her heart had picked up a new, exuberant pounding-not from fear this time. It was from being inches too close to Cord. That problem, thankfully, was readily fixable. “I’ll chase after Caviar. The thing is, he’s used to being able to shoot back and forth between the two apartments-Oh.” Midflight, she stopped abruptly. “I forgot to ask why you knocked on the door. What do you need?”