Jake took an unconscious step backward, uncertain if her fragile hold on this sudden happiness would take. “Well . . . okay, then. I’ll be back in a few.”
She startled him by suddenly coming to her feet and moving toward him. “I lost my wallet. I don’t have any cash—”
“Hey, it’s on me,” he said, quickening his step so that he might reach the door before she reached him, flinging his tool belt onto the counter without breaking stride.
“Thank you,” she said sweetly. “You’re a lifesaver.”
God, he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He stepped through the door and walked briskly down the path to his bike.
“Mr. Manning?”
Jake risked a look over his shoulder.
She was standing in the doorway, her head poked out around the jamb to look at him. “Colombian, instead of French. I mean, if they have it. If they ask you, you could just say, Columbian.”
“Ah . . . sure.”
“And maybe a double mocha?”
Was that a 7-Eleven brand? Seeing as how his drink of choice was Mountain Dew, he rarely paid attention to the coffee bar in those stores, but he nodded all the same.
Robin Lear took a step outside.
Jake frantically shoved his hand into his pocket and tried to grab his keys at the same time he straddled his bike.
“Honestly? A skinny decaffeinated Colombian double mocha latte steamed and with nutmeg instead of chocolate would be great.” She smiled.
Was this chick for real? “Just one question,” Jake said. “Want me to handpick the beans, or can we just leave that to Juan Valdez and the donkey?” Before she could answer, Jake quickly revved his bike loud and long and took off so he couldn’t hear even a single word from that woman’s lips.
Double mocha was not a 7-Eleven coffee. When he paid for his soda, the clerk looked at him like he was an idiot and pointed him toward Java the Hut, “a couple of blocks” down.
Only a couple of blocks turned out to be several. By the time Jake found Java the Hut, he had forgotten the coffee instructions. “Colombian double chocolate,” he said.
“Dude!” the guy at the register exclaimed as he scratched around the earring in his nose. “Colombian double chocolate what?”
“Whatever you got. With nutmeg,” he said, proud that he’d remembered that, anyway. When he emerged at least a quarter of an hour later (the double chocolates had to wait behind everyone else, apparently) with his extra-wide whatever wrapped securely in a heat-containing cardboard sleeve, he was acutely conscious of how much additional time he’d lost in the course of being a good guy. He arrived in something of a huff at the house on North Boulevard a full forty minutes after he had walked out the door, no thanks to Miss Double Trouble Mocha, and paused now to listen for any signs of out-and-out insanity. Hearing none, he rapped lightly on the door.
No answer.
Jake knocked again for good measure, and when she didn’t answer, opened the door and cautiously peeked inside. It appeared empty.
Very carefully, he stepped inside, looked around. Maybe she’d left. Well, hell, she might have at least left a note since he’d gone to so much trouble to get her a hot chocolate thing. With a sigh of exasperation, he walked through the kitchen to the dining table and set the coffee down.
That was when he noticed his doughnuts were missing. Not missing, as in disappeared, but missing as in eaten. There was only one of the five plain glazed doughnuts he had brought for his midmorning snack and a few glazed crumbs.
He was still trying to absorb how a woman as svelte as Robin Lear could consume so many doughnuts—without even asking, for Pete’s sake—when he heard a noise that sounded remarkably like a snore. Jake looked down the hall, toward the bedroom, the only other furnished room in the house.
There it was again.
He walked quietly down the corridor, cautiously approaching the open bedroom door, and as he neared it, he could hear the sound of someone in the throes of a very deep sleep. He paused at one side of the open door, his back to the wall (just in case), then leaned over slowly and peeked inside.
Robin Lear was lying, facedown, atop the brocade coverlet on her bed, her arms flung wide. Her feet hung off the end and her hair was a mess of wet curls. But even more startling, she wore—and Jake had to look carefully to make sure he wasn’t seeing things—red pajamas covered in dozens of Curious George heads. Yep, that was Curious George, all right. But just his head(s).