Million Dollar Dilemma. Judy Baer

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      CHAPTER 2

      Grocery stores are the most amazing things, like Disneyland for the hungry and fresh-food deprived. In Simms an apple, banana or orange is exotic, but here…

      I felt my control slipping in the fresh produce section and didn’t pull myself together until dairy loomed ahead. Even there I felt a tingle over the choices—milk for the lactose intolerant, for the dairy intolerant…next there’d be milk for the simply intolerant.

      “Are you a vegan?” the clerk asked, eyeing my kiwi, Asian pears, jicama, pomelos, tangelos, mangoes, plantains, bread fruit and pomegranates.

      “No, I’m Swedish. People get us mixed up with the Norwegians all the time.”

      Jane says I have a twisted sense of humor. Maybe she’s right.

      I’m also a flower lover, but when one of the fronds of greenery from the mish mash of flowers I purchased tickled my nose, I realized that a dreaded carnation was stowed away in a perfectly nice bunch of tulips, daisies and one strangely exotic bird-of-paradise I couldn’t resist.

      I don’t like carnations. They remind me of the leftover funeral flowers my frugal grandfather had me rearrange for church on Sunday mornings. No matter how artfully I did it or how many funereal bows I discarded, everyone in the congregation knew exactly where they’d come from.

      As I neared my Nicollet Avenue apartment I saw that a crowd had gathered on the sidewalk near the front door of my building to watch a tall, dark-haired man carry suitcases and crates into the vestibule. Several bystanders were gathered around a single case, eyeing it with looks of either trepidation or serious indigestion.

      Curious, I picked up my pace, telling myself that I needed to get the flowers into water and walk Winslow before he had an accident on the ugly patch of brown shag rug in the foyer that really should have been destroyed decades ago.

      “Excuse me, coming through…excuse me, please, I live here. If you don’t mind…” I wormed my way through the crowd of spectators apologizing for batting gawkers with my bouquet and obscenely heavy bag of lumpy fruit. I was almost to the door when a growl made the hair rise on the back of my neck.

      The sound smoldered out of the crate and circled the crowd like a ring of smoke. Everyone took a single step backward in unison, as though the fiend inside the cage were about to escape. Low and guttural, it was an undomesticated, dangerously feral sound. And too untamed to be coming from an enclosure that was about to be carried into my apartment building! I’ve always wondered what could make one’s blood run cold. Well, that sound wrapped a definite chill around my arteries.

      Instead of following my impulse to run, I pushed forward, my maternal instincts pumping. “Please, I have to get through!” Winslow, my baby, was inside that building.

      Feisty as only a redhead can be, I stepped into the center of the circle of people and came toe-to-toe with the dark-haired man, who was wearing a battered leather jacket, perfectly pressed jeans and chamois shirt so soft and pale it looked like fresh butter. Like a pricked balloon, my temper leaked away and jelly settled in my knees. From Attila the Hun to Gumby, just like that.

      “Oh, hello,” I said stupidly, all rational thought gone. The man was Indiana Jones incarnate. Younger, of course, and without that charming little cut in his chin, but a heartthrob-with-a-death-wish-type adventurer, nonetheless. And he did have a scar over his left eyebrow that was mesmerizing in its own way.

      He glanced up as if a mosquito had landed on his cheek, and I was afraid he was going to brush me away. Instead, his faintly stubbled jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed appraisingly.

      As he looked me over from head to toe I felt a weird internal meltdown. This had to be the most beautiful —and intimidating—man I’d ever seen. It was the eyes, I thought. Dark and searing, sorrowful and soul-searching all at once, they snagged on mine for the briefest moment as he bent to pick up the large gray travel crate punctured liberally with airholes.

      Then, through the fissures came a bloodcurdling, unearthly yowl that had the same effect on me as chewing aluminum foil on metal-filled molars.

      “What is that?” I started as the crate quivered and shook. It appeared an eruption was imminent.

      “‘That’ is my cat.”

      Crazed fiend from the bowels of the earth, you mean.

      “Now excuse me, but he’s anxious to be home. If you’ll—” a guttural squall and a brown-and-black paw punching its way through an airhole in the crate punctuated his words “—let me by…” An airborne catnip mouse came shooting out of one of the larger holes in the crate and, without considering what I was doing, I picked it up.

      This is his home? That…thing…actually lives here? My shoulders sagged in dismay.

      Just then Winslow started woofing happily. I could see the top of his moplike head framed in the window of my apartment. Gentle, mild mannered, loving and easily intimidated, Winslow had never met a cat he didn’t like. I had a hunch that was about to change dramatically.

      “Oh, rats,” I muttered, but quickly changed my mind. There’d be no rats within a ten-block radius once this…thing…was on the prowl.

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