No Ordinary Man. Suzanne Brockmann

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СКАЧАТЬ and punched the off button on the phone. She turned back to Rob. “Sorry about that.”

      “It’s okay,” he said in his quiet, accentless voice.

      “You’re hardly making any noise at all,” she told him. “I heard you pull into the driveway while I was on the phone and I meant to come out and ask if you needed any help. Can I give you a hand with the rest of your things?”

      “No, that’s all right.” Rob looked over the railing at his car in the driveway below. “I don’t have that much stuff, and I’m almost done. There’re just another couple of boxes.”

      “I can help you with them.”

      Rob shook his head. “No, really. They’re both too heavy. They’re my free weights. I didn’t pack ’em real well—I just threw all the plates into a couple of crates.”

      Free weights. Rob lifted weights. Funny, she would have never known. If he had a weight lifter’s physique, it was hidden underneath his loose-fitting shirt. At first glance he looked so much like a computer nerd, barely capable of lifting a too heavy briefcase, yet here he was, bringing weight-lifting equipment into her apartment.

      Her apartment? His apartment now. He’d signed a six-month lease just this afternoon. For the next six months, Rob Carpenter was going to be her closest neighbor.

      As she gazed up into his eyes, Jess felt again that spark of awareness, that whisper of heat.

      But he turned away. “Well…I’ll, um, get the rest of my, uh…”

      “I’ll get some iced tea,” Jess offered, heading for the door to her kitchen. “You look like you could use something cool to drink.”

      “That would be nice,” Rob said, stopping at the top of the stairs and looking back at her, smiling very slightly. “Thanks.”

      He moved silently down the stairs as Jess pulled open her screen door.

      Doris was right about at least one thing. Rob did make Jess’s heart beat harder. Just one little smile, and her pulse was pounding.

      She got another glass from the cabinet and pulled the ice cube tray from the freezer. She added several fresh cubes to her own glass, still sitting out on the counter, as Rob moved quietly past the door, carrying a large, heavy-looking box filled with free weights. The box looked awkward and unwieldy, yet he carried it easily, as if it weighed almost nothing.

      He moved silently past the door again, heading back toward the stairs as Jess took the iced tea pitcher from the refrigerator and filled both glasses.

      What did she know about this man?

      Jess knew that Rob worked as a software consultant for some local computer company—she couldn’t remember the name—and that he traveled rather extensively throughout Florida and the southeast, sometimes taking as many as eight or nine business trips in a single month.

      She knew that he had moved to Sarasota from up north—which city or state, Jess couldn’t say. She didn’t think he’d ever mentioned it.

      She knew he had nice eyes, that he was polite and quiet, maybe even shy.

      And that he drove a staid, dark gray Taurus sedan.

      He liked to listen to folk music, and he’d attended nearly all of her gigs. He’d come when she played her guitar and sang at local clubs, often bringing along one of the guys from his office—a friendly man named Frank—but never showing up with a date.

      She knew Rob liked the food at the China Boat, the small restaurant three blocks south. She’d seen him carrying bags of takeout as she’d driven past, after picking up her daughter from Doris’s after school day care. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean he liked the China Boat’s food. Maybe it simply meant that he didn’t like to cook.

      They’d really only spoken a few times. Unlike his friend Frank who was very chatty, Rob never stuck around her gigs long enough to talk, as if he were somehow afraid to impose.

      That wasn’t a lot to go on, but it didn’t take much imagination to picture Rob Carpenter fitting easily into Jess’s life. Her life and Kelsey’s. Her six-year-old daughter actually knew Rob better than Jess did. Kelsey’s best friend lived next door to the house Rob had been renting. Kelsey had told Jess that Rob had often come into her friend’s yard to play baseball with the two children and her friend’s dad. Rob apparently had a natural way with kids. Kelsey—who was usually so reserved around men, thanks to Ian—adored Rob. He’d given both children nick-names—her friend was Beetle and Kelsey was Bug.

      Sure, Doris was right. Jess didn’t know much about Rob’s past. But Kelsey liked him, and that was worth quite a bit in Jess’s book.

      As Jess put the iced tea pitcher back in the refrigerator, Rob moved past the door again, carrying his last box. Moments later, he tapped softly at the screen.

      “Come on in,” she said.

      He opened the screen door quickly and came into the kitchen without bringing in any of the bugs that were circling the light—not an easy feat. He carried in her evening newspaper. With a quick smile, he handed it to her.

      “I was wondering which side of the driveway you wanted me to leave my car on,” he said. “Or if you’d prefer that I parked on the street.”

      “The driveway’s fine,” Jess said, putting the paper down on the kitchen counter and handing him one of the glasses of iced tea. “Just don’t block the garage in case I have to get out before you leave in the morning. And if you ever have anyone stay overnight, any…” She was about to say girlfriends, but she paused, suddenly uncertain. What if he was gay? He couldn’t be, could he? No, from the way he always looked at her, she had to believe that he wasn’t. Still… “Any friends,” she continued, “Just have…them…park on the street.”

      Rob noticed her carefully genderless sentence, and he fought hard to keep his reaction from showing. Jess actually thought that he might be gay. He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or feel insulted. Or feel relieved.

      Because here he was, standing in Jess Baxter’s kitchen. She was not more than six feet away from him, dressed in a short-cropped T-shirt that didn’t quite meet the waistband of her cutoff jeans. Although she wasn’t very tall, her legs were long and slender, and standing there like that in her bare feet, with a narrow strip of smooth, tanned stomach showing between her shorts and her shirt, she looked like something out of a beach boy’s fantasy.

      Her short dark hair curled softly around her heart-shaped face, and her eyes had to be the darkest shade of brown he’d ever seen in his entire life.

      The first time Rob had seen her, when he’d first moved to Sarasota, to this neighborhood, he’d known that she was someone he should stay far, far away from. When he’d first spotted her with Kelsey, he’d fervently hoped that she was happily married. He prayed that she had someone that she loved, someone who adored her, someone who would protect her.

      Naturally, she was divorced, a single mom. She wasn’t seeing anyone, wasn’t even dating. His bad luck just never seemed to quit.

      Still, he’d kept his distance. But he couldn’t keep from watching her. He noticed her when she played in her yard with Kelsey. He watched her when she worked in her garden. He spied her when СКАЧАТЬ