Janet Evanovich - Smitten

Well, what the heck, Lizabeth thought, this was a new age for women. There was no reason in the world why she had to wait for yellow-belly here to kiss her. There was nothing written in stone that said he had to be the aggressor. She took a deep breath, grabbed him by the shirt front, pulled him to her, and planted a kiss on his perfect lips.

There was no response. Matt Hallahan stood like a wooden Indian with his arms at his sides, his lips slightly parted-in shock, rather than passion-his eyes open wide. Lizabeth checked him to make sure he wasn't hyperventilating and kissed him again. The first kiss had been sheer bravado. The second was much more indulgent. Lizabeth took her time on the second kiss. She slid her hands up the front of his shirt, enjoying the feel of hard muscle, until the tips of her fingers tangled in his blond hair and her thumbs brushed along the lobes of his ears. She kissed him lightly, tentatively. She parted her lips and kissed him again with more insistence.

Matt's reaction was guarded. There were at least twenty men wandering around on the job site with easy access to the colonial. Howie was downstairs, installing a chair rail in the dining room, and Zito was hanging cabinets in the kitchen. Men's bodies weren't designed to conceal emotion, Matt acknowledged. Any second now he was going to do his Hulk imitation-the part where the Hulk's body swells up so big it rips right out of its clothes. This didn't seem like a good time for that to happen, so he placed his hands on Lizabeth's waist and gently pushed her away. "This is a little embarrassing…"

Lizabeth snapped her eyes open, made a small, strangled sound in her throat, and smoothed her moist hands on the front of her jeans. Don't panic, she told herself. You just threw yourself at a man who obviously didn't want to catch you. It's not the end of the world. You read the signs wrong. No big deal. In twenty or thirty years, you'll get over it. "Well, I guess that didn't work out, huh? It's okay; I mean, I can handle rejection."

"You think I rejected you?"

"I'm sort of new at this. I don't date much. In fact, I don't date at all. And the problem is I want to be a fairy…"

He pulled her to him with enough force to make her breath catch in her throat, and before she could recover, his mouth claimed hers in a kiss that left no doubt about the extent of his desire. Raw passion, hot and hard, arrowed into her as his tongue swept hers and his hands crushed her against him.

He broke from the kiss and held her at arm's length, taking a moment to let his pulse rate slow. "Would you like me to spell it out?"

"Nope. Not necessary. I think I've got it put together." She licked lips that felt scorched and swollen. "Maybe it would be a good idea to talk about this later… when my ears stop ringing."

Billy and Jason Kane had their noses pressed to the living room window when Elsie pulled up in her powder-blue '57 Cadillac.

"Holy cow," Jason said, "did you ever see a car like that? It's bigger than our garage. It's awesome."

Billy rolled his eyes back in his head. "Man, this is gonna be embarrassing."

Elsie parked in the driveway and shook her head at the house. Lizabeth was her favorite niece. She was bright and honest and tenderhearted to a fault. She was not especially practical, though. As a little girl she'd never allowed reality to get in the way of her imagination. And from the looks of her house, she hadn't changed much. The gray paint was peeling down to bare wood, and shutters hung at odd angles. One had fallen off completely and lay on the ground. Elsie looked up to the eaves, half expecting to see bats roosting. While she was studying the eaves, a squirrel jumped from a three-story oak tree onto the shake roof. Several pieces of the roof broke loose and came skittering down, crashing onto the ground. The squirrel slid along with the rotted cedar shakes until it reached the galvanized gutter, where it clung for dear life. The gutter broke loose from its moorings and swung free at one end, hurtling the squirrel into space for about twenty feet before it safely landed in an overgrown lilac bush. "Next time stay off of the roof," Elsie shouted at the squirrel. "Damn pea-brained rodent." She wrestled two huge suitcases out of the Caddy's backseat and headed for the front door.

"This is probably how you feel when you're in the water and you see Jaws coming," Jason said.

Billy opened the door and Elsie staggered in with the suitcases.

"Just because I'm having a time with these suitcases, don't for a minute think I'm some weak old lady," Elsie said.

Billy shook his head vigorously. "No ma'am. I didn't think that."

"And don't think I'm boring, either. I ever tell you about the time I caught a dope dealer practically single-handedly? Smacked right into him with that big old Cadillac. That was before I was married to Gus." She gave the living room a cursory glance and moved into the kitchen. "Too bad you kids never got to meet Gus. We were only married for two months when he had a heart attack." She opened the refrigerator and took stock. "You kids have lunch yet?"

"No," Jason said. "And I'm allergic to liver. It makes me throw up."

"Yeah," Elsie said, "I know what you mean. I was thinking more in the way of ice cream. How about we have ice cream for lunch." She set a half-gallon of chocolate ice cream on the table and found three spoons. "So what do you guys do for fun around here? You ever play bingo?"

Lizabeth watched Matt wipe the paint from the rim of the half-filled can and thump the lid secure with a hammer. She'd graduated magna cum laude from Amherst, but at the advanced age of thirty-two she didn't know the proper way to close up a can of paint. It was embarrassing. She hated being a helpless female.

Matt slid the can into a corner and turned to Lizabeth. "Now you know just about everything there is to know about painting."

She shook her head. "I don't know how to paint with a roller. After I learn how to use a roller I'm going to paint my living room."

"You don't need to learn how to paint with a roller. You go to a hardware store, and they'll give you a starter kit. It's easy." He saw the doubt on her face. "Didn't you ever help your husband paint?"

Lizabeth almost burst out laughing at the thought of Paul Kane with a paintbrush in his hand. "My husband never painted. He hired people to paint."

"How about your dad? Didn't he ever paint anything?"

"My father is Malcolm Slye. If you were from Virginia you'd know that name. He's a third-generation tobacco baron, and he was smart enough to diversify. He works very hard, but he doesn't paint."

"That's a shame," Matt said. "There's a lot of satisfaction to painting. One minute you've got a dirty, dreary wall and the next thing you know it's fresh and clean. Instant gratification." He unplugged the coffeepot and shut the basement lights off. "So you were the poor little rich girl, huh?"

"No. I was the rich little rich girl. I had a terrific childhood. I just never learned to paint."

"Uh-huh. What happened to Mister Wonderful, the guy who hired painters."

"You mean my ex-husband?" Her eyes narrowed slightly and the line of her mouth tightened. "It turned out we had different expectations about marriage. Paul expected me to close my eyes to constant indiscretions, and I expected him to be faithful to me."

"I'm sorry."

Lizabeth waved it away. "Actually, I could have lived with that. What finally drove me out of the marriage was when he insisted that the boys go to boarding school. Paul had political ambitions. He wanted me to be a perfect hostess. He found the children to be a burden."

"I don't think I like this guy."

"He was very charming," Lizabeth said. "But he was a jerk."

Matt studied her. She was okay. Really okay. She had strength. He grabbed her hand and led her up the stairs. "C'mon, I'm going to give you a ride home. And if you want I'll take a look at your house."

"I should warn you about my Aunt Elsie first," Lizabeth said. "Aunt Elsie is from my mother's side of the family. She's a little outspoken."

"I can handle it. I'm pretty brave when it comes to old ladies."

"You've never met an old lady like Aunt Elsie."

Matt could hear the affection in her voice. "She must be something special."

"She's… unique."

Ten minutes later they drove down Gainsborough and Matt parked his 4x4 Ford pickup in front of Lizabeth's house. The yard was tidy, and someone had planted clusters of flowers along the front porch, but the house itself was even worse than he'd remembered. His attention was distracted by the car in the driveway. "My God, what is that?"

"That's Elsie's car. If you see her on the road give her a wide berth. She didn't learn to drive until last year, and she doesn't have it perfected yet."

A small gray cat sat on the porch watching their approach.

"This is Bob the Cat. He adopted us about a week ago." She reached down and scratched the kitten's neck. The front door opened and two small boys tumbled out.

"Mom! We've had the most awesome day," Jason said. "Aunt Elsie's here. She took us for a ride in her car. It gets six miles to a gallon of gas. It's radical."

Billy was radiant. "She ran over the summer-school crossing guard's hat and got a ticket. And then she clipped a parking meter downtown. The meter had a big dent in it, but nothing happened to her car. Mom, that car is like a tank!"

"I heard that," Elsie said. "It wasn't my fault I ran over that policewoman's hat. She practically * threw it in the middle of the road, right in front of my car."

"Yeah," Billy said, "she got real flustered when she saw us barreling down on her in the Cadillac. She tried to jump out of the way and her hat flew off."

Lizabeth winced. "Elsie, you weren't speeding with the boys in the car, were you?"

"I don't think so, but sometimes my foot sticks on the floor mat…"

Billy rolled his eyes. "She wasn't speeding. She was barely moving. We never went over twenty-five. It was that she was driving down the middle of the road."

"It's that dang big car," Elsie said. "It don't fit in one lane. When I get some money I'm going to get myself one of them nice little Japanese cars." She noticed Matt standing to one side of the family group. "Who's this?"

"This is my boss, Matt Hallahan," Lizabeth said. "He's come over to take a look at the house for me. Matt, this is my aunt, Elsie Hawkins."

Elsie Hawkins had tightly curled steel-gray hair, sharp blue eyes, and an uncompromising mouth. She was dressed in support hose, tennis shoes, and a tailored blue shirtwaist dress that came to just below her knees. Matt thought she looked like she could wrestle alligators and win. Lizabeth affectionately ruffled Jason's hair. "And these are my sons, Jason and Billy."

Both boys had brown hair that had recently been cut. They were dressed in shorts and polo shirts and had skinned knees and quick smiles.

"Wow, he's got a tattoo," Jason said. "Neat!"

Elsie looked at the tattoo. "What's that funny writing on it?"

Matt felt his cheeks flush. He had mixed feelings about his tattoo. "It's Chinese. I joined the Navy right out of high school. We made a port call in Taiwan, and I got drunk and ended up with this tattoo."

"Pretty fancy," Elsie said. "What do those Chinese squiggles mean?"

"Uh…" He shifted from one foot to the other. "It's sort of a rhyme. It has to do with… sexual relations with a duck."

Elsie clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from giggling. "That's terrible," she said.

"I know what it is!" Jason said. "I heard it on cable television. It's…"

"Jason Kane!" Lizabeth said. "Don't you have a football to throw around?"

"Ferguson ate it."

"Ferguson's our dog," Lizabeth explained to Matt. "He eats things."

Matt grinned. The place was a loony bin. He loved it.

Lizabeth made an expansive gesture with her arms. "Well, what do you think of the house?"

He looked around critically. Even if he helped her, he doubted she could afford to do all the necessary work. His guess was she was trying to make it on her own, without her father's or her husband's money, and she was having a tough time of it. "Needs a little paint," he volunteered. "Maybe a few new shakes for the roof."

Elsie looked at him sideways. "Cut the baloney. What do you think it really needs?"

"A lot of paint. It has to be scraped and primed and then painted. It needs an entire new roof, new aluminum gutters, and all of the shutters need to be rehung."

"So, you're in the construction business," Elsie said. "I suppose you got ladders and paint scrapers and such. Why don't you stay for supper. We're having meat loaf."