MacKenzie knew she should be moving on before her mildly warm dinner became stone cold. But she’d been diagnosed as terminally curious as a child and couldn’t quite get her feet to move away from the doorway.
Was there a Mrs. New Neighbor somewhere? The signs she saw said otherwise. The furniture seemed definitely masculine, but then some women favored clean, unobstructed lines and minimal furnishings.
He was nowhere in sight.
“Hello?” she called out. When there was no answer, she raised her voice and repeated the greeting.
This time, she got a response.
Quade came walking out from the rear of the apartment. The moment he saw her, a note of tension invaded his otherwise impassive expression. She was carrying something in a brown paper bag and her offending purse/weapon was suspended from her wrist. Quade watched it warily, then raised his eyes to her face.
“Should I be grabbing a tray or something to deflect any more blows?”
MacKenzie laughed and flashed him what she felt was her best smile, the one she knew took in her eyes, as well as her lips. “Sorry about this morning.”
“Okay.” He said the word as if it were meant to terminate any further conversation.
By all rights, this was her cue to withdraw. But she didn’t like the idea of having someone living next door who bore a grudge against her. It didn’t take much imagination to see that was what was in the works here. What was needed right now was a little damage control.
MacKenzie thought of the take-out bag tucked against her side.
Because he’d turned his back on her and had begun tearing the tape off a box that was almost as tall as she was, she took a step inside the apartment.
“Hungry?”
He didn’t even spare her a look. “Why, you have some rat poison you want to unload?”
She could feel her back going up, but she forced her voice not to sound hostile as she asked, “Not very friendly, are you?”
This time, he did spare her a look. It was the kind of look that made men with black belts in karate take two giant steps backward. “In general I try to avoid people who try to castrate me.”
She didn’t own a black belt in karate, or any other color belt for that matter, but she had been raised with three brothers and had adopted feistiness as her middle name. “That was an accident.”
“And you apologized.” His tone was cold and gave no indication of what he was thinking, other than the fact that he didn’t want to be bothered right now and was dismissing her.
She dug in. “Yes, I did.”
“Apology accepted.” What did it take to get this woman out of his living room and his apartment? Did he have to physically carry her out? He went back to removing the tape from the box he had no intentions of unpacking today. “Mission accomplished.”
Suppressing a sigh, MacKenzie began to leave, then abruptly stopped.
No, damn it, she wasn’t going to add this to the list of things that bothered her. She was going to prove she was a friendly neighbor if she had to nail his hide to the closet door.
“After work I stopped at Sam Wong’s.”
He frowned as he looked at the contents within the box. It had been mislabeled. These things belonged in the kitchen. Okay, so maybe he would unpack a few things, he decided. “Good for you.”
Since he’d left himself open for a moment, she jumped right in. “They have the best Chinese takeout in the city.”
He began to drag the box into the kitchen, doing his best to ignore this woman who was bent on invading his apartment. It was akin to trying to ignore a jack-in-the-box that kept popping up at inopportune times. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
She followed him into the small kitchen. The management had just had it painted a stark white that was all but blinding. She squinted slightly to compensate. “I bought more than I could eat for dinner.”
Digging into the box, Quade hauled out a stack of carefully wrapped dishes. His sister had packed them while trying to talk him out of moving. But it was something he had to do, at least for now. At least until the hole in his gut got smaller.
“Wasteful,” he commented.
She was barely two steps away from exploding. Why was he treating her as if she were some kind of leper when all she was doing was trying to be neighborly? “Would you like to share some?”
Putting the wrapped dishes on the counter, he finally looked at her. “Why would you share it with me?”
“Maybe it’s your sparkling personality I can’t resist.”
For a second, he looked as if he would chew her up and spit her out whole. But then he surprised her. He laughed. Just before he dug into the box again for a second stack of dishes. “Then I’d say you had a serious problem.”
“I don’t, but you might.” The bag was beginning to get heavy. MacKenzie leaned it against the counter. “Are you always like this?”
He hadn’t the vaguest idea what she was talking about. All he knew was that Carla had packed too many things. All he really needed was a single setting, not eight. That had been Ellen’s domain. She was the one who’d liked company. All he’d ever liked was Ellen.
“Like what?” he bit off.
“Like you’re Mr. Wilson and everyone else is Dennis the Menace.”
He stopped unpacking and gave her a long, penetrating look that ended with a glance toward her purse. “Only when confronted with Dennis.”
“Meaning me.”
Polite lies had never been part of his makeup. “See anyone else around?”
The way she saw it, she could either turn on her heel, tell him to go to hell and retreat into her apartment, or start over. Because she was an optimist at heart and hated the thought of anyone disliking her, she opted to start over.
Leaving her purse on the counter, she put out her hand. “I think we got off to a wrong start. My name is MacKenzie Ryan.”
He stood contemplating the extended hand for a moment, as if shaking it were a step he wasn’t prepared to take, then shrugged before slipping his strong, bronzed fingers around hers.
“Quade Preston.” He didn’t bother giving her his job title. The less he shared, the better. Dropping her hand, he turned away. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Oh well, she’d tried.
“On that sparkling personality, no doubt.” Turning on her heel, MacKenzie, her purse and her belated peace offering began to walk away.
She was almost at his door when she heard him say, “You need an oil change.”
MacKenzie stopped and turned around. Part of her thought that she’d imagined hearing his voice. “Excuse me?”
“An oil change,” Quade repeated. “Your car’s burning oil.” He shoved the half-emptied box aside. “Saw it as you pulled away this morning.”
MacKenzie ventured back into the room. “You’re a mechanic?”
He shook his head, walking out of the kitchen and past her. God, he was tall, she thought.
“Just observant. When was the last time you changed your oil?” His deep voice floated back to her out of the bedroom.
MacKenzie attempted to think. Car maintenance was one of those things that was strictly an afterthought with her. She knew that her father and brothers would have hooted about her negligence, but with everything she did, something had to go to