“Perhaps a tour?” she asked, all business.
Stop trying to flirt, Gomez. You’re embarrassing yourself.
“Absolutely.” He gestured at the cluttered room. “This is the ocean room. This is where I look at the ocean and read the paper.”
He pointed over her shoulder at the kitchen. “That’s where I don’t cook.”
She turned and walked into the kitchen and, because he was sore from the physical therapy and using a cane, it took him a moment to get all of his appendages to agree to follow her. “You’ll notice the museum of pizza boxes, probably the largest in California. Again, they are not all mine, but I’ve added to the collection. Perhaps in—” He rounded the corner just as Margaret was hanging up his phone.
Irritation and suspicion leaped in him.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“Your phone is dirty.” Margaret scraped pizza sauce off the receiver.
He told himself to calm down. He was no longer a reporter, looking for the hidden agenda in every person he met. And, should things go well with Ms. Warren of the fantastic mouth and careful expression, he would no longer be a complete hermit.
He needed to get used to people again—or at least people who weren’t inflicting pain on his person in the name of healing.
Worse, he was going to have to get used to help.
“Well, it gets worse.” He smiled.
Margaret’s lips twitched and he relaxed.
Score one smile for the horny hermit.
He retraced their steps through his living room, kicking aside papers and books.
“Back here is the bedroom, which is probably the cleanest room in the place.” He opened the door and she ducked around him to enter the nearly empty dark room.
His clothes sat in stacks along the wall. Pulling open dresser drawers was more than he could be bothered with, thanks to his bad hand. His therapist had told him using the drawers would be good for him, but frankly being a slob made his life easier. His nicer stuff—suits and a tux he would probably never wear again—hung in the closet.
The bed, of course, was unmade. His brown comforter was tangled, the pillows were on the floor and the sheets pushed down to the bottom of the mattress. It appeared to be the site of rather athletic sex.
If only that were true.
Ah, sex. I think I heard of it once. If it weren’t so damn depressing, he’d laugh.
He hobbled over to the window to drag open the drapes, illuminating the dust motes in the air.
He turned as Margaret lifted her hand from his bedside table and rubbed her fingers together.
Again he felt that spike of irritation. He wasn’t good at sharing his space or having strangers touching his things. Made him antsy.
But considering it was going to be her job, he couldn’t tell her not to touch his stuff. He chuckled at his own absurdity.
Clean, but please don’t touch anything.
“I don’t suspect the bathroom is going—” she started to say.
“It’s a biohazard. You’ll probably need a special suit or something.”
She smiled again, a Mona Lisa curl to her lips that had devastating effects on his hermit-lifestyle suppressed libido. She really was lovely. Perhaps her features were plain, but her skin seemed to glow.
“Are you Irish?” he blurted. Nice. Really, so suave. It’s a wonder you ever got laid.
“No,” she answered and her attention drifted to the bedside table that showed that one finger swipe through the dust.
“Let’s go into the other room and discuss specifics,” he said and walked by her, close enough that he caught the soap-and-sunshine scent of her.
He heard her follow him into the hallway and then pause.
“What’s in here?” she asked and he turned just as she pushed open the door to his office. Inside, Bear, his dog, went berserk and Caleb reached out and slammed the door shut again.
“You don’t need to worry about that room,” he said. “I don’t want it cleaned.”
“But it looks—”
“It doesn’t get cleaned!” he said with more volume than was necessary with the reticent Margaret Warren. Her lips tightened and she nodded and Caleb felt like a fool.
He’d lost his touch, not just with pretty shy women who once fell to his bidding like ducks in a shooting gallery, but with other people, too. With everyone.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I just—”
“You don’t have to explain,” she said. “I won’t clean that room.”
He nodded, relieved and a little surprised by her straightforward understanding. He could imagine that she might think he was a little nuts. Maybe he was. Most of the time, he wasn’t entirely sure himself.
SHE’D PLACED two of the three surveillance bugs. There was no way she was going to get into his office considering the way he’d flipped when she opened the door.
Obviously there was something in there he didn’t want people to see.
I need to get in that office.
“I think he likes you, Mags,” Gordon said in her ear. “Dude can’t stop looking at you…ouch… Man, stop throwing stuff at me.”
Gordon was right, Gomez was lonely. Really lonely if his awkward sideways glances were any gauge. She was not a woman men stared at. She was a woman men glanced at and forgot.
Apparently, not Gomez.
The back of her neck burned and her fingers tingled and she told herself it was the job. It certainly had nothing to do with that dynamic energy that surrounded him, that seemed to reach out to her with every glance.
That’s good, I can use that.
Things were going well. She seemed to have passed some sort of test when she didn’t react to Gomez’s injuries. She had handled the situation when he caught her bugging the kitchen phone. It had been close, but luckily there really had been pizza sauce on the receiver.
They seemed to get along, if his corny jokes were an indication. Except for his privacy issues about the office, which she planned on stepping all over, she guessed she had this job in the bag.
She followed him from the dark hallway back into the bright room with the view of the ocean. She didn’t pay much attention to what lay outside the window, instead planning to get her third and final bug planted under the table beside the overstuffed sofa.
“Your ad said mornings two days a week,” she said, breaking the silence in the room.
“Right. Eight to noon.” He limped over to the large armchair hidden underneath newspapers. He brushed them all to the floor then collapsed into the dark blue cushions with a groan. “I’ll be home most of that time, but I’m usually working in my office.”
“We need more time, Maggie,” Curtis said. “We’ll be here weeks if you keep to that schedule.”
“I’m afraid that’s not going to work, Mr.—”
“Gomez,” Gomez said, “but please call me Caleb.”
“Okay, Caleb.” She swallowed, his first name felt thick and awkward in her mouth. “It’s going to take me about a week of four-hour days just to get this place cleaned to a livable standard. And that doesn’t include the cooking.”
“Good