He arched a brow. “It’s Dennis, remember?”
She sighed and nodded. “I remember.”
“And my threshold isn’t low at all.” He had a feeling that she had very little to smile about. Maybe he could do something about that. His smile widened beguilingly. “Maybe we can discuss that threshold some time.”
“Maybe,” she agreed, closing the door behind him. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you,” she added quietly.
Nicole tucked the napkin with his phone number into her pocket and went to clear the table.
Surveillance equipment in place, Dennis maintained vigil until two in the morning. He knew that Dombrowski had spelled Winston in the converted VW van that was inconspicuously parked in the carport. Two sets of eyes were better than one.
Accustomed to snatching catnaps whenever he could and able to run on next to no sleep, he managed to get a few hours in the recliner beside his monitors. Even then, he slept lightly, anticipating the telephone ringing at any moment.
It didn’t.
When he opened his eyes again, it was a little past seven. Immediately, he looked at the monitors. Nothing had changed in the parking lot. The same cars that had been there last night were still in their designated spots. The second monitor showed only an empty room. Nicole wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Dennis sat up. Rotating his shoulders and stretching, he was instantly awake, instantly alert.
That was due to his training. By nature, he wasn’t really a morning person. His sister Moira was one of those. Bright and cheerful before her first cup of coffee. He didn’t understand it.
He needed a cup of coffee now, he thought. A strong one.
Still wearing the jeans he’d had on last night, Dennis padded out to the kitchen. He turned on the coffeemaker and opened the front door to get the paper.
As he bent over the mat, reaching for the newspaper, he heard her.
There was a gasp, followed by a cry of anguish and then a few choice words that could have only been evoked under duress.
She was in trouble. Damn, how had Standish managed to get in without either he or Dombrowski seeing the man?
Moot point, he admonished himself.
She hadn’t called him, but then maybe she hadn’t had the opportunity. Maybe she had been overpowered instantly. It was the only thing that made sense.
Adrenaline pumping, Dennis banged his fist on Nicole’s door.
“Nicole, are you all right?” he demanded. There was no reply. He pounded on it again. “Nicole, open the door!”
It was a fire door. He could dead lift twice his body weight, but there was absolutely no way he could force the door open. But he could break open a window.
Dennis turned away from the door and toward the kitchen window when the door swung open.
She stood in the doorway, wearing a pink dress that was far more cheerful that she was at the moment. The apron that no longer fit around her waist was slung over her right shoulder.
Exasperation filled her voice as she snapped, “No, I am not all right and why are you yelling like that?” He’d scared her half to death, banging on her door. She thought it was Standish.
Her sharp tone faded a little as she realized that he was wearing only his jeans and that he had failed to close the snap. It hovered more than an inch below his navel, adhering to tapered hips that belonged in an exercise video. She’d already guessed last night that he was muscular, but she hadn’t realized just how well developed those muscles were. His torso had almost perfect definition. If her hands weren’t already damp, they would have become so.
“What’s wrong?” Dennis demanded as he looked beyond her shoulder into the apartment. There was no one there.
She wiped her hands on the edge of the apron. “You’re the one yelling and banging, you tell me.”
Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t Standish. “I heard you gasp and cry out.”
Her brows drew together as she fisted her hands where her waist used to be. “What are you doing, standing at my door and listening?”
“No, I was getting the paper.” He raised it to substantiate his story. “When I heard you gasp I thought that maybe Standish had forgotten how to count and turned up. I was worried,” he added for good measure. It irritated him that it was partially true.
What he said made her feel guilty. He didn’t deserve to be the target of her waspish tongue. It wasn’t Dennis’s fault that her garbage disposal had decided to pick today to throw up. Lately, that seemed to be the way her life was going.
She sighed, dragging a hand through her hair, her expression softening. “Well, you can rest easy. No one took a contract out on me during the night. Except, maybe, for my garbage disposal.” She glanced over her shoulder. “It seems that it’s not up to grinding chicken bones anymore and has sought retribution by clogging up my sink.”
The tension created by the spontaneous flow of adrenaline began to ease from his body. A grin lazily crept over his lips. “They run independently of each other.”
She didn’t want logic at a time like this. She wanted an unclogged sink. Annoyance raised its hoary head again.
“Well, something is clogging up my sink.” She gestured toward the kitchen floor angrily. “I was rinsing out a frying pan and suddenly, I’ve got a lily pond in my kitchen.”
Not waiting for an invitation, Dennis walked into her apartment. Barefoot, he picked his way gingerly across the wet floor to the sink. He flipped the switch closest to the door and was rewarded with a whining noise that sounded like a car slipping a gear. A moment later, a wisp of smoke emerged from the midst of the rubber covering over the in-sink eradicator.
He shut off the disposal quickly. Squatting, Dennis opened the cabinet doors beneath the sink and looked in. He began moving aside an army of cleansers as he worked his way to the wall.
Nicole tried to bend down and peer over his shoulder. The ache in her back curtailed the effort. “What are you doing?”
He found the cord and followed it to the plug. He worked it free from the wall. “Unplugging your disposal before you have a fire.”
She looked down at the floor. It wasn’t exactly a lily pond, but there was enough water to remove the wax shine. Suddenly, she felt overwhelmed.
“The water would put it out,” she said wearily.
Dennis rose, brushing his hands off on his jeans. “Got a mop?”
“Of course I’ve got a mop,” she said defensively. Just because she wasn’t a neat freak like Marlene didn’t mean she was an utter slob. “Why?”
Justifying everything to her was getting a little old. “I want to dry the floor before one of us lands on our butts.”
He said “us” but he meant her. She could tell by the way he looked at her. She didn’t need someone inferring that she was a klutz. “Well, leave and then you won’t be in danger.”
He only laughed and shook his head. “Nicole, you are definitely a challenge to be neighborly to.”
All right, so she was being grumpy, but she couldn’t help it. She was always grumpy when she was tired. Stubborn about maintaining her independence, she’d remained up most of the night, listening to every noise that didn’t sound as if it belonged. In a garden complex of 203 apartments there were a lot of noises that sounded as if they didn’t belong.
She gestured toward his apartment. “It’s Saturday. Why aren’t you watching your new