Lori Warren? This building, two floors up, he placed her address. He tried to remember meeting her and frowned when no particular face came to mind. Another neighbor attempting to bring him into their congenial little fold, he supposed. He’d deal with it later when he wasn’t so rushed for time.
The wall clock on the opposite side of the room said he had an hour and twenty minutes to get to the most important Christmas party of the season—of his life. That wasn’t much time when it was a forty-minute drive to the governor’s palatial private home in the suburbs.
He ’made his way to the master suite.
Several people had assured him it was a huge coup to be invited to the private party the governor and his wife held in their home. But next year, Andy determined, he’d be going to the one in Topeka. The official one held at the governor’s mansion.
He turned on the shower with one hand as he removed his watch with the other. Allowing time for the temperature to adjust, he drew his tux from the back of the closet and removed the protective plastic bag the dry cleaners had covered it with. It looked okay, he assured himself. He’d had it cleaned last summer, the last time he’d worn it, but he’d been concerned all afternoon, worrying whether it might need a fresh pressing, cursing himself for not thinking to check it sooner.
He smiled to himself as he stepped under the hot spray sending huge clouds of steam out into the room and beyond. He knew as surely as he knew his name that worry over the suit was only a symptom. He wanted this appointment and knew he had only a slight chance of getting it.
He couldn’t remember the last time his stomach had clenched and fluttered the way it had been doing all day. Maybe when he’d taken the bar?
His friends and fellow attorneys called him The Iron Man in court. He’d worked hard to establish the reputation. Nothing shook him. He didn’t allow it. No one ever knew what he was thinking or planning.
Still smiling as he stood naked before the mirror to shave, Andy admitted that it had been a long time since he’d wanted anything as badly as the appointment the governor would be making early in the new year. Everyone, himself included, knew the invitation to this party was one of the governor’s ways of checking him out.
You’ll be fine, he assured himself, turning away from his image and quickly dressing.
When he returned to the living room, he was startled to find he still had fifteen minutes before he needed to leave. He dithered uncharacteristically next to the coat closet. He didn’t want to be late but he didn’t want to be the first one there, either.
The envelope that had been attached to his door caught his eye. It gleamed in the soft recessed lighting. He picked it up, reaching to pull the note from inside. His fingers hovered at the frayed top edge as he realized the back of the envelope itself held the message in pencil, then pen. Please! I don’t know if I need a lawyer but I do know I... The pencil lead had broken and blue ink took over....need your advice—advice underlined twice. Please, could you come to my apartment? ASAP! The ASAP was also underlined twice.
Lori Warren, it was signed. Apartment 339 had been added like an afterthought.
It’s an emergency.
He almost missed the last. The small print crawled up the side of the envelope. At least there were no happy faces or Merry Christmases added in shaky, flowing script. Bertha Thomas, the elderly widow across the hall, liked to add those when she left him little informative instructions once or twice a week about the obligations and duties of apartment living.
He read the note again, adding a “desperately” where the pencil lead had broken. The word wasn’t there in black and white, but he heard it in his head as clearly as if it were. The note screamed it.
Checking the time again, he grabbed his dress coat from the closet, flung it over his arm and patted his pants pocket to make sure he had his keys.
This—he fingered the envelope—would nicely fill the ten minutes remaining. He’d earn a few extra brownie points with his neighbors—not that he needed them. He wouldn’t be living here that long—and this was probably someone panicky about too many speeding tickets. The advice he would give was quick and cheap: Slow down and pay!
Lori glared at the noisy thud at the door. It had been the worst—and best—day of her life and she’d just gotten the baby to sleep. She wanted nothing more than to crash in a chair and become a zombie for a few minutes.
Instead, she hurried to the door...and opened it just in time. His fist was raised to knock again. She didn’t need this heavy-handed visitor hammering twice and waking the baby.
She didn’t need this visitor at all, she thought as she felt her jaw drop. Tall, dark hair, dark eyes, with a sculpted face she was certain turned women to mush. Who else was going to turn up on her doorstep today? First a baby, now the gift from the gods she’d been fantasizing about.
She’d met him twice as she was coming out of the workout room in the basement of the apartment complex clubhouse. Sweaty and red-faced, both times she’d tried hard to blend with the woodwork and she’d prayed that she would meet him when she looked good. Why, oh, why couldn’t she run into this man when she didn’t look like something someone had pureed in the blender?
Third time’s a charm, she thought caustically as her hand automatically went to her hair. She could feel tangles beneath the short sprigs that were sticking out in every direction. The red suit she’d never gotten around to changing felt sticky from nervous perspiration and baby formula. She had a run the size of New York City climbing the back of her hose.
And he was standing there in a tuxedo, looking so picture-perfect he could have stepped off the top of a wedding cake. She didn’t know whether to drool or slam the door in his face.
“Lori Warren?” he asked, sounding as dismayed as she felt. Then he held up her envelope. “You left me this?”
“Mr. McAllister?”
He nodded, looking slightly startled as she grabbed his arm and yanked him into her apartment, closing the door behind him.
Her concerns about the way she looked were forgotten as tears formed in her eyes. “Oh, thank God, you’re here. You will never guess what happened today and I don’t...I can’t—”
“Slow down.” He held up an elegant hand. He used the same hand to touch the small of her back, half leading, half pushing her through the arch, past the low wall dividing the square foyer and into the small living room. “Come on. Let’s sit down. You can calmly tell me all about whatever the problem is.” He guided her toward the couch, stepping around the cluttered coffee table. He lowered his long length beside her as her knees gave out and she sat down.
She held her breath, studying her new neighbor. His hand on her back had felt reassuring. She felt adrift with it gone.
“Now,” he said gently, “tell me what happened today.”
She opened her mouth, then shook her head. She couldn’t find the words. The tears that had flowed so freely all day started again. She tried to stop them but they kept right on rolling. They rattled her. She never cried.
Today, they’d spurted when the baby cried, spurted when she’d left the baby asleep and alone for two minutes to take the elevator down to place the note on his door, spurted every single time she’d thought about the baby—and she’d thought of nothing else—or read the note...
The note. That might explain what she couldn’t. She grabbed it from the edge of the coffee table, gazing at it mindlessly for the hundredth time. She didn’t need to read it. She’d memorized it. It didn’t take much. Eleven words.
Eleven words that meant nothing, she realized, smoothing the note against her thigh. I know you won’t let anything bad happen to my baby.
“I don’t know what to do,” she mouthed soundlessly, searching his face and eyes, hoping to find wisdom there.