“No, I’m Swedish. People get us mixed up with the Norwegians all the time.”
Jane says I have a twisted sense of humor. Maybe she’s right.
I’m also a flower lover, but when one of the fronds of greenery from the mish mash of flowers I purchased tickled my nose, I realized that a dreaded carnation was stowed away in a perfectly nice bunch of tulips, daisies and one strangely exotic bird-of-paradise I couldn’t resist.
I don’t like carnations. They remind me of the leftover funeral flowers my frugal grandfather had me rearrange for church on Sunday mornings. No matter how artfully I did it or how many funereal bows I discarded, everyone in the congregation knew exactly where they’d come from.
As I neared my Nicollet Avenue apartment I saw that a crowd had gathered on the sidewalk near the front door of my building to watch a tall, dark-haired man carry suitcases and crates into the vestibule. Several bystanders were gathered around a single case, eyeing it with looks of either trepidation or serious indigestion.
Curious, I picked up my pace, telling myself that I needed to get the flowers into water and walk Winslow before he had an accident on the ugly patch of brown shag rug in the foyer that really should have been destroyed decades ago.
“Excuse me, coming through…excuse me, please, I live here. If you don’t mind…” I wormed my way through the crowd of spectators apologizing for batting gawkers with my bouquet and obscenely heavy bag of lumpy fruit. I was almost to the door when a growl made the hair rise on the back of my neck.
The sound smoldered out of the crate and circled the crowd like a ring of smoke. Everyone took a single step backward in unison, as though the fiend inside the cage were about to escape. Low and guttural, it was an undomesticated, dangerously feral sound. And too untamed to be coming from an enclosure that was about to be carried into my apartment building! I’ve always wondered what could make one’s blood run cold. Well, that sound wrapped a definite chill around my arteries.
Instead of following my impulse to run, I pushed forward, my maternal instincts pumping. “Please, I have to get through!” Winslow, my baby, was inside that building.
Feisty as only a redhead can be, I stepped into the center of the circle of people and came toe-to-toe with the dark-haired man, who was wearing a battered leather jacket, perfectly pressed jeans and chamois shirt so soft and pale it looked like fresh butter. Like a pricked balloon, my temper leaked away and jelly settled in my knees. From Attila the Hun to Gumby, just like that.
“Oh, hello,” I said stupidly, all rational thought gone. The man was Indiana Jones incarnate. Younger, of course, and without that charming little cut in his chin, but a heartthrob-with-a-death-wish-type adventurer, nonetheless. And he did have a scar over his left eyebrow that was mesmerizing in its own way.
He glanced up as if a mosquito had landed on his cheek, and I was afraid he was going to brush me away. Instead, his faintly stubbled jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed appraisingly.
As he looked me over from head to toe I felt a weird internal meltdown. This had to be the most beautiful —and intimidating—man I’d ever seen. It was the eyes, I thought. Dark and searing, sorrowful and soul-searching all at once, they snagged on mine for the briefest moment as he bent to pick up the large gray travel crate punctured liberally with airholes.
Then, through the fissures came a bloodcurdling, unearthly yowl that had the same effect on me as chewing aluminum foil on metal-filled molars.
“What is that?” I started as the crate quivered and shook. It appeared an eruption was imminent.
“‘That’ is my cat.”
Crazed fiend from the bowels of the earth, you mean.
“Now excuse me, but he’s anxious to be home. If you’ll—” a guttural squall and a brown-and-black paw punching its way through an airhole in the crate punctuated his words “—let me by…” An airborne catnip mouse came shooting out of one of the larger holes in the crate and, without considering what I was doing, I picked it up.
This is his home? That…thing…actually lives here? My shoulders sagged in dismay.
Just then Winslow started woofing happily. I could see the top of his moplike head framed in the window of my apartment. Gentle, mild mannered, loving and easily intimidated, Winslow had never met a cat he didn’t like. I had a hunch that was about to change dramatically.
“Oh, rats,” I muttered, but quickly changed my mind. There’d be no rats within a ten-block radius once this…thing…was on the prowl.
I’ve never known what musical charm or spell it was that made both rats and children follow the Pied Piper to their doom in the poem by Robert Browning, but whatever that piper guy had, this man possessed in spades. Before my head switched into thinking gear, my feet followed him into the building and to the doorway of his apartment. And I did have his catnip mouse.
He was oblivious to me. The travel crate tipped, swayed and shuddered as its inhabitant rocketed from one end to the other, howling discontent and elevating his owner’s already apparent annoyance.
Mesmerized, I stepped into the apartment, unaware of anything but what was inside that crate. I imagined catastrophe—the smells, the sounds, the claws, the danger, the inevitable showdown and the blood, most of which, I quickly realized, would be Winslow’s. He wouldn’t last a minute if he came face-to-face with the Tasmanian devil hunkered evilly in the corner of his crate.
I’d meant to ease myself noiselessly out of the room after dropping the mouse on a nearby table, but was captivated by the space around me, which spoke volumes—literally—about its owner. Books enveloped the room floor to ceiling like wallpaper. In the corners piles of hardbacks teetered like architecture in Pisa. The reading material was eclectic—history, autobiographies, nature and what appeared to be college textbooks.
But the books were a mere background for the rest of the room’s decor. Framed photos in color and black and white leaned in stacks against the legs of furniture, and magazines littered the floor like carpet samples. A film of dust coated the armrests of his oxblood leather couch and a petrified burger and fries spread out on the coffee table made it appear he’d fled the apartment as if it were on fire.
It was all very exotic to me, who’d spent the past eighteen months in Simms, where no one can disappear for more than an hour without being missed, no one’s business is private and all is fair game for coffee-klatch discussion. Of course, this guy was nothing like the men I’d grown accustomed to in Simms. The most mysterious thing about most of them was when they’d last changed their socks and flossed their teeth.
“You’ve lived in this building for a while, haven’t you?”
He spun around on his heel, scowling. “Wha…” He hadn’t even noticed that I’d followed him to the apartment.
“Welcome home,” I blurted, trying to recover some sense of propriety, and thrust into his face the bundle of flowers I was carrying. The tulips, daisies, daffodils, roses, the offending carnation and wildly out of place bird-of-paradise erupted out of the green florist paper and into his arms.
“They were so pretty that I bought some of each. You can’t buy flowers in the market where I come from. It’s only on a rare day that you can buy an eggplant….”
Shut up, Cassia.
“Then you should keep the flowers.” He gently pushed at my outstretched hand as his glower morphed into something softer—a grimace, perhaps. Not much of an improvement, but nothing could dim his good looks.
“I don’t own a vase to put them in. They won’t look like much in a mayonnaise jar. I don’t know what I was thinking.” I thrust the bouquet back at him. I’m nothing if not persistent. Once I embarrass myself, I don’t stop until I’ve achieved it fully.
He obviously didn’t know what to make of my gesture. Finally he raked his dark hair into spikes with