1 #2
“Come on,” Fisher snapped, annoyed. “I’ve been with the Bureau for more than ten years. I’m not about to let some dizzy redhead bring me down.”
“Be sure you don’t,” Brian warned and then teased, “Unless, of course, it’s part of your cover.”
“Shut up,” Fisher chided him. “Or I’ll tell Susan about the Cayman Islands.”
“What? I went to bed at nine o’clock every night...alone.”
“Yeah, well, that might not be the way I tell it,” Fisher said.
“Go ahead. My wife knows better than to believe you,” Brian dared him.
“She always was too smart for her own good,” Fisher acknowledged. “That’s why I just don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“Why she married you.”
“Love,” Brian sighed and put a hand over his heart. “Well, that and my big...”
“McCoy. Phillips. I need an update on Operation Coffee Break. What have you uncovered so far?” Paul Van Buren strode toward their desks.
“Well, I almost had Brian to his shorts,” Fisher answered dryly.
“What?” Van Buren frowned. He was a no-nonsense guy who wore responsibility like a well-cut suit. He’d been with the FBI for over thirty years. He was tough but fair and despite his lack of humor, there wasn’t a man in his service who didn’t respect him.
“Nothing,” Brian interrupted, eyeballing Fisher from behind his wire rims.
“Have you established yourself on the premises, McCoy?” Van Buren asked.
“Moved in yesterday,” he confirmed.
“Any point of contact yet?”
“Well...” Fisher paused.
“Spit it out, Special Agent McCoy,” Van Buren said.
“Yeah.” Brian echoed. “Spit it out.”
“I’m going to a wedding with her on Saturday and a rehearsal dinner on Friday,” Fisher said.
“Ha!” Brian hooted. “Way to move, you dog.”
Van Buren’s eyebrows lifted, but he said nothing, waiting for Fisher’s explanation.
“It’s not like it sounds,” he said. “She needed a date because of an ex-boyfriend who’s going to the wedding. She asked me to help her out. I thought it would be a good opportunity to observe her and the people in her life, to see exactly who has access to the accounts of the shop, etc.”
“Sounds good,” Van Buren agreed. He left, calling over his shoulder, “Don’t screw it up.”
“Or her,” Brian added.
Fisher threw a pencil at him but Brian ducked just in time. Too bad.
Annie hefted the last chair up onto a table and grabbed her broom. She swept up the crumbs that littered the wooden floor. The Coffee Break had done a brisk business today, and she was grateful. She loved living hip deep in coffee beans and crème brulée.
She left the counter light on while she dumped the refuse into the garbage bin and shoved the broom in the closet. She was about to take off her apron and head upstairs when the front door clanged open with a rattle of bells.
A scream was halfway up her throat before she recognized the man standing in the shadows before her.
“Fisher! You scared me,” she said, feeling her heart knock on her ribs.
“Was there a reason you didn’t lock the door?” He stepped into the shop, scowling.
He moved with a predatory grace that Annie couldn’t help but admire. Shoulders back, square jaw jutting forward, he walked into the room as if he owned it. Every silly, feminine nerve in her body responded with a nervous flutter. Oh, dear.
“Uh...I forgot,” she stammered, forcing herself to concentrate on the conversation.
“Forgot?” he echoed in disbelief. “We’re in central Phoenix and you forgot to lock your front door?”
“I would have remembered eventually,” she protested, stepping around him to lock the door.
“After you were robbed or raped or worse?”
“You’re just a ray of sunshine this evening, aren’t you?” she asked, trying to lighten the serious cast to his features. When she’d first met him, he’d struck her as an overly serious sort. Someone who needed to smile more. It was an impossible challenge to refuse.
“Just promise me that you’ll be more careful,” he said, his features softening a fraction. Annie was encouraged.
“Scout’s honor,” she said, raising her right hand.
“That’s no good.” He shook his head. “How do I know you were a Scout?”
“Are you doubting me?” she asked, plunking her hands on her hips with mock offense.
“Prove it,” he said. “What’s the scout’s credo?”
“Thou shalt not nag?” she asked pointedly.
“Try, ‘always be prepared,’” he said.
“That was my second guess.”
“Guess? Aha!” He pointed at her. “You weren’t a Scout.”
“No, I was, but I didn’t make it out of Brownies,” she confessed. He crossed his arms over his chest, awaiting her explanation. Annie mumbled, “I failed comp-fur-coo-gig.”
“Excuse me,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. He was teasing her! “I couldn’t make that out.”
She hung her head to hide her laughter and said, “I failed campfire cooking. Okay? Are you happy now?”
“You failed cooking?” he repeated. Annie glanced up at him through her lashes and saw his lips twitch.
“No, I failed campfire cooking. They wanted us to roast hot dogs on sticks. Do you know what’s in those things? Yuck! I just couldn’t do it.”
“So you failed out of Scouts because you’re a food snob,” he concluded with a laugh.
“Um...basically...yeah.” She smiled. She’d never thought of her shop as huge, but with Fisher standing in the middle of it, it seemed dwarfed by his presence. Just looking up at him made her dizzy. “How about some Death by Chocolate?”
“What by what?”
“You’ve never had Death by Chocolate?”
He shook his head.
“Let me tell you, it beats the heck out of ‘Smores.’ Sit.” She gestured him toward a seat at the counter while she circled it. She slid open the back door to the refrigerated display case and pulled out the decadent torte. She could feel his eyes upon her as she cut him a man-size wedge. Filling a glass of ice-cold milk to go with it, she pushed the plate in front of him.
He eyed the plate as if it were lethal. It was to her hips, but he didn’t need to know that. Handing him a fork, she said, “Try it.”
Fisher tucked into the torte as if it were as innocuous as apple pie. He paused in midchew, and his eyes bugged at Annie in awed delight. He mumbled something that sounded like a benediction, but then shut his eyes as a look of bliss crept across his face.
Wow! Annie felt her pulse skitter somewhere south. She had hoped to coax a smile out of him, but this...She wasn’t prepared for this. She watched as he took a drink of milk from the glass. She watched it slide down his throat and felt her own mouth go dry. As he set the glass back down, one corner of his mouth tipped up in a devil’s grin, parting just enough for her to see a glimpse of teeth. His brown eyes twinkled at her, and Annie was pretty sure there wasn’t going to be enough left of her to mop up with a sponge.
She watched him eat. She knew she was staring, but she couldn’t help it. If he looked that sexy eating Death by Chocolate, then what would he look like... She shook her head, glanced away, and then back.
She watched him suck the last of the chocolate off of his fork, and she felt the back of her neck grow hot. Horrified, she jerked upright, yanking his plate away from him as she went. This was way more than she had bargained for.
Dumping the plate in the sink, she flipped on the tap and drowned the plate as if it held her desire and not just chocolate crumbs. She couldn’t have those sort of feelings for her tenant. He lived across the hall from her for Pete’s sake! If she let him get under her skin, she’d never sleep again.
“You forgot these.”
“What?” She spun to find him just behind her, holding a fork and an empty glass.
He reached around her to deposit them in the sink and she felt his arm press against hers. The contact sizzled. She glanced at his face. He showed no sign of awareness. Instead, his dark brown eyes seemed to be studying her, as if looking for something. Annie couldn’t comprehend what and she couldn’t look away.
He was the first to straighten. “Thanks for the dessert.”
“You’re welcome,” she forced the words out.
“Do you want me to walk you up?” he asked.
“No,” she said swiftly, too swiftly. “I mean, that is, I have some bookkeeping to do before I turn in.”
“All right.” He stepped back toward the door. “I’ll say good-night then.”
“Good night,” she croaked.
“Sweet dreams, Annie-girl,” he said and disappeared up the back stairs to the apartments above.
Annie wilted against the sink like a cake falling after a loud bang. The man was intoxicating and she didn’t have to try to touch her finger to her nose to know that she was drunk.
Fisher slapped a hand down on his snooze button.
An old song about a widow who would only marry guys named Henry continued to play.
Fisher slapped the button again. The song kept playing. Fisher opened one eye and glanced at his alarm clock. The red digits glowed five-thirty. He’d set his alarm for seven. The singing started again and he groaned.
He forced both of his eyes open and then it hit him. The smell of cinnamon filled his nostrils like salt on a sea breeze. He glanced at his unfamiliar surroundings. Oh yeah, he was living above The Coffee Break. That explained the cinnamon but not the singing.
He pushed his covers aside and pulled on a pair of jeans. Harpy had started to squawk in accompaniment to whoever was belting out the tune in the alley. There was no way he would be getting any more sleep this morning. He took his key and wandered out into the hallway.
The singing grew louder toward the back of the house so he let himself out the back door and onto the deck at the top of the stairs. The rich baritone was deafening now. Fisher glanced over the rail and saw an older man, who looked to be in his fifties, standing outside the kitchen door.
Just as he started the third verse, the back door flew open and out marched Annie. Although she was fully dressed, her red hair stuck out in all directions as if she hadn’t had time to comb it. In her hands, she held a plate with three huge muffins and a glass of milk.
“Here you go, Henry,” she said. “You can stop singing now.”
Henry took the plate and glass of milk and gave her a broad grin. “I was only on the third verse.”
“I have a new tenant. I hope you didn’t wake him,” she said.
“Early bird catches the worm,” Henry declared.
“Yeah, well, I need the rent so let’s hope the early bird is a deep sleeper,” she said with a worried glance up. Just then, she caught sight of Fisher leaning over the rail. “Oh, good morning.”
“Tweet, tweet,” he said. “This early bird is not a deep sleeper.”
“Oh.” She winced and twisted her fingers together. “I’m so sorry. This is Henry.”
As if that explained anything, he thought with a shake of his head.
“Henry, this is Fisher,” she said.
Henry didn’t even glance up. Instead he took his muffins to the picnic table at the side of the house and sat down to enjoy his breakfast in peace. Fisher tried to ignore the irony.
Annie sighed and tripped up the stairs to his side. Even on the dark side of dawn, she moved with a speed that made him woozy.
“Henry?” he asked.
“I don’t know if that’s his real name,” she said. “That’s just what I call him, because of the song.”
“The song?”
“You must have heard it.” She began to sing the same song Fisher never wanted to hear again.
“I heard it,” he interrupted. “But how does that explain him?”
“Well, a few months after I opened The Coffee Break, Henry just showed up. I kept finding him picking through our garbage every morning and he was always singing that song. I told him not to...go through the trash that is. I mean it’s just not sanitary, but he said we had the best dumpster in town.”
“And?” he prompted her.
“And he kept raiding the dumpster, so I gave up. I told him to knock on the backdoor and I would bring him some fresh muffins. Well, Henry never got the knack of knocking.”
“So he sings for his breakfast?”
“Yeah. I’m so sorry he woke you up,” she said. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“How will you do that?”
“I’ll just get up earlier and make sure I meet Henry at the door.”
Fisher glanced over the rail at the man seated below them devouring his breakfast. His skin was leathery from years on the streets, his clothes were ragged and his hair was uncombed and filthy. Breakfast from Annie every day was probably the one certainty in his life.
“Don’t worry about it. I usually get up at five-thirty anyway,” he lied.
“Really?” she asked. “That’s great. Then you don’t mind?”
“No, I don’t mind,” he said and meant it.
Annie glanced at her watch and jumped. “Oh, I had better get moving or I won’t get all of my baking done. I’m so glad you’re an early riser. I knew this would work out. I just knew it.”
Fisher watched as she disappeared into the house at a run. One more piece in the puzzle that was Annie, and it didn’t help one little bit.