To Catch a Latte Thick as Thieves

1

“S he’s making me wear purple,” Annie Talbot confided to her sister. They sat at a small table, beside a window at the back of Annie’s shop called The Coffee Break.

“Purple? With your red hair?” Mary cringed. “Street-length or tea-length?”

“Full-length,” Annie said. “With a hooped skirt and a parasol. She has a Scarlett O’Hara complex. Who knew?”

“Tara Plantation in Phoenix, Arizona?” Mary snorted.

“It’s not funny.” Annie glared at her older sister.

“Oh, yes it is.” Mary chortled. “Just think you can twirl your parasol as you stroll down the aisle to the theme from Gone with the Wind ...’”

“I get the idea.” Annie interrupted her sister before she could start humming. She loved Mary dearly, but the woman couldn’t carry a tune in a bag, and Annie wasn’t up to listening to all of the dogs in the neighborhood bay in accompaniment.

“You could always say no,” Mary reminded her.

“Too late. The wedding is this weekend.” Annie sighed. “Eve would kill me.”

“Better that than be seen in that dress,” Mary said. She picked up her coffee cup and studied Annie over the rim. “Tell her you’re afraid of that old wives’ tale. What is it? Three times a bridesmaid never a bride?”

“Given that this is my ninth tour of duty as a bridal attendant, I don’t think she’d buy it. Besides everyone knows how I feel about marriage.”

“Yes, I know. ‘It’s an unnatural state leading to inevitable heartbreak and disappointment,’” Mary repeated Annie’s well-known sentiments like a mantra. “Good grief, it’s hard to believe I’ve been happily married for ten years.”

“You and Ken are an aberration,” Annie said.

“Gee, Sis, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“You know what I mean,” Annie said. “Marriage, a lifetime commitment, is just not natural for human beings.”

“Neither is celibacy,” Mary retorted, shaking her head. Her sleek auburn bob brushed across her cheeks in a becoming sweep and Annie felt the familiar pang of envy. No matter what she tried, her mass of curly red tangles never looked that good.

“Look at Mom and Dad,” Annie said.

“They’re an aberration.”

“Dad’s on his third marriage and Mom’s on her fourth.”

“See? They still haven’t given up on finding the right mate,” Mary said.

“Please.” Annie wiped the table with her napkin. “They’re professionals.”

“Hmm,” Mary hummed noncommittally. “You have a bigger dilemma than a purple hooped skirt.”

“I do?”

“Yes.” Mary plunked her cup onto the table. “I saw Stewart. He’s bringing his new girlfriend to the wedding.”

“Oh, good for him,” Annie said and meant it. She had broken off her relationship with Stewart months ago. He was a nice guy, but he wanted to get married and that just didn’t factor into Annie’s plans. She had decided long ago that she wasn’t the marrying kind.

“It’s not fine,” Mary said. “He has some ridiculous idea that seeing him with someone else will make you jealous enough to take him up on his proposal.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes.”

“Subtlety never was one of his strengths,” Annie observed. “I guess I’ll just have to dredge up a date and hammer it home to him that we’re finished.”

“Are you?”

“Yes,” she said with little regret. “After I broke up with him, I realized I never really loved him. Not as much as I should have.”

“So, where are you going to dig up a date in three days?” Mary asked.

“I don’t know? The cemetery?” Annie joked with a shrug.

“I wouldn’t. Corpses make terrible dates – they’re dead bores,” Mary quipped.

“Ugh! That was terrible.” Annie grimaced with a chuckle. Glancing over her sister’s shoulder, she checked to see that her staff had the shop under control. Annie wasn’t one to take a break in the middle of the day, but it wasn’t often that Mary escaped her domestic bliss, and she was loathe to pass up any time with her sister.

“How about Paul Lester from Dad’s firm?” Mary suggested.

“He has hair growing out of his ears,” Annie said. “Lots of it.”

“Billy Winchester?”

“Still lives with his mother.”

“Chuck Newton?”

“In jail.”

“What for?” Mary blinked.

“Grand theft auto.”

“What?”

“Apparently his wife got the car in the divorce, but he didn’t agree.”

“Oh. Well, Ken has a friend at work...”

A crash from outside interrupted whatever Mary had been about to say. Both women whipped their heads in the direction of the staircase that ran outside the window up to the second floor. Simultaneously, their jaws dropped open.

Framed in the window was a perfect male torso. Suntanned skin glistened with sweat that dripped off defined pectorals and a taut stomach.

“Oh my,” Mary gasped.

The torso bent at the waist, and they watched as a shock of dark brown hair and a square jaw filled the open window.

“Hi, Annie,” the possessor of the perfect torso greeted them. His gaze held hers as if he were studying her.

“Hi, Fisher,” Annie responded, but it was little more than a squeak.

“Sorry about the noise.” He grunted as he hefted a box onto his shoulders and disappeared from sight with a glimpse of bunched forearms and muscle-knotted calves.

Mary turned to her sister with a raised eyebrow and a wicked grin. “Fisher? Your new tenant?”

“Uh-huh,” Annie said, clearing her throat.

“My, my, my.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“What do I think?”

“That I rented the apartment to him just because he’s gorgeous,” Annie said.

“And you didn’t?”

“No, he actually has a job, which means he can pay the rent,” she said. “And besides, the day he came to see the apartment he was wearing a suit.”

“Oh yeah, he’d look like Quasimodo in a suit,” her sister teased.

“I really had no idea he was so good-looking without his clothes on,” Annie protested, feeling her face grow hot.

“Well, now you know,” Mary observed dryly. “He did pay his first month’s rent in advance, I hope?”

“He wrote me a check.”

“Wait and see if it bounces.”

“Spoilsport.”

“He would be perfect, you know,” Mary mused.

“Perfect for what?”

“The wedding,” she answered.

“No, I don’t think...”

“He’d be a loud and clear message to Stewart that you’ve moved on.”

“You think?”

“He’s gorgeous and employed?” Mary asked and Annie nodded. “That’s pretty much perfect.”

“I don’t think I could...”

“I dare you,” Mary interrupted her.

“Dare me?” Annie repeated.

“Double-dare you,” Mary said.

“Double-dare? Are you nuts? We’re not kids anymore. I don’t have to accept a double-dare.”

“Bock...bo-bo-bo-bock,” Mary clucked. Tucking her thumbs under her armpits, she began to flap her elbows.

Annie could feel the stares of nearby customers and felt her already warm face grow hot with embarrassment. “Mary, you’re making a scene.”

“Bock...bo-bock,” Mary squawked louder and began to bob her head.

Annie started laughing. She couldn’t help it. Her sophisticated sister looked ridiculous.

“All right. All right. I give.” Annie raised her hands in surrender.

Mary picked up her coffee cup and took a delicate sip. “Good for you. After all, what’s the worst that could happen? He says no? Big deal.”

“Yeah, big deal.” Annie rolled her eyes.

Fisher heard the footsteps on the stairs long before they reached the landing. Judging from the pace – quick but light – it had to be his landlord Annie. He’d noticed when he leased the apartment that she moved with a speed that made him dizzy. She never walked. She ran.

Sure enough, her mane of fiery red hair peeked around his doorway accompanied by a cursory knock.

“Fisher?”

“In here,” he invited her into his living room.

She took a hurried step forward, but then leapt back with a shriek. Fisher felt the hair on his neck stand on end, but then he relaxed. Harpy, his pet cockatiel, had swung down from her perch on top of the door frame and was hanging upside down in Annie’s face.

“Hello,” Harpy said. “Hello.”

Fisher glanced out the door to see Annie leaning against the rail her hand pressed against her rib cage as if trying to keep her heart where it belonged. One long, curling strand of hair fell across her face. She pursed her lips and blew it aside. She looked thoroughly exasperated. Fisher swallowed a laugh.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Harpy’s just getting used to her new digs.”

“Harpy, huh?” She lifted an eyebrow.

“Come here, Harpy.” Fisher held out his finger, and Harpy gripped it with her beak and swung down to perch on his hand. “Meet our new landlady.”

“Hello,” Harpy said.

“Hello, Harpy,” Annie said. “Can I pet her?”

“Sure. She loves to have her pinfeathers scratched.”

“Hi, Harpy.” Annie’s voice dropped an octave as she rubbed the back of Harpy’s head between her index finger and her thumb. Harpy sagged forward, her head bent, giving Annie full access. “Oh, who’s a pretty bird?” Annie cooed and Fisher felt her voice skitter over his skin, making the hair on his arms rise.

When he’d signed the lease, he’d been struck by her resemblance to Orphan Annie. With her curly red hair and freckles, the similarity was close enough to warrant the name. He was pretty sure, however, that Orphan Annie didn’t have a voice that could bring a grown man to his knees.

A waft of scent, faintly floral and very sexy, drifted by his nose. She sure didn’t smell like a cartoon, either. He looked away and tried to envision a curly-topped kid in a red dress with a white collar, standing next to a dog. What was the dog’s name? It had shaggy hair and it was sort of brown...

“Fisher, are you all right?”

He glanced back, hoping that the image in his mind would be standing before him. No such luck. Dark sapphire-blue eyes met his, and he felt himself swallow. Damn. With those eyes, that voice and that scent, she bore no resemblance to the fictional character in his mind.

“Are you okay?” she asked again.

“Just fine,” he lied. So she was attractive. So what? There were plenty of attractive women in the world. He was a professional. He never let his personal feelings get in the way of a job. And this was a job, nothing more. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, I...” she stammered. “I...was just wondering how you were settling in?”

He narrowed his eyes. A hint of red crept into her face, covering the spray of freckles on her cheeks. She looked like a sticky-fingered, three-year-old caught raiding the candy dish. Cute.

He turned away from her, hoping to give her a chance to build up the nerve to say what she really wanted. He carried Harpy to her cage in the corner of the living room. He opened the door and lifted her to her perch. Harpy immediately assumed her favorite position; she hung upside down and began to squawk for food.

“I’m settling in just fine,” he said. “And Harpy certainly seems at home.”

“Does she always hang upside down?” Annie asked with a laugh as if relieved by the change of subject.

“Always,” he confirmed, ignoring the way her laugh made him want to laugh in return. It was deep and throaty and thoroughly provoking. “Was there anything else?”

“Actually.” She paused, and Fisher glanced over his shoulder to see her face bloom a deeper shade of red. “There was one thing.”

“Yes?” he prompted.

“I was wondering if you’d consider being my date.”

“Date?” he repeated, feeling as if she’d belted him in the solar plexus.

“You see, the thing is, I have to be in a wedding...” Her voice trailed off.

“And?”

“And I need a date,” she rushed to explain. “Now I know you just moved in, and you don’t even know me, but this might be a good way for you to meet some new people. And it won’t be a date in the technical sense. It would be more like two friends going to a wedding together.”

“Why do you need a date so badly?” he asked. The fiery color had receded from her cheeks, but her gaze was firmly fastened on the floor as if she were hoping a hole would open up and give her a swift getaway. She was obviously embarrassed, but he had to give her credit for nerve. She didn’t seem the kind to ask out a total stranger...unless she had a very good reason.

“Well, there’s this ex-boyfriend,” she began.

“Ah.” He nodded.

“He’s a nice guy, but he doesn’t seem to understand that I’ve moved on,” she explained.

“And he’ll be at the wedding,” Fisher deduced aloud, “and you think if you bring a date, he’ll realize it’s over.”

“That’s the idea,” she admitted.

“I only have one question,” he said. “Why me? Don’t you know someone else who could be your fake boyfriend?”

“Honestly?” She wrinkled her nose before answering. “No. Running the shop doesn’t give me much of a chance to socialize.”

“Really? I’d have thought you’d have to beat ‘em off with the coffeepot.”

She snorted a surprised laugh through her nose, and Fisher blinked. The woman was a snorter! Why he found this charming he had no idea. As her laughter faded she watched him with wide eyes as if awaiting a sentence. He didn’t have the heart to torture her and besides she was handing him the very thing he needed. An in.

“I’d be happy to go,” he said.

“Really?” Her eyebrows hit her hairline and then she grinned. “I don’t suppose you’d be available for the rehearsal dinner, too?”

“Uh, well, I don’t see why not,” he said.

“Okay. I’ll meet you Friday evening at six-thirty,” she said.

“Sounds fine.”

“Great.” She beamed at him as she walked backward toward the door. “Friday then.”

She stumbled over the doorframe, and Fisher leapt forward, catching her by the arm to keep her from falling.

“Oh!” She shook her head and laughed at herself. “That’s me, grace in motion.”

Fisher couldn’t help but smile. She was a charmer. Her skin felt soft and warm beneath his fingers. He squeezed her arm before letting her go.

“Thank you, Fisher,” she said.

“My pleasure,” he said and meant it.

“So, how does she look?”

Fisher squinted across the desk at his partner. Look? She looked great. A spray of freckles, a mane of wild red hair and a contagious laugh... Oh, yeah, she looked just fine.

“Fish?” Brian Phillips, Fisher’s partner, waved his hand in front of his face. “You in there?”

He shook his head, trying to dislodge Annie’s image. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“So.” Brian leaned back in his chair. “How does she look?”

“She’s a redhead,” he said.

“Uh-oh,” Brian said. “You don’t mix well with redheads. Remember the one in Tucson who we nabbed for check fraud. She kicked you in the...”

“I remember,” Fisher interrupted with a wince. “Annie’s not like that.”

“Annie is it?” Brian asked. “Better watch it, Special Agent McCoy, you know you’re not supposed to become personally involved with your suspects.”

“We’re not sure she’s a suspect,” he protested.

Brian sat up straight all humor wiped from his face. “Yes, she is. Someone at The Coffee Break is laundering huge amounts of dirty money through a secondary account. She’s the owner, so she’s the chief suspect. The criminals using her services are some very nasty thugs. Don’t underestimate her.”