Natalie’s hand slammed rhythmically on the steering wheel of her car to the beat of her classic Beatles CD. She cranked the volume up, rolled her window down, and flew along in ecstasy. Her anthropology teacher had left a note on the door of their classroom saying class had been canceled for the day. Hooray for personal emergencies and the teachers who had them! That gave Natalie an extra couple of hours of unexpected freedom, not to mention a few more days to study for the midterm exam she had expected to sweat blood on that morning. She liked the subject well enough, but the teacher had warned the class that he was tough, and he hadn’t been exaggerating. Natalie wouldn’t have been as worried if she’d gotten to go over her notes last night, but she’d ended up helping Emma write a paper on Greek mythology.
Now she could get to the lawyer’s house, have it spanking clean—that meant dusted and quickly vacuumed, since he was never there and she’d never even seen evidence that he existed—and use his marvelous kitchen space to practice for her tap class midterm. Who knew that tap dancing would count as a physical education requirement? Considering the fact that Natalie had never considered herself very athletic, it had seemed like a fun and less intimidating choice—especially after she’d found a pair of tap shoes at the DI.
She would also be able get her afternoon cleaning job finished by early afternoon and have free time to—what? She had free time so seldom on weekdays she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with it. She could work on her stained-glass creation, study for her anthropology exam, or scour a couple of thrift stores for some hidden treasures.
Pulling to an abrupt halt in the driveway, she grabbed her cleaning tool kit and lightweight vacuum cleaner and headed to the front door. She had gone through the utility door on her first visit to the house, but the front door was so much closer to her car that she’d quickly made it a habit. On a whim, she went back to her car and grabbed the Beatles CD. Mr. Big Shot Attorney had a first-class audio system wired through the entire house. And she felt like rockin’.
Halfway to the door, Natalie paused and ran back out to her car again. She wasn’t in the mood to clean yet. She wanted to celebrate! For so long, her life had felt like the lyrics of a bad country song, and now she had the small miracle of time. She returned the cleaning tools to the car, grabbed her tap shoes, exchanged the Beatles for her tap class CD, unfortunately titled “Best of Vaudeville,” which contained a modern remix of some good old tap standards, and ran back to the house. She slipped into the tap shoes, slid the class CD into the audio player, cranked up the volume, and ran to the kitchen to get set.
Feet apart, hands on hips, she mentally thought through the movements she would be practicing. Step, shuffle, lift, cross—darn! What was it? She clicked across the kitchen floor tiles to the spiral notebook she had set on the table just as the music began with a crash. A long, showy drum solo got the first track cranking, louder and quicker, faster and faster, cymbals and snare drums repeating like machine-gun fire, bass drum thumping loudly. She reviewed her notes and ran back to her original position. Deep breath. Step, shuffle, cross, step. Step, shuffle, cross, step. She readied herself for her first steps. The drum solo continued, tenor drums pounding syncopations into her brain. Initially, she thought the class CD was kind of corny—it was called “Best of Vaudeville,” for heaven’s sake. But the more she had listened to it as she practiced her tap-dancing steps, the more it had gotten under her skin. Sheepishly, she acknowledged that she liked it. It was fun. Besides, it reminded her, sort of, of her nana and how she used to talk about the good old days.
The drum solo crescendoed into a big drum roll, and then the trombones kicked in with the melody. Hands on hips, she thought, here we go. This time we are going to stay with the beat. She’d had a hard time getting her feet to move fast enough to keep up with the music’s tempo, but she’d practiced a lot and was almost up to speed. She focused, took another deep breath, and lifted her right foot. Step, shuffle, cross, step, step, shuffle, cross, step. She almost had it. A couple more times through and she was sure she’d be able to stay with the music.
* * *
Ross was as close to unconscious as a person could be. A complete lack of awareness blanketed his senses, his body in a deeply relaxed void. He gradually became aware of gunfire somewhere in the near distance. Enemy artillery, gang warfare. His shoulders bunched and tensed. He was on the streets of New York—not Manhattan or Brooklyn. Somewhere more dangerous. It called for caution. He thrashed in his bed, seeking cover from the gunfire. Sunlight began filtering through the buildings. No, they were the curtains of his bedroom. He was foggy, but he remembered now, he was home. So why didn’t the gunfire stop?
Adrenaline pumped fire through his veins as a result of the disturbing images in his dream. The percussive shots hammered at his skull. What was going on? As full consciousness hit, he bolted upright with alarm. Someone was in his house. He leaped from the bed, his head swinging from side to side, searching for a makeshift weapon. Opening the closet, his eyes landed on his practice putter leaning against the corner inside the door.
He grabbed it, then ran his hand through his hair and took a deep breath to calm his jangled nerves. After his ordeal of a trip to New York, it would be just his luck to have a break-in on his first day home. A stroke of inspiration made him pause to grab his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and punch in 911, with his thumb over the send button, before heading out of his bedroom to the landing and quietly inching his way down the stairs.
Halfway down, the gunfire, which he now recognized as drums, turned into some sort of band thing. Jazz, sort of, though he wasn’t sure. He heard some strange rapping bursts, like castanets, coming from the kitchen; the “music,” he could tell, was being pumped through his audio system. Quietly, he edged his way down the hall to the kitchen door. There, in his kitchen, to his utter surprise, was a petite woman in a lime-green T-shirt and blue jeans, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, tap dancing, of all things. Make that tap dancing, sort of. Her arms were flailing wildly at her sides like frantic windmills as her feet hopped up and down and shuffled back and forth. If it weren’t for the fact that his head throbbed and his stomach pitched from his sudden movements, he might have found the scene humorous. As it was, she was a stranger, an intruder invading the privacy of his home. There had been a woman in his ward in New York a couple of years back who had gotten into his apartment once. He wasn’t sure how, but he’d had his suspicions at the time. He had flatly told her not to bother him again or she could expect him to file charges.
Suddenly, the woman in the green T-shirt let out a blood-curdling scream, slipped on the tiles, and fell in a tangle of elbows and legs to the kitchen floor.
Ross felt every nerve ending in his body explode, especially the ones in close proximity to his head. He clenched his hands, narrowly missing calling emergency, and raised the arm holding the golf putter. The woman’s shoulders collapsed, and she was gulping in breaths. So was he, actually.
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” he asked in a threatening tone loud enough to be heard over the blaring trumpets from the CD.
She looked at him like she didn’t speak English, like she was trying to process his simple questions in terms she could understand. Then she replied in a shaky voice. “Natalie. I’m Natalie.”
“Okay, Natalie, and just what are you doing in my house?”
Her hand was clutching her T-shirt over her heart, and she paused like she was collecting her thoughts along with her wits. “I was . . . what? I . . . hmmm. Shuffling off to Buffalo?” She slid her knees under her and pushed herself to all fours.
Ross wasn’t a dance expert by any stretch, but he’d at least heard the term before, and while still cautious, he started to relax. With the putter still slightly raised in warning, he walked over to the CD player and stopped the music. Gesturing with his head toward his CD player, he said, “And what was that?”
Still breathing hard, staring down at the floor tiles, the woman Natalie said, “‘Mississippi Mud.’”
Was she intentionally trying to be funny? Ross crossed his arms over his chest and gave her his best death-sentence stare. Except that she wasn’t looking at him. She moved to get her feet under her, averting her face. He put out his hand to help her up, but she ignored the gesture and scrambled to her feet, the taps on her shoes clinking like bad money.
* * *
Natalie tried to catch her breath as she surreptitiously studied the man in front of her who was wielding a golf club. He was tall and dark, his mouth set in a firm line. He had a day’s growth of beard showing, and his eyes were dark and intense but shadowed, and he looked—wrinkled. He wore rumpled slacks and a dress shirt, the cuffs rolled up to his elbows, the collar open, the shirttail hanging partially out on the side. Unfortunately, right at that moment, the rumpled slept-in-his-clothes look didn’t make him look cute and cuddly. He looked formidable. Why was it that when she encountered a strong male her brain turned to sludge, her tongue became ten pounds heavier, and the words that plopped off of it could have been scripted into a bad sitcom?
Seeing him had scared her to death anyway, but when she’d gotten a good look at him, all broad shoulders and designer clothes, with the rugged-warrior thing going, she’d gone into default wallflower mode. Now, if she could just leave the house with a modicum of poise . . . she’d pack up and get the heck out of Dodge.
He was staring at her, not saying anything, looking at her thoroughly, sizing her up. She realized suddenly that she had been staring at him as well and felt herself go pink. She dropped her gaze and nonchalantly hiked up her jeans. Clearing her throat, she extended her hand and said again, “I’m Natalie. You must be Ross McConnell.”
She hoped that the fact that she knew his name would add a sense of reassurance to the situation and was horrified when her vain attempt at an introduction failed. His probing looks suddenly iced over, turning glacial and rigid. He ignored her outstretched hand and leaned the golf club against a wall, then refolded his arms against his chest. “Natalie whoever you are, I am not in a patient mood. I suggest you leave my home right now.”
The corners of her mouth turned up in a quivering attempt to smile. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. Esther said, I mean—”
“Before I push the send button on this 911 call.”
Natalie’s mouth dropped into an O, then snapped shut. She swiftly moved to the kitchen table, grabbed her things, and slipped out the front door. She ground the key in the ignition, threw the car in reverse, and tore down the road. Her only coherent thought was how glad she was that she hadn’t taken all of her cleaning tools into his house yet, how that would have dragged out her entire escape. She didn’t notice how badly she was shaking until she was halfway home. And it wasn’t until she pulled into her own driveway that she realized she’d left her CD at Mr. McConnell’s house.
* * *
Ross locked the front door and headed slowly up the stairs. His head felt like it would fall off any second, and part of him wished it would. Even though his stomach still felt like he’d been on a roller coaster all night, he decided to risk it and take some ibuprofen. He headed back to the kitchen and grabbed the pills, then filled a glass with tap water. His mouth tasted like battery acid, and he felt like he’d just stepped on a bunny. The slogan on the woman’s T-shirt had read “What if the hokey pokey is really what it’s all about?”
Carrying the glass upstairs with him, he set it on the night table and lay back on the bed. He tried to fluff the pillow and settle it around his throbbing brain. He needed more sleep. He tried to push the image of a female whirligig aside but failed. He could still see the blonde ponytail whipping as wildly as her arms had been, then her falling in a sprawling heap on the floor, her green eyes wide. “Mississippi Mud,” he muttered. He probably shouldn’t have been so short with her, he knew, but he’d used every ounce of patience he had during his two weeks with Gina and the Germans. Whatever he’d had left, he was sure he’d vomited into the great void at thirty thousand feet. And seeing some strange woman in his house had conjured visions of cookies and casseroles, blind dates gone bad, nice women who turned into desperate stalkers when they scented single male prey. He thought of Liz, who had initially approached him. He’d acted on instinct today, that’s all. The tap-dancing woman seemed familiar, for some reason. He couldn’t think anymore right then. His eyes felt heavy, the pulsing throb in his temples beginning to ebb. The ibuprofen was starting to work, thank goodness.
She’d mentioned an Esther, he thought, just before he drifted back to sleep.