The Perfect Neighbor by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online

*
    He got home at three, prepared to beat on Cybil’s door and demand quiet. It was a letdown to arrive and discover the party was over. There wasn’t a sound coming from her apartment.
    He let himself in, locked up, then told himself he’d take advantage of the peace. After brewing a pot of coffee strong enough to dance on, he settled back at his machine, back into his play, back into the minds of characters who were destroying their lives because they couldn’t reach their own hearts.
    The sun was up when he stopped, when the sudden rush of energy that had flooded him drained out again. He decided it was the first solid work he’d managed in nearly a week, and celebrated by falling facedown and fully dressed into bed.
    And there he dreamed.
    Of a pretty face framed by a fringe of glossy brown hair, offset by long-lidded and enormous eyes the color of willow fronds. Of a voice that bubbled like a brook.
    Why does everything have to be so serious?
she asked him, laughing as she slid her arms up his chest, linked them around his neck.
    Because life’s a serious business.
    That’s only one-half of one of the coins. There are lots and lots of coins. Aren’t you going to dance with me?
    He already was. They were in Delta’s, and though it was empty, the music was playing, low and sultry.
    I’m not going to keep my eye on you. I can’t afford it.
    But you already are.
    The top of her head reached his chin. When she tilted her head back, flicked her tongue lazily over his jaw, he felt the rush of his own blood.
    That’s not all you want to keep on me, is it?
    I don’t want you.
    There was that laugh, light as air, frothy as champagne.
What’s the point of lying,
she asked him,
in your own dreams? You can do anything you want to me in dreams. It won’t matter.
    I don’t want you,
he said again, even as he pulled her to the floor.
    He awoke, sweating, tangled in sheets, appalled, amazed, and finally when his head started to clear, amused.
    The woman was a menace, he decided, and the only thing that had reflected any sort of reality in the painfully erotic dream was that he didn’t want her.
    He rubbed his hands over his face, glanced at the watch still on his wrist. Since it was after four in the afternoon, he judged he’d gotten the first decent eight hours of sleep he’d had in nearly a week. So what if it was at the wrong end of the time scale?
    He trooped down to the kitchen, drank the dregs of the coffee and rooted out the only bagel that still looked edible. He was going to have to break down and buy some food.
    He spent an hour working out, mechanically lifting weights, reminding his body it wasn’t built to simply sit at a keyboard. Pleased that the sweat he’d worked up this time had nothing to do with sexual fantasies, he spent another twenty minutes indulging in a hot shower, and shaved for the first time in three—or maybe it was four—days.
    He thought he might take himself out for a decent meal—which would be a nice change of pace. Then he’d face the tedium and low-grade horror of going to the market. Dressed and feeling remarkably clearheaded and cheerful, he opened his door.
    Cybil dropped the hand she’d lifted to ring his buzzer. “Thank God you’re home.”
    His mood wavered as his thought zoomed right back to the dream, and the barroom floor. “What?”
    “You have to do me a favor.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “It’s an emergency.” She grabbed his arm before he could walk by. “It’s life and death. My life and very possibly Mrs. Wolinsky’s nephew Johnny’s death. Because one of us is going to die if I have to go out with him, which is why I told her I had a date tonight.”
    “And you think this interests me because …”
    “Oh, don’t be surly now, McQuinn. I’m a desperate woman. Look, she didn’t give me time to think. I’m a terrible liar. I mean, I just don’t lie very often, so I’m bad at it. She kept asking who I was going out with, and I couldn’t think of