Read the Perfect Neighbor Nora Roberts Online

Chapter 1

"And so … have you talked to him still?"

"Hmm?" Cybil Campbell connected to work at her cartoon board, diligently sectioning off the paper with the skill of long habit. "Who am I talking to?"

In that location was a long and gusty sigh—one that had Cybil fighting to go along her lips from twitching. She knew her outset-flooring neighbor Jody Myers well—and understood exactly what him she was referring to.

"The gorgeous Mr. Mysterious in 3B, Cyb. Come on, he moved in a week agone and hasn't said a word to anyone. Just you're correct across the hall. We demand some details here."

"I've been pretty busy." Cybil flicked a glance up, watching Jody, with her expressive brown eyes and mop of dusky-blond pilus, energetically pace around the studio. "Inappreciably noticed him."

Jody's first response was a snort. "Go real. You observe everything."

Jody wandered to the drawing board, hung over Cybil'due south shoulder, then wrinkled her nose. Cypher much interesting about a bunch of blue lines. She liked it meliorate when Cybil started sketching in the sections.

"He doesn't even have a name on the mailbox yet. And nobody ever sees him leave the building during the day. Not even Mrs. Wolinsky, and nobody gets past her."

"Perhaps he'southward a vampire."

"Wow." Intrigued with the idea, Jody pursed her pretty lips. "Would that be cool or what?"

"Too cool," Cybil agreed, and continued to prep her cartoon, as Jody danced around the studio and chattered like a magpie.

Information technology never bothered Cybil to take company while she worked. The fact was, she enjoyed it. She'd never been one for isolation and quiet. It was the reason she was happy living in New York, happy to be settled into a minor building with a handful of unapologetically nosy neighbors.

Such things non only satisfied her on a personal level, they were grist for her professional mill.

And of all the occupants of the one-time, converted warehouse, Jody Myers was Cybil's favorite. Three years earlier when Cybil had moved in, Jody had been an energetic newlywed who fervently believed that everyone should be as blissfully happy every bit she herself was.

Meaning, Cybil mused, married.

Now the mother of the seriously ambrosial eight-month-old Charlie, Jody was only more committed to her cause. And Cybil knew she herself was Jody'southward principal objective.

"Haven't you even come across him in the hall?" Jody wanted to know.

"Non yet." Idly, Cybil picked up a pencil, tapped it against her full-to-pouty lesser lip. Her long-lidded eyes were the greenish of a articulate bounding main at twilight, and might have been exotic or sultry if they weren't about always shimmering with sense of humor.

"Really, Mrs. Wolinsky'due south losing her touch. I have seen him leave the building during the day—which rules out vampire status."

"You have?" Instantly caught, Jody dragged a rolling stool over to the drawing board. "When? Where? How?"

"When—dawn. Where? Heading e on G. How? Insomnia." Getting into the spirit, Cybil swiveled on her stool. Her optics danced with entertainment. "Woke up early, and I kept thinking most the brownies left over from the political party the other nighttime."

"Atomic brownies," Jody agreed.

"Aye, so I couldn't get dorsum to sleep until I ate one. Since I was upwardly anyhow, I came in here to work awhile and concluded up merely standing at the window. I saw him become out. You can't miss him. He must be vi-four. And those shoulders …"

Both women rolled their eyes in appreciation.

"Anyway, he was carrying a gym purse and wearing black jeans and a black sweatshirt, and so my deduction was he was heading to the gym to work out. You lot don't go those shoulders by lying around eating chips and drinking beer all twenty-four hours."

"Aha!" Jody speared a finger in the air. "You lot are interested."

"I'm not dead, Jody. The man is dangerously gorgeous, and you add together that air of mystery along with a tight butt …" Her easily, rarely withal, spread broad. "What's a daughter to do only wonder?"

"Why wonder? Why don't yous become knock on his door, accept him some cookies or something. Welcome him to the neighborhood. So you can find out what he does in there all day, if he's single, what he does for a living. If he'southward single. What—" She broke off, caput lifting in alarm. "That's Charlie waking up."

"I didn't hear a thing." Cybil turned her head, aiming an ear toward the doorway, listened, shrugged. "I swear, Jody, since you gave birth you accept ears like a bat."

"I'thou going to change him and take him for a walk. Want to come?"

"No, can't. I've got to work."

"I'll see yous this night, then. Dinner's at vii."

"Correct." Cybil managed to smile as Jody dashed off to retrieve Charlie from the bedroom where she'd put him downwardly for a nap.

Dinner at seven. With Jody'south tedious and annoying cousin Frank. When, Cybil asked herself, was she going to develop a backbone and tell Jody to end trying to fix her up?

Probably, she decided, almost the same time she told Mrs. Wolinsky the same thing. And Mr. Peebles on the first flooring, and her dry cleaner. What was this obsession with the people in her life to find her a man?

She was 20-four, single and happy. Not that she didn't desire a family one twenty-four hour period. And maybe a nice business firm out in the burbs somewhere with a k for the kids. And the canis familiaris. There'd have to be a dog. Merely that was for some fourth dimension or other. She liked her life right now very much, thanks.

Resting her elbows on her drawing board, she propped her chin on her fists and gave in enough to stare out the window and permit herself to daydream. Must be spring, she mused, that was making her experience so restless and total of nervous energy.

She reconsidered going for that walk with Jody and Charlie later on all but so heard her friend call out a goodbye and slam the door behind her.

So much for that.

Work, she reminded herself, and swiveled back to begin sketching in the starting time section of her comic strip, "Friends and Neighbors."

She had a steady and clever paw for drawing and had come up by it naturally. Her mother was a successful, internationally respected artist; her begetter, the reclusive genius behind the long-running "Macintosh" comic strip. Together, they had given her and her siblings a dearest of art, a sense of the ridiculous and a solid foundation.

Cybil had known, even when she'd left the security of their dwelling in Maine, she'd be welcomed dorsum if New York rejected her.

But it hadn't.

For over three years now her strip had grown in popularity. She was proud of it, proud of the simplicity, warmth and humour she was able to create with everyday characters in everyday situations. She didn't effort to mimic her father's irony or his oft sharp political satires. For her, it was life that fabricated her laugh. Being stuck in line at the movies, finding the right pair of shoes, surviving notwithstanding another blind date.

While many saw her Emily as autobiographical, Cybil saw her as a marvelous well of ideas but never recognized the reflection. Later on all, Emily was a statuesque blonde who had miserable luck holding a job and worse luck with men.

Cybil herself was a brunette of boilerplate height with a successful career. As for men, well, they weren't enough of a priority for her to worry about luck one mode or the other.

A scowl marred her expression, narrowing her light-light-green optics as she caught herself tapping her pencil rather than using it. She just couldn't seem to concentrate. She scooped her fingers through her short cap of brandy-brown hair, pursed her softly sculpted mouth and shrugged. Peradventure what she needed was a brusk break, a snack. Perhaps a little chocolate would go the juices flowing.

She pushed back, tucking her pencil behind her ear in an absentminded habit she'd been trying to pause since

childhood, left the sun-drenched studio and headed downstairs.

Her apartment was wonderfully open; bated from the studio infinite, that had been the main reason she'd snapped it upwards so speedily. A long service bar separated the kitchen from the living area, leaving the lower level all one surface area. Alpine windows allow in light and the street noises that had kept her awake and thrilled for weeks after her arrival in the urban center.

She moved well, another trait inherited from her female parent. What her father called the Grandeau Grace. She had long limbs that had been suited to the ballet lessons she'd begged for as a child—then grown tired of. Barefoot, she padded into the kitchen, opened the fridge and considered.

She could whip up something interesting, she mused. She'd had cooking lessons, too—and hadn't become bored with them until she'd outdistanced her instructor in inventiveness.

Then she heard it and sighed. The music carried through the old walls, across the short hallway outside her door. Sad and sexy, she mused, the quiet sob of the alto sax. Mr. Mysterious in 3B didn't play every day, but she'd come to wish he would.

It always stirred her, those long liquid notes and the swirl of emotion behind them.

A struggling musician? she wondered. Hoping to find his pause in New York. Crestfallen, no doubt, she continued, weaving one of her scenarios for him as she began to have out ingredients. A adult female behind it, of course. Some cold-blooded redhead who'd caught him under her spell, stripped his soul, and then crushed his nonetheless-throbbing heart under her four-inch Italian heel.

A few days earlier, she'd invented a dissimilar lifestyle for him, i where he'd run away from his filthy rich and abusive family unit equally a boy of sixteen. Had survived on the streets past playing on street corners in New Orleans—one of her favorite cities—then had worked his manner north as that same roughshod family—headed by an insane uncle—scoured the state for him.

She hadn't quite worked out why they were scouring, but it wasn't really of import. He was on the run and comforted only by his music.

Or he was a regime agent working undercover.

An international gem thief, hiding from a government agent.

A serial killer trolling for his next victim.

She laughed at herself, then looked down at the ingredients she'd lined upward without thinking. Whatever he was, she realized with another laugh, obviously it looked like she was making him those cookies.

* * *

His name was Preston McQuinn. He wouldn't have considered himself particularly mysterious. Only private. It was that ingrained need for privacy that had plopped him down in the heart of one of the world's busiest cities.

Temporarily, he mused, as he slipped his sax back into its case. But temporarily. In another couple of months, the rehab would exist completed on his house on Connecticut'south rocky coast. Some chosen information technology his fortress, and that was fine with him. A man could exist blissfully alone for weeks at a fourth dimension in a fortress. And no one got in unless the gates were lifted.

He started back upstairs, leaving behind the nearly empty living room. He only used it to play—the acoustics were dandy—or to work out if he didn't feel similar going to the gym a couple of blocks abroad.

The second floor was where he lived—temporarily, he thought again. And all he needed in this way station was a bed, a dresser, the right lighting and a desk sturdy plenty to hold his laptop, monitor and the paperwork that they frequently generated.

He wouldn't take had a phone, but his agent had forced a prison cell phone on him and had pleaded with him to continue it on.

He did—unless he didn't feel similar it.

Preston sabbatum at the desk-bound, pleased that the little turn with his sax had cleared out the cobwebs. Mandy, his agent, was busy chewing on her inch-long nails over the progress of his latest play. He could have told her to spare the enamel. It would be done when it was done, and non a infinitesimal before.

The trouble with success, he thought, was that it became its own entity. One time you did something people liked, they wanted you to do information technology again—only faster and bigger. Preston didn't give a damn almost what people wanted. They could break downwards the doors of the theater to see his next play, give him some other Pulitzer, toss him another Tony and bring him money by the truckloads. Or they could stay away in droves, critically bomb the work and demand their money back.

Information technology was the work that mattered. And information technology only had to matter to him.

Financially, he was secure, e'er had been. Mandy said that was part of his trouble. Without the need or desire for money to keep him hungry, he was arrogant and aristocratic from his audience. And so over again, she also said that was what fabricated him a genius. Considering he simply didn't give a damn.

He saturday in the large room, a tall, muscular man with matted hair the color of a well-fed mink's pelt. Eyes of cool blue scanned the words already typed. His mouth was firm and unsmiling, his confront narrow, rawboned and carelessly handsome.

He tuned out the street sounds that seemed to batter against the windows day and dark, and let himself sideslip dorsum into the soul of the man he'd created inside the clever little computer. A man struggling desperately to survive his own desires.

The harsh audio of his buzzer made him swear as he felt himself sucked back into that empty room. He considered snarling and waiting information technology out, then weighed in homo nature and decided the intruder would probably keep coming back until he dispatched them once and for all.

Probably the eagle-eyed one-time woman from the ground floor, Preston decided as he started downward. She'd already tried to snag him twice when he'd headed out to the club in the evening. He was adept at evading, only it was condign a nuisance. Smarter to hit her confront-on with a few rude remarks and let her huff away to gossip about him.

But when he checked the peephole, he didn't see the tidy adult female with her bright bird's eyes, but a pretty brunette with hair curt as a boy'due south and big green eyes.

From across the hall, he realized, and wondered what the hell she could want. He'd figured since she'd left him alone for virtually a week, she intended to proceed right on doing and then. Which made her, in his mind, the perfect neighbour.

Annoyed that she'd spoiled information technology, he opened the door, leaned against it. "Yeah?"

"Hullo." Oh, yes, indeed, Cybil thought, he was even better when you got a proficient shut-up look at the confront. "I'm Cybil Campbell. 3A?" She offered a bright, friendly smile and gestured to her own door.

He only lifted an intriguingly winged eyebrow. "Yep?"

A homo of few words, she decided and connected to smile—though she wished his eyes would flicker abroad just long enough for her to crane her neck and see beyond him into the apartment. She couldn't very well try it when he was focused on her, without appearing to be prying. Which, of course, she wasn't. Actually.

"I heard yous playing a while ago. I piece of work at dwelling house and sound travels."

If she was here to bitch nearly the noise, she was out of luck, Preston mused. He played when he felt like playing. He continued to study her coolly—the pert, slightly turned-up nose; the sensuously ripe oral fissure; the long narrow feet with sassily painted pink toes.

"I usually forget to turn the stereo on while I'1000 working," she went on cheerfully, making him observe a tiny dimple that winked off and on abreast her rima oris. "So it's nice to hear you lot play. Ralph and Sissy were into Vivaldi big-time. Which is fine, really, but monotonous when that's all you hear. They used to live in your identify, Ralph and Sissy," she explained, waving a hand toward his apartment. "They moved to White Plains after Ralph had an affair with a clerk at Saks. Well, he didn't really take an affair, only he was thinking about it, and Sissy said it was move out of the city or she'd scalp him in a divorce. Mrs. Wolinsky gives them half dozen months, but I don't know, I think they might go far. Anyway …"

She held out the pretty yellow plate with a small-scale mountain of chocolate-chip cookies heaped on information technology, covered by clear pink plastic wrap. "I brought you some cookies."

He glanced down at them, giving her a very brief window of opportunity to sneak

a peek around him and see his empty living room.

The poor guy couldn't even afford a couch, she idea. Then his unsmiling blueish eyes flicked back to hers.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did yous bring me cookies?"

"Oh, well, I was baking them. Sometimes I cook to clear out my head when I tin can't seem to concentrate on work. Most often it's blistering that does information technology for me. And if I keep them all, I'll but swallow them all and detest myself." The dimple kept fluttering. "Don't you like cookies?"

"I've got nada against them."

"Well so, enjoy." She pushed them into his hands. "And welcome to the building. If yous demand anything I'chiliad ordinarily around." Again she gestured vaguely with pretty, slim-fingered hands. "And if you desire to find out who'southward who around here, I can fill yous in. I've lived hither a few years now, and I know everybody."

"I won't." He stepped dorsum and shut the door in her face.

Cybil stood where she was a moment, stunned speechless past the abrupt dismissal. She was adequately certain that she'd lived for twenty-four years without e'er having had a door close in her face up, and now that she'd had the feel, she decided she didn't care for it.

She defenseless herself before she could pound on his door and demand her cookies back. She wouldn't sink that low, she told herself, turning sharply on her heel and marching back to her own door.

Now she knew the mysterious Mr. Mysterious was insanely attractive, built like a god and equally rude as a cranky two-yr-one-time who needed a swat on the butt and a nap. Well, that was fine, just fine. She could stay out of his fashion.

She didn't slam her door—figuring he'd hear information technology and smirk with that go-to-hell mouth of his. But when she was safely inside, she turned to the door and indulged in a juvenile exhibition of making faces, sticking out her tongue and wagging her fingers from her ears.

Information technology made her feel marginally better.

But the lesser line was the human had her cookies, her favorite dessert plate and her very rare antagonism. And she still didn't know his proper name.

* * *

Preston didn't regret his actions. Not for a infinitesimal. He calculated his studied rudeness would keep his terminally pert neighbor with the turned-upward nose and sexy pink toenails out of his hair during his stay across the hall. The final thing he needed was the local welcoming committee rolling upwardly at his door, especially when information technology was led past a bubbly motormouth brunette with eyes like a fairy.

Damn information technology, in New York, people were supposed to ignore their neighbors. He was pretty certain information technology was a city ordinance, and if non, it should be.

But his luck, he thought, that she was single—he had no incertitude that if she'd had a married man she'd accept poured out all his virtues and delights. That she worked at dwelling and would therefore be easy to trip over whenever he headed out was just some other black marking.

And that she made, easily down, the best chocolate-chip cookies in the known universe was close to unforgivable.

He'd managed to ignore them while he worked. Preston McQuinn could ignore a nuclear holocaust if the words were pumping. But when he surfaced, he started to think about them lying in his kitchen on their chirpy yellow plate.

He thought nearly them while he showered, while he dressed, while he eased out the kinks brought on by hours sitting in one spot with posture his third-grade teacher, Sister Mary Joseph, had termed pitiful.

And then when he went downwards for what he considered a well-earned beer, he eyed the plate on the counter. He'd popped the top, took a thoughtful drink. So what if he had a couple? he mused. Tossing them in the trash wasn't necessary—he'd given perky Cybil the heave-ho.

She was going to want her party plate back, he imagined. He might too sample the wares earlier he dumped the plate outside her door.

So he ate one. Grunted in approval. Ate a second and blew out a breath of pure appreciation.

And when he'd consumed nearly two dozen, he cursed.

Like a damn drug, he thought, feeling slightly ill and definitely sluggish. He stared at the near-empty plate with a combination of self-disgust and greed. With what scraps of willpower he had left, he dumped the remaining cookies in a plastic bowl, then crossed the room to get his sax.

He was going to walk effectually the block a few times before he headed to the club.

When he opened the door he heard her stomping up the stairs. Wincing, he drew back, leaving his door open up only a crack. He could hear that mile-a-minute voice of hers going, which had him lifting a brow when he saw she was solitary.

"Never again," she muttered. "I don't care if she sticks bamboo shoots under my nails, holds a hot poker to my eye. I will never, e'er, go through that torture again in this lifetime. That's it. Over, washed."

She'd inverse her clothes, Preston noted, and was wearing snug black pants with a tailored blackness blazer, offsetting them with a shirt the color of ripe strawberries and long dangles at her ears.

She kept talking to herself equally she opened a bag the size of a postage stamp postage stamp. "Life's too short to be bored witless for ii precious hours of it. She will not do this to me over again. I know how to say no. I but have to practice, that's all. Where the bloody hell are my keys?"

The sound of the door opening behind her fabricated her jump, spin effectually. Preston noted that the dangles in her ears didn't match and wondered if it was a fashion statement or abandon. Since she evidently couldn't find her keys in a bag smaller than the palm of his hand, he opted for the latter.

She looked flushed, flustered and fresh. And smelled even better than her cookies. And because he noticed, she just irritated him more.

Read the Perfect Neighbor Nora Roberts Online

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