that's the first thing you and I have agreed on since—" She cut off her words. It would be a mistake to mention that horrible dinner together and what happened afterward.
He knew exactly what she meant. She could see it on his face. She felt her own flood with color. He didn't speak, thank God. Didn't tease or give her a knowing smile. He just nodded.
She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. Then she gave him a direct look. "Thank you, again. For all you did for me tonight."
"Sure. It was nothing." He left the room.
She flopped back on the bed with a huge sigh. She stared up at the dark ceiling. He was a nice man. Under all that bluster and cockiness was a good person. He loved his grandmother. He had honor and scruples, even when he was ten. Who would have thought it? The lamp went out, and she could hear him settle in on the sofa. She reached over and turned down the gas lamp. Then she lay there.
The silence was strange. It was almost too quiet. She could hear nothing from outside, not even the rain. There was only the sound of her own heartbeat, which was like drumming in her ears.
He was there, just around the corner. And she was here, sleeping in his bed.
She turned on her side, then sat up and adjusted the ice and drew the covers over her. Her head sank into his feather pillow. She turned her face into it and breathed in. Conn. It smelled like his shoulder. She turned and grabbed the other pillow, hugging it to her chest, and she curled onto her side, then closed her eyes.
"Nellibelle?" he called out from the next room.
She resisted the urge to moo. She flopped over on her back, arm over her eyes before she answered,. "Yes?"
"Don't go thinking I'm some kind of hero…or anything."
What was this all about? “You did rescue me."
“Found in the dangerous jaws of a bed cabinet?”
She was smiling. Dangerous jaws. Of course he was somewhat of a hero in her eyes. He'd rescued her.
"You still awake?" he called out.
"Yes."
"I have a confession to make."
"What?"
"I knew the roof leaked."
A moment later she heaved the pillows across the room.
Chapter 5
The next morning Nellibelle went back to being herself.
She was stiff and cold, which made him moody and brooding. They didn't speak, until the next day when he took it upon himself to repair her roof. It took a week for Conn to fix it. While he worked on it, he discovered something about his landlady.
Miss Eleanor Austen was so soft-hearted, she fed cream to all the stray cats in the neighborhood.
He had been high above her, working with some glass sealant when he heard her chattering away. He looked down through the glass and saw her puttering around the kitchen, gathering bowls and filling them with cream from the bottles he'd seen the milk wagon deliver.
Every day the cats came up the fire escape and sat there until she opened the window. They would huddle near her feet, whining and crying until she placed the bowls on the floor.
Afterward she tied red and green Christmas ribbons with silly looking little brass bells around their necks as if they were gift-wrapped, and she opened the window for them. Four cats stayed after that first morning, curled up on her sofa. Five others left, but from what he could see, they came back at the same time every day.
She began to talk to him the second day. By the third, she fed him sandwiches and coffee. They sat at her table and talked about the building, about her grandfather, and she explained about the lease and Andrew Austen's dream.
Conn had liked the old man and thought him fair. But Conn's first impression of Austen’s granddaughter had been that she was completely unpredictable and unreasonable. He never did understand her.
Until now when he knew her better.
While he worked on the roof, he learned her routine, kept watching her when he should have been working. She was tall and lean and had an efficient manner about her. But he'd seen her do the strangest things, like the bells on the cats.
She was an odd mixture of logic and illogic. He supposed that wasn't her fault. She was a woman. But watching her try to put together one of her grandfather's telescopes had been something he wasn't likely to forget. She sat in the middle of the floor,