Naughty Neighbor - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,26

she thought about it, the more exotic and heroic it seemed, and her life sounded dull in comparison. She’d lived all her life within the beltway. She’d barely traveled because she’d never had time for a vacation. She’d never seen a jungle or a desert or even the Pacific Ocean. In the past, she’d never much cared about seeing Kuala Lumpur or San Salvador or Shagai Fort, but suddenly she felt rabid with wanderlust. She should broaden her horizons, she thought. She should see more of the world. Maybe she should get a job with the CIA or Cunard or join the Peace Corps.

She was on adrenaline overload, she acknowledged. She was romanticizing Pete Streeter, and she was grossly exaggerating her desire to trade modern plumbing for a glimpse of the Khyber Pass. Still, she felt exhilarated over the idea that, suddenly, there were all sorts of new options and exciting experiences available to her.

Pete went east on the beltway to Connecticut Avenue and then cut south. He wasn’t sure if it was the best route, but it seemed the most straightforward. Louisa probably knew of a better road, but he didn’t want to disturb her. She was lost in thought, chewing his last piece of gum for all she was worth.

Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was wild and tangled. She was steamy from passion and their run through the woods. She smelled like sex and Juicy Fruit, and just sitting next to her made his heart race. She was primordial woman in a Porsche. She was beautiful and erotic and naively blind to the power she held over him.

He couldn’t imagine what she was thinking, but the next morning she was going to wake up with her blood pressure back to normal and the passion of the night hours behind her. She was going to be furious that she’d almost made it in a car, on the side of a road, with a man she’d only known for three days and thought was a notch below slug spit. He was going to keep his door locked and his sound system cranked up until she was done breaking things.

He left Connecticut Avenue with its neon-lit restaurants and twenty-four-hour traffic. A block off Connecticut on 27th Street, urban Washington was dark and quiet, settled in for the night behind locked doors. Globed streetlights dropped dim light over gray sidewalk and made the porch and shrub shadows seem black and deep.

Pete always felt comfortable here. There was a softness to 27th Street. It was unpretentious with its old-fashioned above-ground wires, rickety garages, and messy lawns. The residents were busy but not unfriendly.

His house in Santa Barbara had privacy because of the exclusivity of the neighborhood. His Manhattan condo had privacy because the doorman strictly enforced it. 27th Street was a place where privacy needn’t be guarded. Privacy occurred naturally on 27th Street through a lack of interest and a shortage of idle hours.

There was normality here, Pete thought. It was a place to raise children and grow old with grace. At least, it had been prior to the pig business.

Pete parked the car and followed Louisa to her door and into her apartment. He checked out each room, including the closets. He made sure the windows were locked and the back door secure. The following day the alarm system would be in place. For the night he’d have to hope for the best.

“It would be safer if we stayed together tonight,” he said.

Louisa weighed the risk of being attacked in her sleep and decided she was safer taking her chances with the pig people. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I’d sleep on the couch.”

Louisa rolled her eyes.

“Unless you’d rather I slept in your bed…”

She felt the flush creeping up from her shirt collar. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Pete grinned. He pulled her to him and kissed her long and hard. When he was done, he sighed in satisfaction. “Still hot for me, huh?”

He was right, of course, and that made it all the worse. “Out,” Louisa said. “Out, out, out, out, out!”

He gave another sigh. This time it was clearly regret. He opened the front door and stood on the porch until he heard the lock click.

Louisa wasn’t sure she wanted to get out of bed. It was morning, and the sun was shining, and Washington was on the move without her. She had no place to go—no job, no future. Even if she had a place