Patti Standard - His Perfect Family

His first stop was the pile of bills and scribbled notes tucked behind the phone on the counter next to the refrigerator. Carefully and methodically, he went through each scrap of paper. Mrs. Rhodes carried a balance on both of her gold cards, he noted. The latest charges were to a local pharmacy and to the Tire Exchange for a complete set of new radials. She was pushing the due date on several of her bills but seemed to be keeping her head above water. If she had twenty-five thousand tucked away somewhere, she wasn’t sending any of it to Arkansas Power and Gas.

Upstairs wasn’t exactly a wealth of information, either. There was a girl’s bedroom, early teens, he guessed from the amount of black clothing in the closet. A computer held the place of honor on her desk, and he clicked on the monitor and CPU to take a cursory look at the directory. He whistled softly. A hack. A talented one. That was interesting.

There was a standard bathroom, with the standard woman’s stuff—hot rollers, makeup and intricately designed brushes and combs. He opened the cupboard under the sink and pulled out a large pink box with a delicate flower embossed on its front. He ran his hand to the bottom and flexed some of the absorbent pads. No stiff hundred-dollar bills crinkled. It was worth a try. He’d seen stranger hiding places.

The spare bedroom was used for an office-sewing-stackthe-Christmas-decorations room. He’d need to spend some time there, going through boxes. The last room along the hallway was hers. Definitely hers. Anything that spoke of Mr. Harvey Rhodes had been effectively disposed of during the six months since he’d missed that turn. There were no suits in the closet, no ties on the rack, no lingering whiff of spicy aftershave. Any sign of the man had disappeared as thoroughly as the money.

Interesting.

If she had the cash somewhere on the premises, her room was the most likely place to hide it, he decided, since it offered the most privacy. He crossed to the dresser and rummaged through the drawers with a skilled thoroughness that left no edge unexplored yet didn’t ruffle so much as a fold of cloth.

He paused when he reached the drawer overflowing with silky scraps. His hands sank into the piles, rough calluses snagging the delicate material. That jackass Round had been right—satin and lace, midnight blue and red and emerald, smelling of night and sin. He shoved the drawer shut and moved to the closet.

Her taste in clothing ran to pastel colors, soft, drycleanable and matching. He frowned, trying to imagine the hot red satin he’d just held in his hands underneath these cool, easter-egg-sweet skirts and blouses. More and more interesting.

He dropped to his knees and burrowed to the back corner of the closet, feeling along the floor for a loose carpet edge. Several long dresses in plastic garment bags engulfed him, draping over his head.

He felt a polite tap on his back.

“Excuse me, Mr. Matchett? May I help you find something?”

Cutter froze for no more than an instant before slowly backing out of the closet, his hammer bumping along the carpet, his mind quickly and deliberately evaluating options, discarding one after another. He fought the sound-muffling garment bags from around his ears and turned toward the room, toward her, rocking back on his haunches in the closet doorway. His face was level with her stomach, a gently rounded female stomach zipped into a pair of cream-colored corduroys.

He swallowed, his mouth dry, and worked his way up. Past the curve of her breasts, covered in something sky blue and clingy, up the long column of her neck to a firm yet delicate chin, a thin and aquiline nose, cheekbones high and sharp enough to cut, and long blond hair, the color of wheat where it waved around her shoulders ripening to big buttery chunks around her face.

A classy face that could freeze a man to death—if it weren’t for those eyes. Cutter stared into her eyes, the color of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s with a few swallows gone. Just enough to let in some light, to kiss it and make it glow. The color of his favorite honey stain, a custom blend he hand buffed until oak turned to sunlight.

“Mr. Matchett?” she repeated. There was just a hint of the South in her voice.

“I was checking the direction of the floor joists,” he said calmly. He gave a rap on the floor and cocked his head, pretending to listen for a hollow ring. Thank God this section of her bedroom was directly over the pantry downstairs.

“Oh.”

He stuck his head back into the closet and began to pound some more, his heart drumming in his ears just as loudly. What in the hell was she doing home! He was disgusted with himself for being caught in such a foolish position. That little weasel Round had said she worked at the bank from eight to five and the daughter didn’t get home from school until at least four-thirty. He was getting lazy and sloppy in his old age, and he cursed himself. In the good old days, it would have been a bullet in the back instead of her soft touch on his spine.

He could still feel a leftover tingle where her fingers had rested. An icy little blonde, Round had said, yet he had burned right through, head to toe, when he’d looked at her. Fire, not ice. He shifted his shoulders, trying to shake off the odd sensation. She was the mark, honey eyes or not

Adrianne stared at the back of Cutter Matchett’s jeans sticking from her closet. It was difficult to have a conversation in this position, she decided, so she said nothing, still disconcerted by the long, cool look he’d just given her. And by her reaction to it. It had been rather like staring into the hypnotic eyes of a large predatory cat, she decided. You admired its grace, its power, all the time uneasily aware that the beast was wondering whether to eat you now or later. She found herself anxiously studying his trim behind while she waited for the rapping to stop.

Seconds later, the man sprang to his feet. “Got it.” He nodded to her crisply, then strode from the room, down the hallway toward the stairs without another word, leaving her to stare after him.

Well.

Slowly, she retraced her steps. She’d come home from her grocery-shopping trip to find his truck blocking her driveway and his tools in her kitchen, and she’d made a quick survey of the house until she’d found him in her bedroom. By the time she returned downstairs, he was already at work in the pantry, attacking the old shelves with a crowbar.

His back was to her, so she gave him a quick, surreptitious once-over from the safety of the doorway. Six foot and strong as an ox, if the way nails were popping was any indication. He wore tight, faded jeans and a black T-shirt that had been washed so many times she could see the lighter tint of his skin showing through at the shoulders. A battered tool belt hung around his hips, tugging at his jeans. His boots were sturdy-looking high-tops, laced with leather.

A man’s man, she thought. The type who would handle hammers, rifles, horses — women — with a relaxed yet firm grip. Good whiskey, rare steak, voluptuous blondes. So different from the men at the bank or Harvey’s professional friends, who monitored their cholesterol with religious fervor and could order quiche with a straight face. Not at all the type of man she was used to being around. She licked suddenly dry lips.

“Well, I better get the groceries out of the van.” She addressed his back and wasn’t surprised when there was no answer.

The paper bags were unloaded and groceries put away with no sound except the soft shutting of cupboard doors and the tortured noises coming from the pantry. She felt the urge to tiptoe and found herself holding her breath during any unexpected silences. This was ridiculous! The man was going to be in her house for the next two weeks. In her kitchen, which was where she and Lisa spent most of their time. She couldn’t very well pretend he wasn’t there. He was large, uncommunicative, intense, but that was no reason why she couldn’t be polite.

She marched over to the pantry and planted herself in the doorway. This was her house, after all, and no—no hunk with a hammer was going to intimidate her. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.

He tore a two-by-four loose from the wall before he turned his head to consider her over his thick shoulder, the board in his hand studded with twisted nails like some medieval weapon. “Are you planning to be home all day today, Mrs. Rhodes?”

“It’s Adrianne, please.” She smiled.

He didn’t.

“I’m on vacation. I thought as long as the house would be a mess with the remodeling, it would be a good time to repaint the upstairs and do my spring-cleaning. The place hasn’t been painted since we bought it....” He watched her, unblinking, as she wound down. “So, uh, if you need me to run errands or anything, just let me know.”

His dark eyes were as unsettling now as before. She found herself studying his face as intently as he had hers. His dark hair was cut short, military short, and shot through with gray. The cut made his disturbing hooded eyes and heavy brows stand out and threw his straight nose into prominence. Extras in Mafia movies had faces like his. His jaw was determinedly square and drew attention to his lips, lips that curved in a smile that wasn’t really a smile. More like a mocking arc, but whether he laughed at her, himself or the world in general, she couldn’t tell. Whichever, it wasn’t very pleasant

Well, she was more than used to dealing with unpleasant people. As a loan officer, she dealt with them all the time. All you had to do was smile — always. The more unpleasant they became, the more pleasant you became. And you always, always, smiled.

She’d seen her mother do it every night of her childhood, those hot summer nights in Atlanta when the air was so wet and muggy you had to force it into your lungs. The more her father drank, the more Blanche would smile, the more gaily she would laugh as she’d take Adrianne into another room and shut the door tight and play dolls or dress-up or fairy princess.

So now she smiled politely at the man in her kitchen until he finally said, “I’D let you know if I need anything.”

“All right.”

He lifted the crowbar once again. Obviously, the conversation was over as far as he was concerned. And she felt nothing but relief. Ignoring him as best she could, she gathered her cleaning supplies and prepared to tackle the living room. She stood in the doorway, bucket in one hand, rag in the other, and took a deep breath. A strange sense of anticipation grew within her. As the weather had warmed, she’d felt an increasing need to — purge. She wanted everything around her clean and fresh and...hers. Just hers.

She wanted to wash away every fingerprint Harvey had ever put on the woodwork, pick up every piece of lint that had ever dropped from his pockets. She wanted to vacuum away the indentation of the policemen sitting on her sofa and that odious man from the insurance company, badgering her, looking at her with suspicious, disbelieving eyes while she insisted she didn’t know what they were talking about. She didn’t know anything about any twenty-five thousand dollars. Harvey hadn’t come home from the office that day. She’d never seen the money, never heard of the money; she had no idea what they were talking about.

She wanted it all gone.

So she started on the baseboards, wiping them clean. Next, she moved every piece of furniture and vacuumed underneath, took down the drapes, removed pictures from the walls, dusted the leaves of live plants and silk plants alike. Nothing was spared.

For three hours, she cleaned and scrubbed and polished until the living room shone in the sun that came through the curtainless, sparkling windows. And while she cleaned, she was aware of Cutter Matchett in the next room tearing her pantry apart.