The Wrong Man by Natasha Anders
“If you say so,” he acquiesced gracefully. He wasn’t about to argue when he’d already gotten his way.
CHAPTER FIVE
“What is this place?” Sam asked ten minutes later. Lia had brought her tiny, ancient car to a stop outside a beautiful Cape Dutch–style building off the main road of the tiny town of Riversend. A discreet plaque on the wall just below the house number told him that this wasn’t a private residence, but he wasn’t close enough to read it.
There really wasn’t much going on in this town. Lia had pointed out the “hot spots”—pub, eatery, Methodist church, random shops, Catholic church, Spencer Carlisle’s huge sporting goods store, Anglican church, library, mosque, grocery store, her father’s veterinary practice—in very little time. It certainly unsettled a veteran sinner like Sam to be around so many places of worship.
Once they’d turned off Main Road into the “suburbs,” it had been nothing but cute house after cute house. Before they reached their mystery destination, she’d pointed out Daisy’s little dollhouse, telling him she, Lia, would be moving there soon.
“Twice a week, I come here to play the piano for an hour or so.”
“The piano?” he repeated dumbly, and she nodded, flipping the sun visor down and using the mirror to apply bubblegum-flavored lip gloss to her soft, pink mouth. The gloss gave her lips a juicy sheen, tempting Sam to sample that bubblegum taste with his own lips and tongue. She wore very little makeup, just a bit of eyeliner and that lightly rose-tinted gloss, accentuating her two best features.
God, he desperately wanted to kiss her!
He averted his eyes and shifted uncomfortably, willing his unwelcome erection away. This was highly inconvenient; she was supposed to be growing more sexually aware of him, not vice versa. He forced himself to push away the memory of her beautiful, soft mouth planting sweet kisses all over his naked chest and ran an embarrassingly shaky hand through his hair. It needed cutting—maybe he could convince Lia to do it for him. He nearly groaned at the thought, the idea of her hands in his hair and on his scalp sending a shudder of anticipatory pleasure down his spine.
Rein it in, for fuck’s sake! he commanded himself sternly. This was getting ridiculous.
“I didn’t know you played the piano,” he heard himself say and was grateful that his lizard brain had kicked in and his fight instinct had flickered to life. He really couldn’t continue to sit here mutely fantasizing about stripping that prim little dress from her neatly proportioned body and fucking her senseless. It was adolescent and uncouth.
“I’m a passable player, nothing special. I’m the only one available to do it at this time of the day,” she said with a shrug, grabbing her handbag and letting herself out of the car. Sam fumbled with his seat belt and the door handle, and by the time he staggered out of the car, she was halfway up the path toward the building. She set the car alarm when she heard his door close, not bothering to turn and check if he was following her.
A little disgruntled by this lack of concern, Sam felt his brow lower into an irritable scowl but continued to follow her like a lost puppy. He wasn’t used to having so little control over a situation, and for some reason he’d expected Lia to be fawning all over his injured ass. In fact, he’d placed bets with himself that he’d be irritated with her fretting less than halfway through the day. She struck him as a fusser . . . but there’d been nary a fuss in sight all morning. And Sam irrationally found himself irritated by the absence of what he now considered his due.
He shook his head and grumbled beneath his breath as he trudged up to where she stood waiting by the door. Oh, okay, scratch that, she wasn’t waiting, the door was opening and she was totally going inside . . . without him.
For fuck’s sake!
He hastened his pace and caught up before the door shut in his face. A pretty young woman, with complex-looking cornrows and wearing what looked like a nurse’s uniform, smiled at him questioningly.
“I’m with her.” He nodded toward Lia, who was chatting with another uniformed woman a few paces ahead of them. What was this place? The woman—her name tag identified her as Prudence Magubane—quirked her head as she assessed him.
“With Lia?” she asked.
“The one and only,” he affirmed, and her smile widened.
“Welcome to Sunset Manor. We’re glad you can join us for the afternoon musicale. Our residents will be so pleased to see a new face.”
Residents?
“Happy to be here, I’m sure,” he said gallantly, while wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into. He nodded at Prudence before hastening to catch up with Lia.
“Please be nice,” she said beneath her breath once he was beside her, and he frowned, a little insulted by her comment. He’d never aspired to be nice in his life, but he wouldn’t go out of his way to be an arsehole, for God’s sake. What did she take him for? Some callow misanthrope without any social graces? He could lay on the charm when he wanted to. She knew that better than most.
“I don’t do nice, princess. I do charming, charismatic, sexy, fascinating—”
“Conceited,” she interrupted.
“I would have gone with honest,” he said, laying it on thick.
“All right, fine. Be charming and charismatic. Just don’t be dismissive, okay?” she said, stopping outside a pair of large, closed double doors. A sign above the doors read CAFETERIA in bold letters. She threw back her shoulders without a further word and pushed the doors open. Sam followed and came to a complete standstill just inside the room.
The cafeteria was filled with senior citizens. Men and women whose ages appeared to range from sixty-five to ninety, maybe older. They were all dressed to the nines, and they all greeted Lia exuberantly. Lia was smiling, that huge, beautiful, open smile that he had last seen at her sister’s wedding. It had captivated him then and did the same now. He couldn’t take his eyes off her beaming face as she greeted everybody by name, asking after grandchildren, pets, and ailments.
This wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting, and while half of him wanted to flee before the silver brigade caught sight of him, the other half just wanted to stare at her and bask in all that warmth and radiance.
Still, whatever this was, it clearly wasn’t his scene, and he tore his gaze from Lia and took one backtracking step before he was spotted. A little old lady with a walker beamed at him and, with more speed than he would have believed possible, came up to chat.
“Hello there, are you our Lia’s young man? She’s never brought a boy to our afternoon soirees before. I’m Alison Bryson. I hope you’ll save a dance for me.” She stuck out her hand, and before he quite knew what he was doing, he took her palm in his. He smiled down at the lovely old girl and bent at the waist, lifting the back of her hand to his mouth to drop a kiss onto her paper-thin skin.
“Enchanted, I’m sure,” he purred, and she giggled girlishly. “My name’s Sam, and I’m always happy to dance with a beautiful woman.”
“Silly boy,” she tittered. “Aren’t you the charmer?”
A few of the others drifted over and introduced themselves, avidly interested in Sam, wanting to know if he was Lia’s “gentleman friend.” They were a friendly and cheerful group and couldn’t stop lauding Sam’s “sweetheart.” She was such a “dear thing” with a “kind heart” and a “gentle spirit” and a “wonderful pianist with very talented fingers.” Sam didn’t know about the rest of it, but they were spot on about her talented fingers. He suppressed a shudder at the inappropriate memory of her hand tightening around his . . .
“—member?” Sam blinked, reddened, and shook himself before focusing on the dapper gentleman decked out in a neatly pressed three-piece suit and a white fedora.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” he apologized.
“I asked if you were willing to become a member of our Sunday night poker club,” the man, Bertie, repeated patiently. Obviously used to repeating himself in this half-deaf crowd.
“Uh? I’m no
“You do play, right?”
“Of course, but I probably won’t be in Riversend for very long.”
“You won’t? What about our Lia? You’re not the love-them-and-leave-them type, are you? That doesn’t sit right with me at all, young man! She’s a good, decent girl.” The man looked seriously affronted at the thought of Sam abandoning Lia.
“We’re not—”
“Brand and I are just friends,” Lia’s voice intervened, and Sam had never been more grateful for an extraction from a volatile—potentially hostile—situation before. “I’m helping him while he recovers from his injuries. He got stabbed saving his girlfriend from an attacker.”
Oohs and ahhs followed that revelation, and the crowd pressed in around him, wanting to know more. He sent a panicked look at Lia, whose lips quirked in amusement before she clapped her hands like a schoolteacher bringing a disruptive class to order. She moved to the piano and plucked one of several binders up from the top of the instrument.
“Why don’t we start?” She looked down at the binder. “I’m taking requests from Set B today.” Her words definitely distracted them, and she smiled and mouthed you’re welcome at Sam before sitting down in front of the old upright piano in the corner. The requests came thick and fast, and she grinned before settling on “Moon River.” Lia was right; her playing was passable at best. She hit the occasional wrong note, and it reminded Sam of the dance classes his mother had insisted he attend when he was a boy, but it was good enough to dance to. Soon all the debonair silver foxes present were approaching their giggling, coquettish ladies and requesting the “honor” of this dance. It was so sweet it practically gave Sam a toothache, but at the same time, he couldn’t help finding the entire scene poignant and charming.
The women outnumbered the men, and the few ladies who were left without a partner watched the dancing couples wistfully. Sam spotted Alison Bryson huddled among the wallflowers and made his way toward her.
“I believe this dance is mine,” he said with a bow. The corny gesture was worth it just to see her face light up. He gathered her frail body into his arms, maintaining a polite distance between them, and slowly, mindful of the fact that she had to dance without her walker, waltzed her around the floor. It was awkward with her limp and his cast, but they fared quite admirably despite that.
Lia played song after song. The sheets in Set B ranged from “Fly Me to the Moon” to “Great Balls of Fire” and even “Hey Ya!” by Outkast. The seniors loved it. She watched Brand surreptitiously as he made his way from one wallflower to the next, and by the end of the hour every woman present had had at least one partnered dance. At one point, with one of the livelier songs, he’d divided his attention between three different partners at the same time.
Lia didn’t know what she’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t Brand throwing himself into the experience so wholeheartedly. She’d expected reticence, surliness, possible lurking in the corner . . . instead he’d been the life of the party, and by the time they left he’d promised Bertie he’d be the fourth at this week’s poker match, begged Edith to bake one of her famous chocolate mousse cakes for him, oohed over Alison’s pictures of her grandbabies, and allowed at least five of the seniors—that Lia had seen—to sign his cast.
To say that he’d been a hit would be understating it.
He had a definite bounce in his step when they walked back to the car and grinned at her once they were both buckled up and she had the engine running again.
“You thought I was going to hate that, didn’t you?” he asked, his voice challenging. She watched him contemplatively, tilting her head slightly as a thought occurred to her.
“I did, and you knew that. Is that why you laid it on so thick? Did you pretend to enjoy yourself just to prove me wrong? Because they all genuinely liked you, Brand. I would hate to have them disappointed if you start breaking promises.”
“What promises?”
“Bertie’s poker night, for one.”
“About that . . .” Lia braced herself, waiting for the inevitable excuse, knowing she would be the one who would have to break the news to Bertie. “I’m going to need a ride on Sunday night.”
“What?” she asked blankly.
“To the poker thing. I can’t drive myself, you’re going to have to bring me.”
“You’re actually going?”
“Lia, I can be a prick . . . but you don’t know me well enough to assume I make promises I won’t keep.” His voice was like ice, and Lia chewed the inside of her cheek while she looked at him for another long moment, trying to gauge how much of what she’d presumed about this man was accurate.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. Thank you for making sure they all had a good time.”
“Not my usual scene, but I enjoyed it. Where to next?”
For a small town, Riversend had way too many homeless creatures in its animal shelter—dogs, cats, a couple of parrots, a pony, two donkeys, countless chickens, an African rock python, and a freaking porcupine. Lia spent time grooming the long-haired cats and dogs, talking to them soothingly while she gently combed the knots from their coats. The animals, clearly starved for affection, loved it, and Sam could see it broke a piece of her heart every time she had to return one to its cage. While she was busy with that, one of the animal minders, Siphiso, introduced Sam to a few of the rehab dogs. They were all potential adoptees with abusive backgrounds who had to be rehabilitated before they could be cleared for adoption. Siphiso explained that less than half of the rehab dogs wound up in loving homes even after being cleared. People were too reticent to take a large dog with a violent past into their homes.
“This is Trevor,” Siphiso said as they came up to yet another large pen. A huge chocolate-and-white boxer crouched in the farthest corner of the cage. His body language was hostile—tail down, ears and hackles up, and teeth bared. He looked both terrifying and terrified, and Sam felt something inside him break at the sight of the thin, cowering, angry animal. His white muzzle was covered in scars; there were thick ridges of scar tissue all over his torso and back.
“What happened to you, my boy?” Sam asked beneath his breath, hearing the hitch in his voice.
“He was a fighting dog. Somebody found him on the side of the road—he was stabbed many times. Possibly by his owner because he’s a bad fighter. Or by a competitor because he’s too good. He’s very angry. Doesn’t trust anybody. Dr. Gunnerson-Smythe wanted to give him a chance and said we should try rehab, but he’s been with us for nearly four months now and still trusts no one.”
“Christ,” Sam swore shakily, sinking to his haunches in front of the pen. “Hey, boy. Trevor? That’s a shitty name. We’ll pick a new one, okay? New name for a new life.”
“Trevor is his new name.” Lia’s voice sounded quietly behind him. She nodded at Siphiso with a smile, and the man waved and walked off, leaving them alone. Lia crouched down beside Sam, uncaring of the fact that her white hem was touching the dirty floor.
“No wonder he’s given up on life,” Sam said, but he couldn’t summon up enough cheer to make the words humorous. Instead they sounded dull and despairing. He continued to look at the dog, who didn’t even have enough interest in his surroundings to maintain his hostility. He just huffed a sigh and sank to the floor, huddling on his thin blanket and cushion and watching them with wary eyes. Stabbed, for fuck’s sake. What kind of motherfucker stabbed an animal? Sam felt an affinity with the dog. It sucked balls to be stabbed.
“We have to go,” Lia whispered after a few long, silent moments. Sam wrested his gaze from the wretched creature in the corner of the pen and gratefully pinned them on her lovely face.
“How do you do this every week?”
“Every day,” she corrected, and he swore shakily.
“How?”
“How can I not?” she asked simply, and he shook his head before one last, quick look at Trevor. He pushed himself up, ignoring the twinges in his leg and back, and stro
Brand didn’t say a word in the car as Lia drove them to MJ’s for lunch. She should have warned him about the shelter. She hadn’t expected it to affect him as deeply as it clearly had. Something about Trevor seemed to have resonated with him. The dog didn’t have much time left. He wasn’t responding to any of the conventional rehabilitation techniques, and Dr. Gunnerson-Smythe, the shelter’s vet, had begun making the warning noises he usually made just before an animal was about to be put to sleep.
“I’m sorry,” she said after parking the car, and he blinked, like someone coming out of a deep sleep.
“I beg your pardon?” His words nearly made her smile—they were so innately British.
“About the shelter. I should have warned you or something.” He shook his head.
“People can be dicks,” he muttered. “You help the victims of that dickery. Try to make their lives a little happier. It’s commendable. Nothing to be sorry about.”
“You weren’t prepared for it.”
“Nothing you said could have prepared me for that. It’s just one of those things you have to see for yourself.”
“Did you have dogs as a boy?”
“Not even a goldfish.”
“Seriously? That’s . . .” It was surprising, was what it was. He’d been so deeply affected by Trevor’s plight, Lia had been certain that he must have had at least one dog in the past. “It’s unexpected.”
“My mum and I moved around a lot when I was a kid, not the best life for a pet,” he said, and her eyes narrowed. Not the best life for a child, either, if you asked her. “And then when I was older, I joined the army. Did that for a while. Then started the agency with Mason. There was never time for any pets.”
“I see.”
“Where are we?” he asked, changing the subject without any finesse whatsoever.
“MJ’s. For lunch.”