Undercover with the Mob

“I, ah…” she began eloquently.

“Um, I…” he chorused at the same time.

“Gotta go,” they both said as one.

And, just like that, they turned around and sped off in opposite directions.

And as she fled, all Natalie could think was that, for a mobster, he had a very gentle touch. Not to mention exceptionally good taste in art.

JACK WAS KEEPING a close eye on his objective when he ran into Natalie in the art museum a second time. Or, rather, almost ran into her a second time. Fortunately, he saw her before she saw him, so he was able to duck behind a sculpture before any damage had been done.

Damn. So much for staying out of her way.

This was just great, he thought as he pressed his body against the cool stone statue. Now there were two people he had to keep an eye on in this crowd. What was bad was that he would have much rather kept his eye on Natalie than on his objective. What was worse was that his eye wasn’t the only body part he was thinking about when it came to keeping something on Natalie.

But he was obligated, even honor bound, to make the man in the trench coat who was studying the Matisse his priority. Because he was the person Jack had been assigned to take care of—so to speak. Not that there was any real care in what Jack was supposed to do to the man in the trench coat who was studying the Matisse. But he did have a job to do—and there was sort of an art to that job, he reflected—and until he could complete that job, he had to stay focused on it. Even if it was a job he didn’t particularly relish completing. Especially now that Natalie Dorset was lurking around.

Lurking, he echoed to himself. Yeah, right. If there was anyone lurking these days, it was Jack. When had he been reduced to such a thing? he asked himself irritably. And why, suddenly, did his job seem kind of sordid and tawdry? He’d always taken pride in his work before. Before Natalie Dorset had come along looking all squeaky-clean and dewy and wholesome. Ever since meeting her, Jack had felt sinister in the extreme. Which made no sense, because what he did for a living was a highly regarded tradition in his family. His father, his father’s father, his father’s father’s father back in the old country, all of them had been in the same line of work. Jack respected his heritage, and had always taken pride in his birthright. Since meeting Natalie, though, his heritage seemed almost tarnished somehow.

Which really made no sense at all, because he barely knew the woman. Yeah, sure, he’d run into her a few times this week, so he knew her a little. Like, he knew she left for work everyday at 7:30 a.m. on the dot, which meant she was punctual. And he knew she often ate breakfast and dinner with their landlady, Mrs. Klosterman, which made him think she was one of those women who felt obligated to take care of other people. And he knew she drove an old Volkswagen, to which she seemed totally suited, because it was kind of funky, and so was she. Not just because of the singing pajamas she’d been wearing that first morning he met her, but because of the way she dressed at other times, too. Like, for instance, oh, he didn’t know…today. She was sort of a combination of Ralph Lauren and Fishin’ with Orlando. And somehow, on Natalie, it worked.

And Jack knew she taught high school, because he’d seen her downstairs grading papers one evening and asked her about it. A high school teacher, he reflected again. She didn’t seem the type. Hell, where he’d gone to high school in Brooklyn, a teacher who looked like her wouldn’t have lasted through lunch. Jeez, she would have been lunch for some of the guys he’d run around with. But she’d claimed to actually enjoy teaching English to teenagers. She’d assigned James Fenimore Cooper on purpose.

And Jack knew she liked old movies, because he’d come in a couple of nights to find her and Mrs. Klosterman watching movies on TV, black-and-white jobs from the forties. Cary Grant, he’d heard them talking about as he’d climbed the stairs to his apartment. The suave, debonair, tuxedoed type. The leading man type. The type Jack most certainly was not. He preferred to think of himself as more of an antihero. Okay, so maybe he was more anti- than he was hero sometimes. That was beside the point. The point was…

What was the point again?

Oh, yeah. The point was he had no business hiding behind a sculpture sneaking peeks at a woman when he had a job to do. Especially a woman like Natalie Dorset, with whom he had absolutely nothing in common. Maybe if she’d been a combination of Frederick’s of Hollywood and Fishin’ with Orlando, then maybe his attraction to her would have made sense. Or if she’d taught exotic dancing classes instead of high school, and assigned bumps and grinds instead of Natty Bumppo. Or if she’d left for work around ten o’clock every night to serve drinks in some smoky bar. Or if she’d had breakfast and dinner with her bookie. Or if she’d driven a sporty little red number on the verge of being repo’d. Then, maybe his attraction to her wouldn’t have been such a shock. Because women like Natalie Dorset normally didn’t even make it onto Jack’s radar.

She sure was cute, though.

Still, even if Jack did have something in common with her, he still had no business sneaking peeks at her. Or talking to her. Or being preoccupied by her. Or wondering what she looked like naked. But he’d only done that last thing once…okay, maybe twice…okay, five, or at most fifty times, and only because he’d had too much Chianti. Except for all those times when he’d done it while he was sober. But that was only because he’d accidentally come across Body Heat on cable that night. But then there was that time when he’d done it while watching the Weather Channel, too…

Ah, hell.

The point was he was only here to do a job, and that job did not include Natalie Dorset, clothed or unclothed, in or out of his bed. Or on the sofa. Or in the shower. Or atop the kitchen table. The kitchen counter. The kitchen pantry. The kitchen floor…

Um, what was the question again?

Oh, yeah. It wasn’t a question. It was a fact. He could not allow himself to be sidetracked while doing this job. He would just have to avoid Natalie Dorset from here on out, and keep his focus on his target. Who…oh, dammit…seemed to have disappeared.

Jack scanned the crowded museum, starting with the last place he’d seen the man in the trench coat, invariably finding Natalie instead, then forcing his gaze away again, over everyone else in the room. There. He found him. Two paintings down from the one he’d just finished looking at. Jack groaned inwardly. Just how much longer could the guy look at paintings? Jack was ready to go for pizza. And a beer. And a naked high school English teacher.

He threw back his head in disgust with himself, only to have it smack against hard stone. He turned and realized he’d been leaning all this time against a reproduction of Rodin’s The Kiss, and that he’d just bonked his head on a naked breast hard enough to make himself see stars.

Man, oh, man, he thought as he rubbed at the lump that was already beginning to form. This job was going to shorten his life for sure.

AS NATALIE WAS climbing the stairs to her apartment that evening, juggling two bags of groceries she’d picked up on the way home from the museum, she came to a halt in the second floor landing to adjust the strap on her purse. It had nothing to do with the fact that she heard someone inside Jack Miller’s apartment talking. And she only hesitated a moment after completing that adjustment because she needed to rest. It wasn’t because she thought she heard him use the word whacked. Because he might not have said whacked. He might have said fact. Or quacked. Or shellacked. And those were all totally harmless words.

Then again, maybe he’d said hacked, she thought as a teensy little feeling of paranoia wedged its way under her skin. Or smacked. Or even hijacked. Which weren’t so harmless words.

Or maybe he’d said cracked, she thought wryly, since he could have been talking to someone about the mental state of his new upstairs neighbor.

She really had been spending too much time listening to Mrs. Klosterman this week. And she knew better than to take seriously someone who thought The X-Files was a series of documentaries by Ken Burns. Sighing to herself, Natalie finished adjusting her purse strap and shifted her grocery bags to a more manageable position, then settled her foot on the next step.

And then stopped dead in her tracks—and she really wished she’d come up with a better way to think about that than dead in her tracks—because she heard Jack’s voice say, clear as day, “I’ll kill ’im.”

Telling herself she was just imagining things, Natalie turned her ear toward the door, if for no other reason than to reassure herself that she was just imagining things. But instead of being reassured, she heard Jack’s voice again, louder and more emphatic this time, saying, “No, Manny, I mean it. I’m gonna kill the guy. No way will I let ’im get away with that.”

And then Natalie’s world went a little fuzzy, and she had to sit down. Which—hey, whattaya know—gave her a really great seat for eavesdropping on the rest of Jack’s conversation. But when she realized she was hearing only his side, she concluded he must be on the telephone with someone. Still, only his side told her plenty.

There was a long pause after that second avowal of his intent to murder someone, then, “Look, I had him in my sights all day,” she heard Jack continue, “but there was always a crowd around, so an opportunity never presented itself.”

There was more silence for a moment, wherein Natalie assumed the other person was speaking again, then she heard Jack’s voice once more. “Yeah, I know. But it’s not going to be easy. The guy’s so edgy. I never know what he’s gonna do next, where he’s gonna go. What?” More silence, then, “Hey, I know what I’m being paid to do, and I’ll do it. It just might not go down the way we planned, that’s all.”

Holy moly, Natalie thought. He wasn’t a Mob hit man turned Mob informant. He was a Mob hit man period!

No, no, no, no, no, she immediately told herself. There was a perfectly good explanation for what she was hearing. Hey, she herself had wanted to kill more than a few people in her time, including several of her students just this past week, because a lot of them had neglected to do their assigned reading. So just because someone said, “I’ll kill ’im,” didn’t mean that they were going to, you know, kill ’im. And that business about the crowd being around someone, that could have meant anything. And the part about being paid to do something? Well, now, that could be anything, too. He could have been paid to deliver phone books for all Natalie knew.

Yeah, that was it. He was the new phone book delivery guy. That explained all those nice muscles. A person had to be built to haul around those White Pages.

“Don’t worry, Manny,” Jack said angrily on the other side of his door, bringing Natalie’s attention back to the matter at hand. “I came here to do a job, and I’m not leaving until it’s done. You just better hope it doesn’t get any messier than it already has.”

Okay, so maybe he dropped some of the phone books in a puddle and they got dirty, she thought. She could see that. They’d had a lot of rain lately. And those phone books got unwieldy when you tried to carry too many at one time. And those plastic bags they put them in were cheap as hell. It could have happened to anyone.

When Natalie stood up, she still felt a little muzzy-headed, though whether that was because of her initial fright or the profound lameness of her excuses for Jack’s words, she couldn’t have said. In any event, she was totally unprepared for the opening of his door, and even less prepared for when he came barreling out of it, shrugging on his leather motorcycle jacket. And he was obviously un-prepared to find her lurking outside his door, because he kept on coming, nearly knocking her down the steps before he saw her.

Hastily, he grabbed her to steady her before she could go tumbling back down to the living room in a heap. But she overcompensated and hurled her body forward, an action that thrust her right into that muscular phone book-delivering body of his. And that made her drop both bags of groceries, which did spill out and go tumbling back down to the living room.

“Whoa,” Jack said as he balanced her, curling his fingers over her upper arms to do so. “Where’s the fire?”

Gosh, she should probably just keep that information to herself, Natalie thought as heat began seeping through her belly and spreading up into her breasts and down into her…

And that was when she remembered that, among the groceries she’d bought today, was a box of tampons. Oh, damn.

“I am so sorry to run into you,” she said.

And then she could think of not one more thing to utter. Because Jack’s hands on her arms just felt too yummy for words, strong and gentle at the same time. Hands like his would be equally comfortable sledgehammering solid rock or stroking a woman’s naked flesh, she thought. And speaking for herself, she would have been equally happy watching him do either.

“No, I’m the one who ran into you, so I’m the one who’s sorry,” he told her, his fingers still curving gently over her arms.

In fact, his thumbs on the insides of her arms moved gently up and down, as if he were trying to calm her. Which was pretty ironic, seeing as how the action only incited her to commit mayhem. Preferably on his person. ASAP. That fire he’d asked about leaped higher inside her, threatening to burn out of control.

“I wasn’t watching where I was going,” he added. “You okay?”

She nodded, even though okay was pretty much the last thing she felt at the moment. “Yeah,” she said a little breathlessly. “I’m okay. You just, um, startled me, that’s all.”

For a moment, neither of them said anything more. Natalie only continued to stand staring up at Jack, marveling at how handsome he was, and Jack gazed back down at her, thinking she knew not what. But she wished she did. She wished she could read his mind at that moment and know what his impression of her was. Because he was making an awfully big impression on her.

Finally, softly, “Let me help you pick this stuff up,” he offered.

And before Natalie could decline, he was stooping to collect the nearly empty grocery bags and scooping up the few items that hadn’t gone down the stairs. Like, for instance—of course—the tampons. Amazingly, though, he didn’t bat an eye, didn’t even hesitate as he picked them up and tossed them back into the paper sack. He only glanced up at her and smiled and said, “I got sisters,” and his casualness about it went a long way toward endearing him to Natalie. It also convinced her she had misunderstood whatever he’d been talking about on the phone. Because no Mob hit man could possibly handle a box of tampons that comfortably. It was odd logic, to be sure, but it comforted her nonetheless.

She bent, too, then, to collect her things, wincing at the scattered strawberries. “Oh, damn,” she said when she saw them.

By now, Jack was at the foot of the steps, gathering the items that had made their way down there, placing them into the sack he’d carried with him. “What’s wrong?” he called up.

“My strawberries,” she said. “I love them. And they’re so hard to find this time of year. Not to mention so expensive when I do find them.” She blew out an exasperated breath as she carefully gathered them up and placed them back into their plastic basket. “Maybe I can salvage a few of them,” she said morosely.

Jack made his way back up the steps just as she was dropping the last of her groceries back into her own sack. “I’ll help you get these upstairs,” he told her.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I can manage.”

“It’s the least I can do,” he insisted.

She relented then. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

As he followed her the rest of the way up, Natalie was acutely aware of him behind her. She knew he couldn’t be watching her—with the way she was dressed, what was there to see?—but somehow, she felt the heat of his gaze boring into her. It only added to her already frazzled state, jacking up the fire that was already blazing away in her midsection. But that was nothing compared to the inferno that fairly exploded when they reached her front door.

Thanks to her nervousness, when Natalie went to unlock it, she dropped her keys, which then skittered off the top step and threatened to go tumbling down the way her groceries had. But Jack deftly caught them before they could go too far, then stepped up behind her on the third floor landing, which she’d never, until that moment, considered especially small.

But with Jack crowding her from behind, it was very small indeed. Small enough that he had to press his front lightly to her back when he stood behind her, so that she could smell the clean, soapy, non-Aqua Velva scent of him and feel the heat of his body mingling with the heat of her own. Especially when he leaned forward and snaked his arm around her to unlock her front door himself. But he had a little trouble managing the gesture, and had to take yet another step forward, bumping his body even more intimately against hers, working the key into the slot until it turned and the door opened. And every time he shifted his body to accommodate his efforts, he rubbed against Natalie, creating a delicious sort of friction unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.

Strangely, even after he’d managed to get the door open, he didn’t move away from her. Instead, he continued to hold his body close to hers, as if he were reluctant to put any distance between the two of them. Which was just fine with Natalie, since she could stand here like this all night. It was, after all, the closest thing she’d had to a sexual encounter for some time. Now if she could just think of some acceptable excuse for why she had to suddenly remove her clothing…

“You, uh, you wanna go inside?” Jack asked as she pondered her dilemma.

And then Natalie realized the reason he hadn’t moved away from her was simply because he was waiting for her to move first. And because she’d only stood there like an imbecile, he was probably thinking she was, well, an imbecile. Either that, or he was thinking she’d been enjoying the feel of his body next to hers too much to want to end it, and might possibly be grappling for some acceptable excuse for why she had to suddenly remove her clothing, and how embarrassing was that? Especially since he was right.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, forcing her feet forward. “Sorry. I was just thinking about something.”

Like how nice it would be to have her door opened this way every night. And how nice it would be if Jack followed her into her apartment every night. And how nice it would be if they spent the rest of the night rubbing their bodies together every night.

Oh, dear.

Hastily, she strode to her minuscule galley kitchen and set her bag of groceries on what little available counter space was there. Jack followed and did likewise, making the kitchen feel more like a closet. He was just so big. So overwhelming. So incredibly potent. She’d never met a man like him before, let alone have one rub up against her the way he had, however involuntary the action had been on his part.

The moment he settled his bag of groceries on the counter, he turned and took a few steps in the opposite direction, and Natalie told herself he was not trying to escape. As she quickly emptied the bags and put things in their proper places, he prowled around her small living room, and she got the feeling it was because he wasn’t quite ready to leave. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part. In any event, however, he made no further move to escape. Uh, leave.

“You got a nice place here,” he said as he looked around.

And why did he sound as if he made the observation grudgingly? she wondered. She, too, looked around her apartment, trying to see it the way someone would for the first time. Five years of residence and a very small space added up to a lot of clutter, she realized. But he was right—it was nice clutter. Natalie wasn’t the type to go for finery, but she did like beautiful things. After she’d graduated from college and found this apartment, she’d haunted the antique shops and boutiques along Third Street and Bards-town Road and Frankfort Avenue, looking for interesting pieces to furnish her very first place. Her college dorm had been stark and bland and uninteresting, so she’d deliberately purchased things of bold color and intrepid design, striving more for chimerical than practical, fun instead of functional.

Her large, overstuffed, Victorian velvet sofa, the color of good merlot, had been her one splurge. The coffee table had started life as an old steamer trunk, and the end tables were marble-topped, carved wooden lyres. An old glass cocktail shaker on one held dried flowers, a crystal bowl overflowing with potpourri took up most of the other. Her lamps were Art Deco bronzes, and ancient Oriental rugs covered much of the hardwood floor. Dozens of houseplants spilled from wide window ledges, while other, larger ones sprung up from terra-cotta pots. Brightly colored majolica—something she’d collected since she was a teenager—filled every available space leftover.

All in all, she thought whimsically, not for the first time, the place looked like the home of an aging, eccentric Hollywood actress who’d never quite made it to the B-List. It was the sort of place she’d always wanted to have, and she was comfortable here.

Nevertheless, she shrugged off Jack’s compliment almost literally. “Thanks. I like it.” And she did.

“Yeah, I do, too,” he told her. “It’s…homey,” he added, again seeming somewhat reluctant to say so. “Interesting. Different from my place.”

His place, she knew, was a furnished apartment, but it was much like the rest of Mrs. Klosterman’s house, filled with old, but comfortable things. Still, it lacked anything that might add a personal touch, whereas Natalie’s apartment was overflowing with the personal. And that did indeed make a big difference.

She had expected him to leave after offering those few requisite niceties, but he began to wander around her living room, instead, looking at…Well, he seemed to be looking at everything, she thought. Evidently, he’d been telling the truth when he said he found the place interesting, because he shoved his hands into the back pockets of his black jeans and made his way to her overcrowded bookcase, scanning the titles he found there.

“Oh, yeah,” he said as he read over them. “I can tell you’re an English teacher. Hawthorne, Wharton, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Twain, James.” He turned around to look at her. “You like American literature, huh?”

She nodded. “Especially the nineteenth century. Though I like the early twentieth century, too.”

He turned back to the bookcases again. “I like the guys who came later,” he told her. “Faulkner. Fitzgerald. Kerouac. Hemingway. I think The Sun Also Rises is the greatest book ever written.”

Natalie silently chided herself for being surprised. How often had she herself been stereotyped as the conservative, prudish, easily overrun sort, simply because of the way she dressed and talked, and because of her job? How often had she been treated like a pushover? A doormat? A woman who was more likely to be abducted by a gang of leisure suit-wearing circus freaks than to find a husband after the age of thirty-five? Too many times for her to recall. So she shouldn’t think Jack Miller was a brainless thug, simply because of the way he dressed and talked. Of course, she didn’t think he was a brainless thug, she realized. She thought he was…

Well. She thought of him in ways she probably shouldn’t.

“I’d have to argue with you,” she told him as she folded up the paper sacks and stowed them under her kitchen sink. “I think The Scarlet Letter is the greatest book ever written.”

He turned again to look at her. “I can see that,” he said. “You don’t seem the type to suffer hypocrites.”

She wondered what other type she seemed—or didn’t seem—to him. And she wondered why she hoped so much that whatever he thought of her, it was good. Then she surprised herself by asking him, “Have you had dinner yet?”