Secrets (A Standalone Novel) (A Suspense Romance) (3 page)

By the time I settled in for the night, it was more
like early morning. I just couldn’t keep my brain
off
the mysterious neighbor. It killed me that I had, again,
forgotten to ask him his name. Surely there was something wrong with me. What
normal girl had feelings so strong about a man when she didn’t even know his name?

I figured his name was something exotic. He had dark
brown hair with matching deep brown eyes. His olive skin was smooth as
perfection. He had to have an exotic name to match his exotic appearance. Perhaps
it was Xavier or Maximus, or something even more interesting.

As I drifted off to
sleep,
I could still feel the pressure of his hard bulge up against me. I closed my
eyes and remembered how it felt to have such a gorgeous man desire me.

When morning
came,
I was determined. I was tired of thinking about my neighbor as “the gorgeous
man.” I wanted to know his name.

With my coffee in
hand,
I walked casually over to his house and knocked on the door. Remembering back
to the evening before, I suddenly didn’t want him to answer. I started to back
away from the door, but he answered.

“Yes?” he said with a grin.

He was again without his shirt; I thought maybe that
was a problem for him, perhaps he just didn’t like to wear shirts. It certainly
wasn’t a problem for me! His hands were covered in paint and he wiped them on
his pants as he looked at me.

“I need to know your name,” I said without any
introduction.

His eyes widened and he took a step out of his house
and toward me.

“What do you need this information for?”

His eyes looked deep into mine and I could hardly
gather the words I needed to answer him. I desperately wanted to answer him,
finally readying myself to speak.

“If we are neighbors, we should know each other’s
names. You already know mine.”

“Yes, Katelyn. It is such a beautiful name.”

“My name is Chris,” he said dryly.

“Hello Chris,” I said with my own wicked smile.

I felt better instantly. I knew his name and could
actually stop addressing him as the gorgeous man next door.

“Hello Katelyn,” he said my name slowly with his rough
voice.

The way he said my name made me want him. Who am I
kidding? He didn’t have to say a thing and I wanted him. I wanted to actually
talk to him, I still knew nothing about him and as much as my body longed to
know him more intimately; my mind told me to
beware
.
There was something about this new resident of Bain, something secretive and
suspicious.

“Are you painting? It’s pretty early to be painting,”
I said as I looked at his paint-coated hands.

For some
reason,
this statement made him laugh. Not just a chuckle, but an outright full-on
laugh. I didn’t get it. I looked away from him and uncomfortably continued to
stand there.

“What time do you think it is?” he asked as his
laughter calmed.

“I don’t know eight or so in the morning.”

I didn’t have my phone with me so I didn’t know
exactly. But whatever time it was, it certainly wasn’t this funny.

“Sweetheart, it’s almost four o’clock in the
afternoon.”

“What!”

The shock of his statement didn’t fully register with
me. There was no way it was that late, I would know if it I had slept away my
entire Sunday. He stepped into his house and left the door open. Within a
moment,
he was back with his own cell phone. He
handed it to me and the clock on the front read 3:50pm.

My jaw dropped open and I just stared at his phone.
How had I slept so late again? What was coming over me? Then I realized he had
just let me hold his phone. I don’t think I have ever had a man freely let me
hold their phone and my girlfriends and I had just talked about this a few
weeks ago.

Men are always trying to hide things: secret flirty
text messages, naked photos, there was always something on their phones that
they didn’t want women to see. Yet here I was, holding this complete stranger’s
phone in my hand. It struck me as odd. He seemed like the kind of guy who had a
whole plethora of secrets; I figured they just must not be located in his
phone.

“Wow, I can’t believe it is so late. I really have to
get some staining done before the end of the day. It was nice meeting you
Chris.”

I turned toward my house and only had a few more steps
before I was in my house when he hollered after me.

“Hey, do you have any painter’s tape? I seem to be
making a mess everywhere.”

I looked at his paint-coated hands.

“I don’t think painter’s tape will help with that,” I said
wryly, then smiled and continued toward the door of my house, “but, yes I have
some. Come on in. Just don’t touch anything with those hands of yours.”

The last thing I needed was his paint-covered hands
touching any of the woodwork I was working so hard to restore.

As we walked into my
house,
a slight burst of embarrassment flushed over me. No one ever visited my house,
and for good reason; it was a disaster. I had all the woodwork from the entire
downstairs pulled off the walls and strewn throughout the house. It was like an
obstacle course to make it from one room to the next.

“I apologize for the mess, I’m restoring the house and
it’s
quite
the process.”

He just looked around and took in the old home. The
house’s
Victorian style was somewhat original in
Missouri during the time period.
I wanted to restore the home to its
original splendor so it could be put on the historical society register.

The home had been built in 1910 by my grandparents and
then passed down to my parents. It was a huge part of this town and I didn’t
want anyone coming in years from now and trying to tear it down. Plus, I didn’t
have anything better to do with my time. There was only so many pictures a
person could take before they needed to spend some time on a different hobby.

“Don’t apologize, this house is beautiful.”

Something about the way he said that caught me off
guard. It seemed like the first truly sincere words I had heard from him. He
was in awe of my old house. I turned back to glace at him, but he didn’t see.
He was too busy looking at every detail of the woodworking on the floor as well
as the paneling on the walls.

“Thanks, are you an admirer of old homes?”

Then just as quickly as his genuine talk had appeared,
his crude language reappeared.

“I’m an admirer of your ass,” he said as he walked
past me, taking an especially long glance at my backside.

“Seriously?”

“
Oh,
I’m
kidding. Yes, I like old houses. I love the idea of tearing apart an old
building and putting it back to better even stronger than it originally was.”

I walked toward the stairs
and
just as I took my second step up, he grabbed my arm and pulled
me back toward him. He was right there, standing
on
the bottom step as I turned to face him. My body was still not
at his height, but much closer than before.
 
There was something in his eyes that I
couldn’t have described, but I now know was
pure
lust.

He moved his lips swiftly to meet mine and it was a
good thing he let his hands hold onto my hips. I likely would have fallen over
from the wobbly nature of my knees. I hadn’t expected a kiss. Yes, I had wanted
one, but it was such odd timing that I wasn’t prepared.

My mouth opened to let him in. His tongue searched me
for pleasure. The kiss was gentle at first, but the more I moved against him
the harder he pressed against me. He wasn’t about to give up on kissing me.
Finally,
I gave in.

My arms moved up to his neck and wrapped around him. I
had not kissed a man in over a year and this was no ordinary man. His body was
that of a sexy god. Yes, a sex god. That was the best way I could describe him.
There were c
hiseled muscles
at every
corner of his firm body.

His tongue had skills that the rest of my body longed
to enjoy. I could feel the rush of wetness as the physical reaction of kissing
him shot throughout me.

“I had to kiss you. I’m
sorry,
but it had to be done,” Chris said as he released me.

I stood there in a daze for a moment, pondering the
kiss that had just knocked me out of the park. This man could kiss, that was
for damn sure.

“Yeah, well should we get you some painter’s tape?” I
said as the flush red of my face burned to cool down.

“Yes. Let’s do that. Is it upstairs?”

He started to take a few steps up the stairs before I
grabbed him.

“Oh
no,
you
don’t. You’re not going up to my bedroom.”

“Why not? You don’t trust me near your bed?”

His eyes burned into me and I couldn’t help but lick
my lips. They wanted to feel his again, but I resisted.

“No. You stay here.”

I held my hand out to stop him from coming up the stairs
while I went to find his tape. I had been painting in my bedroom last so I
quickly grabbed it.

“Hey, did you know this chandelier is about to fall?”

I looked at it as I walked down the stairs. It looked
fine to me.

“It’s been there for almost one hundred years and
sturdy as could be. I’m sure it’s fine.”

“I can fix it for you if you’d like. Maybe take it
down so you can clean it before reattaching it?”

“Alright,” I said as I handed him the tape.

“How old is this house? 1900?”

“Close, 1910. It was built by my grandparents. It was
one of the first houses in the city.”

“Any you are restoring it? What else do you do with
yourself?”

“Oh nothing, I just stalk my neighbors and sand wood.”

I cringed at the words when they came out. Why did my
mouth work so poorly? Certainly that sounded really sexy. Yes, I’m your
neighbor and I’m going to stalk you now. Ugh!

“You can play with my wood, no stalking necessary,” he
winked.

Geeze what was it with this guy? He seriously could
turn anything into sexual innuendo. I rolled my eyes and laughed at his joke.

“Well, what do you do for a living?”

At this
question,
he instantly clammed up. The sparkle of desire in his eyes disappeared and he
turned cold. The change was so abrupt that I was completely thrown for a moment.
Nothing about him seemed to even like me anymore, let alone desire me.

“I’m going to get back to my painting. Have a good
night,” he said and then swiftly left my house.

I watched through the window as he made it back inside
his home and I wondered what it was it that I had said. I just asked what he
did for a living. How was that so bad?

He was so hot and cold. It was hard for me to figure
him out. One minute he was seductively kissing me and the next moment he turned
cold as ice and walked out of my house. I had never met anyone that could
change their personality so quickly. I kept my eye out for Chris each day as I
did yardwork or left the house for errands. But I never saw him coming or
going. I never saw a car outside, but he certainly could have been parking it
in his garage. The old houses in Bain all had detached garages that sat behind
our homes, which made it very difficult to see exactly what was going on or if
someone was home at all.

Day
after day passed
and again I didn’t see Chris. It was baffling. What on earth could he do for a
living that he could be in Bain
anyways?
Most of the people who lived here were retired, worked for the local school or
were independent like myself. We were over an hour from St. Louis and there were
plenty of nicer small towns within a closer distance.

I had to stop letting Chris fill my mind. My
photography exhibit was getting close and I still needed to go through my
pictures and choose the final set of photos. I knew there was one last photo I wanted
to get out in the woods, but I had to wait for the moon to be at just the right
location.

I made my way to my garage, where I had made my dark
room for developing my pictures. As had become a habit, I glanced over at
Chris’s house to see if it looked like he was home. No car outside the garage
and no lights on in the house. He certainly did not appear to be home.

Developing my pictures was one of my favorite parts of
photography. There was just something wonderful about doing the developing
yourself: setting the paper into the chemicals, moving the photo paper from one
tub of fluid to the next; I loved it. I ached to get my hands dirty and develop
some of the prints for my upcoming show.

Of
course,
it
was faster, and even cheaper, to pay someone else to develop my prints. But it
was art to me, even the process of developing had become part of my art.
I experimented with overexposing
and
underexposing
my photos until they reached the
exact look that I wanted. I darkened the room in my garage and started in on
the long night of developing. My dark room wasn’t the best, so I was relegated
to developing my pictures at night to ensure the least amount of exposure
possible.

Slowly and methodically I worked through my pictures.
Soon it was after four o’clock in the morning and I hadn’t even realized where
all the time had gone. Suddenly there was a bright light from Chris’s house. I
quickly blocked the leak of light with a black towel and hoped my pictures
would be alright. I closed the black curtain and snuck out the door to my
garage quietly.

It was Chris. He had pulled up in front of his garage
in a black Jeep. He was unloading some very large duffel bags. Each of them
looked to be very heavy and he set them down gently, one at a time. My mind
raced with thoughts of what could be in those bags. Each bag was about four
feet long and was filled with some obscurely shaped objects. The odd shapes
poked and pressed the fabric of the duffle bags in weird places. I pushed my
body back as close to the building as I could. The last thing I wanted was him
to see me really stalking him.

He left the bags on the ground as he pulled his Jeep
into the garage. He quickly came around and grabbed two of the six bags
and carried
them inside his house. I fought the
urge to run over and look inside one of the bags. It was just too risky, so I
waited. It took him about a minute to bring the first two bags into his house.
So when he grabbed the second two
bags,
I
made my way quickly over to the last two and unzipped one.

It was dark and I couldn’t see a thing inside the bag,
so I pressed my hand into it. The cold metal of what I thought to be a gun
greeted my hand. I quickly pulled away and ran back to the cover of my garage.

Oh no, I forgot to zip the bag back up!

It was too late now, there was no way I could make it
back over to the bag and get it zipped up before he was there to grab them. I
watched in anticipation for him to return. Luckily the dark of night
camouflaged my mistake. He grabbed the bags with ease and headed back into his
house.

Guns! Why was he hauling bags full of guns into his
house? Maybe I had not felt right, maybe they weren’t really guns? I couldn’t
be one hundred percent sure, but my stomach was in knots.

This gorgeous guy
comes
to my small little town and starts making out with me and sure enough he turns
out to be some sort of gun dealer or something. He didn’t seem like the type of
guy who would be part of such an illegal line of work. Granted, I didn’t really
know what type of guy he was, but he seemed more honest than a gun dealer would
be.