"I'll catch you."
He was crazy, she thought. And she loved him. And he was right. All she needed was confidence. "This is kinda fun," she yelled to him. "You look awful. You're all wet."
"I know," he yelled back. "You look great."
Lizabeth jumped onto the board with both feet and ran flat out into his arms. The momentum knocked them back into the truck, where they clung together, laughing. "You were wonderful," Matt said. "You had real style out there."
Lizabeth wriggled against him. "I know. I'm a class act."
Their eyes held and his mouth very deliberately settled on hers. It was warm and wet with the rain, and his hands possessively moved across her water-slicked back. In all her years of marriage to Paul, nothing had ever felt this intimate, this loving. If nothing more comes of this relationship, Lizabeth thought, at least I'll have had this afternoon. She couldn't imagine it getting any better. It was already perfect.
"I hate to put a damper on things," Matt said, "but you're breaking out in goose bumps. I think I should get you into some dry clothes."
Lizabeth swung into the truck cab and shook the rain from her hair. She waited until Matt settled behind the wheel before talking. "I suppose, since you're going home with me, and you're going to find out anyway… I suppose I should tell you the flasher stopped by last night."
Matt turned in her direction, one arm over the back of the bench seat. "He stopped by?"
"Yeah, you know, out in the yard, just like always."
"In the rain?" There was a note of disbelief in his voice.
"It was kind of sad. He was all wet. His tie was soaked, and his bag got soggy."
Matt pressed his lips together. "What about the lights?"
"We turned them on, and he ran away."
"Did you recognize him?"
She shook her head. "No. But I have a much better idea what he looks like. I got to see a lot more of him."
"Wonderful." He put the truck in gear, turned the heater on full blast to warm Lizabeth, and pulled out of the cul-de-sac. "The man is a fruitcake, Lizabeth. Normal people do not go flashing in the rain."
"Yes, but I think he's a harmless fruitcake. Where are we going? My house is in the opposite direction."
"We're going to my town house. We're going to get some of my clothes, and then we're going back to your place. This guy's flashing career is coming to an end."
"Just exactly what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to spend the night with you. I'm going to wait for the flasher to appear. Then I'm going to break every bone in his body."
"No! You can't do that. He's not a violent person. He's just a little misguided. I think you should talk to him."
"Talk to him?" Was she kidding? "Fine, if that's what you want, I'll talk to him. First I'll rip the bag off his head, then I'll grab him by his lousy tie, and then I'll talk to him. I'll tell him if he ever comes within a quarter of a mile of you, I'll break every bone in his body."
Lizabeth crossed her arms over her chest and slunk down in the seat. She made a disgusted sound with her tongue and stonily stared out the truck window.
"Now what?" Matt asked. "I agreed to talk to him. Now what's wrong?"
"Threatening to break every bone in his body isn't talking to him. It's macho garbage."
"Macho garbage?" His face creased into a broad grin.
"Unh!" Lizabeth rolled her eyes. "You know what you are? You're a… a carpenter!"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Big shoulders, nifty butt, no brains. It means you have to prove your manhood with a display of muscle."
"You think I have a nifty butt?" He sounded pleased.
"Have you been listening?" Lizabeth shouted.
"Yup. The part about the no brains isn't true. I may not have a fancy education, but I'm not stupid. The rest of it I suppose is okay." He parked in a numbered space and pointed to a brick-front town house. "That's mine. Number twenty-two." The rain had slackened off to a fine drizzle. Matt went around the truck and opened the door for Lizabeth. "Come on. This is your big opportunity to see what sort of house a macho garbage man lives in."
"I'm sorry about the macho garbage part. I got carried away. Are you insulted?"
"No. You're probably right. Sometimes I definitely have macho garbage tendencies." He unlocked the front door and followed Lizabeth into the small foyer.
Lizabeth looked into an empty living room. There was no furniture, no rug, no curtains. Just a motorcycle. "There's a motorcycle in your living room."
"I don't have a garage."
"Ah-hah," she said, trying to sound as if his explanation was perfectly ordinary and logical. But her mind was in total chaos. My lord, she thought, he owns a motorcycle. A big, black, shiny motorcycle. She'd never actually known anyone who owned a motorcycle, and she equated this sort of motorcycle with men who drank motor oil and robbed convenience stores. She was in love with a man who had a tattoo and owned a motorcycle! A man who wanted to beat up on an innocent flasher. Of course, he was also the man who set her on fire with his kisses and encouraged her to run and jump in the rain. A man who bought sticky buns for her dog and played soccer with her kids. She chewed on her lower lip and stared at him. "Do you belong to one of those gangs?"
"A bikers' club?" He chuckled. "No. That's not my style." He took her hand and led her upstairs. "Mostly I live up here. I don't do much entertaining, so it might be a little messy." He stopped at the head of the stairs and looked around. "Actually, it's messier than I thought. Maybe you don't want to see this."
The upstairs consisted of two bedrooms and a bath, and laundry was everywhere. It littered the hall, rolled from under furniture like giant dust bunnies, and gathered big time in corners. It spilled out of open closet doors and open drawers and hung from bedposts, doorknobs, and chair backs. One bedroom housed a desk and an upholstered executive swivel chair. The remainder of the room held stacked boxes of floor tile, cans of house paint, heavy-duty extension cords, an assortment of power tools, rolls of duct tape, and three stacks of old copies of National Geographic. The other room had a dresser, double bed with night table, and an overstuffed easy chair. A television and VCR had been placed on the dresser, along with a hot plate and hot-air popcorn maker. An assortment of crushed beer cans, crumpled Styrofoam burger boxes, and balled-up bakery bags mixed with the mounds of clothes on the floor, on the bed, on the dresser, in the chair.
"It sort of got away from me," Matt said.
Lizabeth shook her head. "Oinkus Americanus. I've seen this phenomenon before." She unconsciously picked up a T-shirt and folded it. "This is probably the real reason you want to move into my house for the night. You've lost your bed." She folded another T-shirt and stacked it neatly on the first one.
Matt rooted through a closet and came up with a maroon gym bag. He kicked at the clothes on the floor and found a pair of jeans and a yellow shirt. He put them in the bag with underwear and socks, and then headed for the bathroom. "It isn't usually this bad. I've been busy. I've had a lot on my mind."
"Like what?"
He reappeared with the bag. "You. Me. Other things."
"What other things?"
"For starters, my partner is still in the hospital. He'll be in traction another week, and when he gets out it'll be at least a month before he's back on the job. He did all the paperwork. He did the buying and selling. I did the building. Now I'm stuck with everything. You think this room is a mess, you should take a look at my desk drawers."
"That bad?"
"I should hire a secretary, but Frank will be back in six weeks, and it would take me longer than that to bring someone new up to speed."
Lizabeth finished folding and arranging into neat piles the clothes on the bed. Without thinking, she moved on to the debris on the floor, grouping it into washing categories-darks, whites, hopeless. He was overworked, and some of it was her fault. He'd been spending every minute of his spare time fixing her dilapidated house. She found a wastebasket and began collecting beer cans, deciding some of them had been there since 1985. While she might be partially to blame for the condition of his bedroom, she thought to herself, there were also other forces at work here. Matthew Hallahan was a domestic slob.