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Mr. Perfect(10)
Author: Linda Howard

Well, that shot that theory in the ass. Jaine managed a smile. "Yes, of course." She started to say something about the strange hours he kept, but saw the gleam in Mrs. Kulavich's bright blue eyes and bit back the words. The last thing she needed was for her elderly neighbor to think she had any interest in the jerk and maybe tell him, since Mrs. Kulavich was obviously on good terms with him. She took care of that by adding, "I thought he might be a drug dealer or something."

Mrs. Kulavich looked scandalized. "Sam, a drug dealer? Oh, my. No, he would never do anything like that."

"That's a relief." Jaine smiled again. "I suppose I'd better start mowing before it gets much hotter."

"Be sure to drink plenty of water," Mrs. Kulavich called after her.

"I will."

Well, drat, Jane thought as she wrestled the trash can out of her backseat. The jerk was a cop; he hadn't lied. There went her dream of seeing him hauled away in handcuffs. She deposited the can by his back porch, then released the plastic can she had bought for herself from the trunk. If the can hadn't been plastic, she never could have gotten it in there, but plastic compressed. When she opened the trunk, it sprang at her like something alive. She put the can behind her small kitchen stoop, neatly out of sight from the street, then went inside and quickly changed into shorts and a halter top. That was what suburban ladies wore to mow their lawns, wasn't it? Then she remembered her older neighbors, and changed the halter top for a T- shirt; she didn't want to give some old gent a heart attack. She felt a thrill of anticipation as she unlocked the padlock on the garage doors and slipped inside, fumbling until she reached the switch that turned on the single overhead light. Her dad's pride and joy sat there, completely covered by a custom-made canvas tarp, lined with felt so it wouldn't scratch the paint. Damn, she wished he had left it at David's. The car wasn't as much trouble as BooBoo, but she worried about it a lot more.

The deciding factor in leaving it at her house, she thought, was that her garage still had the old-fashioned double doors rather than a modern garage door that slid up. Her dad worried about the car being seen from the street; she could get into her garage without opening the doors more than the twelve inches required for her to slip through, while everything in David's double garage was visible every time he raised his door. First chance she got, she was putting in an automatic garage door.

She had covered her new lawn mower with a sheet so it wouldn't get dusty. She removed the sheet and stroked her hand over the cool metal. Maybe her low-tech garage wasn't the deciding factor in her baby-sitting the car; maybe it was because she was the only one of her dad's children who shared his enthusiasm for cars. She was the one who had hung over the fender of their family sedan, staring into the mysterious mechanical bowels as her dad changed the oil and spark plugs. By the time she was ten, she had been helping him. By the time she was twelve, she had taken over the chore. For a while she had considered going into automotive mechanical engineering, but the training took years and she wasn't really that ambitious. All she wanted was a job that paid well and that she didn't hate, and she was as good with numbers as she was with motors. She enjoyed cars; she didn't want to turn them into a job.

She wheeled her lawn mower past her dad's car, taking care not to touch it. The canvas tarp protected it from the ground up, but she didn't take any chances where that car was concerned. Opening one of the garage doors only enough to let her get the lawn mower out, she ushered her new baby out into the sunlight. The red paint gleamed; the chrome handlebars glistened. Oh, it was pretty. At the last minute, she remembered something about the mowing ritual, and moved her car to the street; one had to be careful about accidentally slinging a rock that could break a window or chip a paint job. She looked at the jerk's car and shrugged; he might notice BooBoo's paw prints, but he'd never notice another dent in that thing. With a happy smile, she fired up the little motor. The thing about cutting grass, she discovered, was that you had an instant sense of achievement. You could see exactly where you had been and what you had accomplished. Her dad and David had always taken care of that chore when she was growing up, much to her relief, because mowing the lawn had looked boring. Only as she had grown older had she seen the lure of having your own grass, and now she felt as if she had finally, at the age of thirty, stepped into full adulthood. She was a home owner. She mowed her lawn. Cool.

Something tapped her on the shoulder.

She shrieked and released the lawn mower handles, jumping to one side and whirling to face her attacker. The mower stopped in its tracks.

The jerk stood there, bloodshot eyes, snarl on his face, dirty clothes: his usual presentation. He reached over and slid the lever on the mower to the off position, and the efficient little engine growled to a stop.

Silence.

For about half a second.

"What in hell did you do that for?" she roared, her face turning red with temper as she stepped closer, unconsciously balling her right hand into a fist. "I thought you were trying to quit cussing," he taunted. "You'd drive a saint to cussing!"

"That let's you out, doesn't it?"

"You're damn right!"

He eyed her right hand. "Are you going to use that, or are you going to be reasonable?"

"What –?" She glanced down and saw that her arm was half-cocked, her fist already drawn back. With great effort she uncurled her fingers. They immediately assumed the fight position again. She really, really wanted to slug him, and she got even angrier because she couldn't. "Reasonable?" she yelled, stepping even closer. "You want me to be reasonable? You're the one who scared the hell out of me and turned off my mower!"

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