“Oh.” Marguerite smiled with obvious relief. “We were so worried when you didn’t answer the knock. The boys saw a man creeping around your house and heard two screams, and we were afraid your intruder had got in and harmed you before we could get to the house.”
“We’re fine,” Pet said. Her mouth tightened, but she didn’t comment on the fact that they were able to hear Parker scream when the windows in the house were all closed.
“I only screamed once,” Parker said suddenly. “When I first saw him. I was surprised,” he added as if to excuse screaming at all.
Pet placed her hands on his shoulders and instinctively drew him closer as she reminded him, “You also screamed ‘no’ when I was going to leave you in the bathroom to go see if he’d got in.”
“Oh.” He flushed slightly and nodded. “Yeah. Maybe I did.”
Pet glanced back to Marguerite. “Thank you for your concern. I . . .” Her voice died in her throat as she noted the woman’s eyes. They were more silver than blue now, as if the excitement of the moment had changed them somehow. Pet stared at the woman’s alien eyes and for a minute they seemed to steal her breath as well as her ability to think.
“You are safe with us, dear,” Marguerite said quietly, reaching out to touch her wrist gently. Pet felt those words to her very soul. She was safe now that Marguerite and Santo were there. She knew it and felt herself relax.
“I think your caller is worried about you. Perhaps you should assure him you are all right,” Marguerite said gently.
Pet peered down at the phone in her hand with surprise. She’d forgotten all about the 911 operator. Raising the phone to her ear, she heard his anxious cries, “Hello? Hello! Miss? Is everything all right?”
“Yes. Sorry,” Pet said as soon as the phone was at her mouth. “Everything is fine. I—”
“Marguerite?”
Pet paused and glanced to the stairs at that concerned call from below.
“Up here, dear,” Marguerite responded, turning her head toward the stairs.
“Your neighbors are there now?” the 911 operator asked.
“Uh-huh,” Pet murmured as Marguerite’s husband appeared on the landing. The concern she’d heard in his voice was equally apparent in Julius’s expression as he came into view. It didn’t ease until his gaze had slid over the four of them there in the hallway, she noted as he hurried toward them, and then her attention returned to the phone as the 911 operator spoke again.
“I’ll warn the officers so they don’t mistake your neighbors for the intruder,” he assured her, and then added, “They’re arriving now, so I’ll let you go so you can talk to them.”
“Thank you,” Pet murmured, hardly hearing his words as she watched Julius Notte reach his wife and slide an arm around her waist.
“Everyone is all right, then?” he asked, pulling Marguerite close and kissing her forehead. He was bare-chested, with only a pair of loose pajama bottoms hanging low on his hips. The couple had obviously been pulled from bed.
“The police are here.”
Pet shifted her attention back to the stairs as Justin Bricker and Zanipolo appeared. Like Santo, they were still dressed.
“The police are asking to speak to the homeowner,” Justin announced, glancing to Julius. “Should I—?” He stopped and glanced down with surprise when Parker suddenly launched himself forward, rushing for the stairs.
“Parker!” Pet hurried after him. The boy was still holding the cat and blanket, the latter of which was long and she was sure would trip him up. But he made it to the bottom of the stairs unscathed and didn’t stop until he’d placed himself in front of the police officer just coming through the broken front door.
Pet slowed to a halt at the bottom of the stairs as she took in the damage Santo had done. Good Lord, he’d smashed it to pieces. It now littered the floor in short broken slats, leaving a gaping hole where the door had been.
“This is my house.”
Pet glanced to Parker at that announcement and forced a pained smile to her face when the police officer blinked down at her nephew and then raised his gaze to her and arched an eyebrow in question. He was a nice-looking man. Tall and burly with dirty blond hair and clear blue eyes. His name tag read Cross.
“Thank you for coming, Officer Cross,” she murmured, moving to stand beside Parker. “My name is Petronella Stone and this is my nephew, Parker Peters. His parents own this house, but I’m watching him while they’re both away.”
Officer Cross nodded, and then his gaze dropped over her as he pulled out his notepad. When his movements stilled and his eyes widened suddenly, she glanced down at herself and nearly groaned aloud. She’d forgotten she was still in her nightwear. Pet had worn a cropped T-shirt and boxers to bed. The boxers were a pair an old boyfriend had left behind and never asked to have back. They were comfortable and large enough that they hung from her hips rather than at her waist. Her T-shirt stopped several inches above the boxers, leaving a lot of skin on display. It also clung to what little skin it did cover. It read simply:
You.
Me.
Bed.
Now.
The officer’s stern expression cracked into a smile that made her assume he approved, and then a low growl had Pet glancing over her shoulder to see that Marguerite and all four men were coming down the stairs. She couldn’t tell where the sound had come from, but did notice when Marguerite reached out to clasp Santo’s arm as if to soothe him.
Santo felt Marguerite’s touch on his arm but didn’t take his gaze away from the petite woman in the entry and the tall policeman looking her over so lasciviously. At least the man had been before Santo had growled. Now the officer had his cop face back on and was eyeing Santo and the others narrowly as he opened his notepad and retrieved a pen.
Forcing himself to relax, Santo frowned slightly at his possessive reaction to the officer’s obvious interest in Pet. It had caught him by surprise, coming on rather abruptly, and violently. He’d wanted to plow the man in the face and then pluck the eyes from his head for daring to look on her so.
But then, Santo acknowledged, he seemed to be having odd reactions to Pet as well. For instance, he’d been desperate to get to her when he’d spotted the man creeping around the house. And the scream he’d heard had scared the hell out of him. The second scream had just added to his concern. While his cousin, uncle, and Bricker had chased after the dark figure, he’d gone to the door and been about to crash through it when Marguerite had caught up to him and insisted he knock first. He’d reluctantly done so and then barely waited the length of a breath before knocking again. But that was all he’d managed before he’d sent a fist through the door, grabbed both edges of the hole he’d made, and literally torn the wood apart.
His relief on spotting Pet safe and well upstairs had left him weak and almost gasping. Or perhaps her outfit had been responsible for the breathless part. The woman was a sexy little bundle in the boxers and cropped T-shirt. The top clung lovingly to her skin and was so damned thin he could see the color and shape of her nipples through it. The saying hadn’t helped any. You. Me. Bed. Now. Good Lord! He’d been hard pressed to think of anything else after that and had stood there like a drooling idiot while everyone else had spoken.
Santo was distracted from his thoughts when a second officer appeared behind Cross and tapped him on the shoulder. They exchanged a few words and since he couldn’t hear them, Santo slid into Cross’s mind to read what they were talking about. It seemed Zani and Bricker had spoken to the men briefly before coming inside, and while Cross had come to the door, the second officer had gone around to the back of the house, taken the outside stairs up to the balcony, and checked all the windows. Finding one had marks on it as if someone had tried to force it open, he’d then used his flashlight and walked around a bit outside, scouting the area. There was no sign of the would-be intruder.
“Right,” Cross said suddenly and turned back to Pet to offer her a smile. “Petronella, you said? Can you spell that for me?”
Santo noted that the man still had his cop face on, but his gaze kept trying to skitter down over Pet’s body as he waited, pen poised, for her to spell her name. It was Parker who answered.
“P . . . E . . . T . . . R . . . O . . . N . . . E . . . L . . . L . . . A,” Parker spelled out, and then added, “S . . . T . . . O . . . N . . . E.”
“Thanks, little guy,” the officer said with a grin. “I figured Stone was spelled that way, but it’s good to be sure, and Petronella is an unusual name.” His gaze slid back to Pet as he added that, his grin widening.
“It is unusual but not unheard of,” Parker assured him solemnly. “For instance, there were six female babies named Petronella in 1924. There were 1,161,210 babies born that year, making it only one in 193,535 babies given the name. But it’s much more popular in Europe. There have been explorers, Olympic sailors, swimmers, a painter, a poet, a British journalist, and loads of other women with the name. There was even a Doctor Who character named Petronella Osgood.”
“My nephew; the walking dictionary,” Pet said. Her tone of voice was wry, and Santo noted that she took Parker’s arm to draw him in front of her so she could rest her hands on his shoulders. It also helped cover her skimpy outfit. At least it did in the front. He was still getting an unobstructed view of her from behind and found his gaze lingering on her lovely legs.
“Nobody uses dictionaries anymore, Aunt Pet,” Parker said, craning his neck to look up and back at his aunt. “They Google things . . . like I Googled your name one time because no one else seemed to have it.”
“Of course you did,” she said affectionately.
“So,” the officer said now, trying to get the conversation back on track. “You called 911 about someone trying to break into the house?”
Santo noted the way the man’s gaze slid past Pet to him as he stepped off the stairs to stand behind her. He was aware that the others followed him, and saw the officer’s eyes track that as Pet said, “Yes. Parker and I were both in our beds. I got up to go to the bathroom, and heard the cat hissing and growling, opened his door, and there was a man outside Parker’s window, trying to open it.”