Some Rough Edge Smoothin' Read online

  After wiping the excess cleaner from the rippled green glass with crumbled newspaper-less expensive than paper towels-she polished each pane individually until it sparkled. All around her, sunlight splintered and bounced, creating dancing rainbow-prisms on the grimy walls. Soon, if everything went according to plan, musical notes from student musicians would once again bounce off these walls too.

  Wealthy shipbuilder, Captain Samuel Monroe, built the Monroe mansion in the mid-eighteen hundreds during Fenton's heyday of economic prosperity. The seafaring gentleman and his socialite wife, Priscilla-adorably, he called her Prissy and she called him Cap'n-had produced a brood of ten children, all of whom played an instrument. At times, Seraphina swore she still heard the haunting melodies of a bygone era drifting through the mansion's empty rooms-

  At least that's what she was telling everybody.

  It made for a good story, and the ability to raise scholarship money was often based on such sweet romantic tales. The truth of the matter was romance had nothing to do with her decision to rent the old Monroe place. She took on the mansion because the rent was dirt-cheap, and dirt-cheap was all she could afford. When the owner quoted the amount, she'd agreed to the figure on the spot.

  One month after their verbal agreement, the property was sold to real estate developer-cum-strip club owner, Tomas Ruiz, and she had A NOTICE TO QUIT in her hand.

  Skipping the legalese, she read between the lines: Fenton was undergoing an economic boom, and ‘renovators’ were tearing down old houses like the Monroe place left and right to make way for pricey housing developments. The mansion was next to go.

  Over her dead body. It would take a heck of a lot more than a piece of paper with Eviction Notice printed at the top to get her fanny out of the Monroe mansion. She loved the old place! The house had character. History. Personality. Bats-

  Okay, the bats creeped her out. But the exterminator was coming next week and he'd relocate her little winged friends. And you know what? She'd still be here! That was the whole point. She wasn't going anywhere! Morally, the mansion was hers. She had right on her side, first dibs, a cancelled check for one month's rent and security deposit...and no where else to go. Tomas Ruiz was not getting his money-grubbing hands on her home!

  She'd tell him so just as soon as he returned her phone calls.

  Thus far, he hadn't bothered getting back to her.

  Irresponsible jerk. He was too busy micro-managing his strippers at The Pink Flamingo, she supposed, to dial her number. But if and when she did hear from him, guaranteed, she was giving him a piece of her mind. He wasn't getting away with this travesty of justice!

  She'd show him, Seraphina thought, ripping off a sheet of newspaper and twisting it. Hard. Very hard. Until it squeaked.

  Rolling the guillotined newsprint up into a crumpled ball, she attacked the next windowpane in line.

  She'd put Tomas Ruiz right in his place, Seraphina decided with a vigorous head nod. And not by stooping to his base level, either. Oh, no. She'd take the high road. She'd charm him. Smother him in graciousness. She'd simply explain, in a non-judgmental manner, why she was right and he was wrong. Wrong. Dead wrong.

  She was deep in contemplation, outlining a truly excellent argument to validate her position, when her nape prickled. Her neck never tingled like that unless something was...well...wrong. Wrong. Dead wrong.

  Even so, true panic didn't set in until she heard the soft fall of a footstep directly behind her.

  She knew exactly two people in Fenton, neither of whom would drop by unexpectedly, so there went the possibility that the footstep belonged to a friendly visitor. And since she had no neighbors that ruled out the likelihood that the person sneaking up behind her was here to borrow a cup of sugar.

  The Monroe mansion had wonderful potential, but it was located in a desolate part of the riverfront, an area where breaking-and-entering was commonplace. Seraphina had a horrible feeling she was about to be added to the crime stats.

  Why hadn't she had a locksmith over to install deadbolts on the door, like she had intended to? For that matter, why didn't she have her cell phone close by so she could punch in nine-one-one?

  With no neighbors to scream to for help, no possibility of a three-digit rescue, Seraphina looked wildly around the porch for a weapon.

  She found one close at hand. Actually, it was in her hand. The ammonia window wash solution wasn't exactly Mace, but it would have to do...

  Gripping the plastic bottle like an Uzi, she pivoted, aimed the No-Drip nozzle, and pulled the hair-sensitive trigger.

  Bulls-eye! The streak-free formula tagged the rough-looking thug mid-forehead.

  Legs braced, she was all set to fire off another round of blue spray when the home intruder held up both hands, palms forward.

  “Stop!” He laughed. “Don't squirt! Everything's cool. I surrender.”

  Here, in the flesh, was the criminal element she'd been warned against. This...this...hoodlum had invaded her home, prepared to do who knew what, and now he was laughing at her?

  How dare he?

  No mercy, her thumb squeezed the trigger.

  Two laughing dark eyes were tagged with a stream of harsh ammonia.

  “Shit!” The intruder sputtered and choked and coughed, his hands clawing at his reddened eyeballs. He wasn't laughing any more.

  “That's what you get for picking on a defenseless woman,” she coolly informed him.

  It happened so fast. She never saw it coming, never saw him make his move. One second she was holding the plastic bottle, all set to fire away again, and the next second her weapon was bouncing in a blue sudsy puddle on the floor and she was being sandwiched between a wall and a very large body.

  “Are you all right?” she was asked.

  Her chin quivered. “What do you care?”

  “Hell, lady. You just about ruined me for ever forever watching cable again, but I never meant to hurt you. I acted on reflex.”

  Big hands roamed her all over.

  “Settle down so I can see if you got any broken bones,” he said.

  Settle down? As in passively letting him do whatever he came here to do? Who did he think he was dealing with?

  “If it's money you're after,” she parleyed, changing strategies from attack to negotiation now that she was on the losing end of the encounter, “I have forty dollars in cash in my purse, inside the house-”

  Next to the cell phone. How long could three digits possibly take to punch?

  “If you'd like, I'll go get the money now,” she said, a pleading note creeping into voice, making it go all wobbly. She hated that vocal wobble worse than anything, worse than even being helplessly pressed to the wall.

  “Shh. You've got the wrong idea here,” the miscreant soothed, his pronunciation low-life flavored, a big hand moving down her spine. “Sure I didn't hurt you? You're such a tiny little thing.”

  What was he doing?

  Goodness! He was...oh ...he was feeling her. Everywhere.

  “No! You can't!” she shrieked. “You absolutely cannot do this.”

  “Hush, now. Just let me. Okay?”

  Moaning, her legs loosened. She didn't want them to. She didn't tell them to. The order to part her legs did not originate in her brain; the instruction came from someplace much lower, someplace much deeper, a hidden core inside herself she'd spent years suppressing. She was not fighting him now so much as she was fighting her own wanton nature.

  Gently kneading fingers moved down her back, around her waist, splaying the flare of her hip. When his touch briefly swept the fullness of her bottom, biting her lip, she sighed in pleasure.

  It was hot on the porch, but as his free hand encircled her wrist in a finger manacle, his thumb rubbing the soft underside, stroking in concentric little circles over her pulse, she shivered almost convulsively.

  Not in fear. Oh, not in fear.

  Somehow, she knew he wouldn't hurt her-

  Unless, she asked him to. “Please?”
<
br />   “Easy. Just take it easy, ruca.”

  Slanting his whiskered jaw, he spoke against her ear, “I think maybe I should introduce myself before we get into something here we maybe shouldn't get into. I'm Tomas Ruiz. You know, Ruiz Construction? I understand you been calling me. Guess you never got the message that I was coming by at six-”

  Seraphina frowned. Tomas Ruiz? The new owner of the Monroe mansion? The money-grubbing, opportunistic, womanizer she'd heard so much about? Her new landlord, whom she needed to sway to her cause by virtue of sound reasoning? The man who had the power to destroy her most cherished dream? That Tomas Ruiz? He was the hoodlum whose face she'd just soaked?

  Oh, dear. She'd really screwed up this time.

  “You don't seem hurt,” he said, and the weight of his hard body moved back and away.

  Now free, Seraphina spun around to face her adversary.

  Tomas Ruiz was swiping at his drippy-wet forehead with the sleeve of his torn black T-shirt. As he lifted his arm, she noticed the ripple of his bicep-difficult not to notice the flex of such a large muscle-and that the front of his glossy black hair was dripping with the window washing solution.

  Hair that thick would take an awfully long time to dry. Seraphina had an almost irresistible urge to comb her hands through the long wet strands just to help it along. Would that black hair feel soft or coarse on her fingertips? She wondered.

  She'd very nearly blinded an innocent man, and yet she felt herself drift off into a sensual fantasy that had absolutely nothing at all to do with the reality of her present situation.

  “You are Seraphina Norris, right?” Tomas Ruiz broke into her reverie to question.

  “Hmm?” In her imagination, his dark hair-it was deliciously soft, not coarse at all-was between her fingers and she was mussing it all up. Then she was pulling his mussed-up head down to her belly, her NAKED belly, letting the long strands tickle her bare skin. As she liked that sensation, experimentally, she pulled him down to her...

  “Lady, are you okay?” Whisky-brown eyes showed their concern.

  She snapped back to attention. “Ah-oh. Yes, I'm fine.”

  But was she? Was she really fine?

  She didn't feel very fine. Yes, she did occasionally have those kinds of thoughts, usually when she was alone in bed at night, but never before did they overtake in the middle of the day.

  Hand trembling, she patted the front of her skirt. “And yes, I'm Seraphina Norris.”

  “Listen, I'm sorry if I scared you. I tried the bell, but it don't work. When I knocked on the door, you nodded your head in a kind of jerky motion, so I figured that was your way of telling me to come on ahead. I wouldn't have barged in on you like that otherwise.”

  The nod! She remembered the nod.

  Lost deep in thought, scheming up a way to fix her landlord's wagon, she had indeed nodded her head. Tomas Ruiz might very well have mistaken that nod as a tacit agreement for him to enter her porch. Why, this was all an unfortunate misunderstanding...

  At a loss as to what to do next, say next, she fell back on polite formality.

  Extending her hand, she said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Ruiz.”

  Then she went and ruined everything by swaying on her feet. She did that quite a lot since her illness. The weakness came and went with annoying regularity, the episodes increasing when she was tired.

  Lately, she was tired all the time.

  Bypassing the handshake, Tomas Ruiz made a grab for her elbow. “I could maybe come back tomorrow. I can see my appearance has disturbed you.”

  “Oh, don't you turn this back on me, Mr. Ruiz!”

  She yanked her elbow away from his supportive grip. “This has nothing to do with your appearance. You simply caught me unawares and startled me.”

  He flashed her a dazzling white smile, just oozing with hip, gangsta charm. “Sure about that, ruca? Sure it wasn't my mestizo-brown complexion that did it for you?”

  Ruca. That was the second time he'd called her that. She knew enough Spanglish to know that ruca meant ‘chick’ in the quirky hybridization of Castilian Spanish and English, a best-of-two-world language, full of colorful idiomatic expressions like ruca.

  In nobody's language was she a chick

  In any language Tomas Ruiz did disturb her.

  Not in the way he thought, however. He was talking about something insidious here, about judging a book by its cover. Had she?

  This was the crime-riddled Southside, and Tomas Ruiz's book cover was very rough indeed. His face was dirty. His clothing-breaking-and-entering black-was ripped in several places. There were gaudy silver hoops dangling from his earlobes. He looked like he didn't own a razor. His hair was tied back in a ponytail-that is, most of it was. Some of those gorgeous long strands were sweeping his enormous shoulders.

  Oh, she could go on and on about his disreputable appearance! But had she jumped to the wrong conclusion based solely on his grungy exterior?

  Seraphina adjusted the collar on her tailored white cotton blouse, smoothed her palms over the straight line of her conservative tan skirt, made sure her hair was all neatly tucked into its coil at the back of her head, and examined her conscience.

  “I'm so sorry,” she whispered, horrified at what she saw inside herself.

  Tomas Ruiz shrugged. “I came straight from work. No shower or change first. That's why I look more bad-ass than usual.”

  She shook her head back and forth. “That's no excuse-”

  “Don't beat yourself up over it. This is a high-crime area. And, let's face it,” he said, thumbing the two-day beard on his chin, then tweaking the silver hoop dangling from his ear lobe, “I fit the profile of a Southside desperado. It's a common enough mistake, a common enough reaction.”

  “But it shouldn't be.”

  His tone was cynical. “Yeah, ain't life a disillusioning bitch, though? You'll get over it in no time.”

  “You don't know me, Mr. Ruiz. Please don't presume to know what I'm thinking or what I'll get over in no time.”

  Tomas Ruiz rocked cockily back and forth on the scuffed heels of his work boots. “That's where you're wrong,” he said smugly. “I know all about you. You're the naïve, do-gooder, gringa lady who wants to start a music school in a condemned building.”

  So much for the introductory pleasantries...

  Seraphina felt absolutely horrible about jumping to the wrong conclusion, about over-reacting based solely on a person's appearance. But at least she'd owned up to her mistake, and this...this arrogant real-estate developer needed to own up to his as well, because no one but no one called her a do-gooder and got away with it. Do-gooder sentimentality wasn't what she was about, wasn't what this school was about.

  She had never backed down from a fight in her life and she was not backing down from this one. She got right in his face. Nose to nose. So close, she could make out each and every one of the individual whisker stubble on Tomas Ruiz's strong jaw. So near, she could practically taste his after work beer. Without any space between them, she inhaled the sweat from his body. Clean sweat. Real sweat. A working man's hard-earned sweat unmasked by fake, male-model cologne.

  Shockingly, as she breathed him in, her hardening nipples pushed out against her blouse.

  She'd felt nothing for so long. Neither anger nor joy, nor anything else except a debilitating and depressing dullness that passed as existence, and now she was feeling this...this... need! A sexual need. Where had it come from?

  She was unprepared. Didn't know how to act. Her traitorous body was reacting in a sexual way to a man's natural scent and her awareness of him as man was taking her by surprise. She didn't expect it, didn't know what to do with it, and horror of horrors, the excitement was spreading lower; her belly actually fluttered, then clenched in arousal.

  She swallowed, intentionally, hoping to compensate for the dryness in her throat, a dryness that was in converse proportion to an embarrassing wetness someplace else.

  She widened her legs in a militant
stance-actually, she was unsticking herself from the panel on her moist panties. “First of all, Mr.Ruiz, the mansion isn't condemned.”

  “Only because the former owner's brother-in-law is Fenton's building inspector. Listen, lady, there's no point arguing. The building ain't safe and I want you out.”

  He was so young!

  She was not so young any more. After this past year, she felt as old as the hills.

  In real years, she was almost thirty-one, far too old to fall for any of Tomas Ruiz's twenty-something lines. Safety had nothing to do with his wanting her out of the mansion!

  “Secondly, Mr. Ruiz, I am far from naïve. Thirdly, I don't want to start a school. I am starting a school. Here. Do you understand the distinction between the two or is that just way over your head?”

  “Hey, I'm not stupid, lady.”

  Considering the Cro-Magnon quality of his grunted reply, the veracity of that statement remained to be seen.

  Charitably, she made no comment about his knuckle dragging. He was, as she'd already noted, very young. As far as she was concerned, his youth meant he was barely bipedal on the evolutionary ladder.

  It was the rare twenty-something male who thought with his gray matter not his genitalia, who put the greater good above his own best interests. She could hardly blame Tomas Ruiz for his youth. But she could and did blame herself for succumbing to the virile appeal of it. Gosh, her panties were soaking!

  “Fourthly, Mr. Ruiz,” she said, almost not remembering what number she was on, “I had a rental agreement with the prior owner. And that entitles me to-”

  “-exactly nada. You didn't pay that rent to me. You wrote the check out to Mike Anderson. And that just goes to prove how naïve you really are, because Anderson had already negotiated the sale of this dump to me before you forked over the security deposit.”

  Her eyes widened. “He had? But surely that's-”

  “-illegal? Guess again.”

  Broad, black T-shirt-clad shoulders bunched. A hard forearm contracted. Pumped-up biceps rippled. A thread of raven black hair fell over an ammonia-dampened forehead. A shadowed jaw tilted to the side in a move that was so slick, so smooth, so utterly charming that Sera knew he had to practice it in front of a mirror. Tomas Ruiz was not a thug; she was wrong about that. But he was most definitely a testosterone polluted young male incapable of any true depth of intellectual activity. Grade-A beefcake. Nice on the eyes, but a cerebral lightweight. He had about as much substance as dandelion fluff.