She cracked open the door, then gaped.
It was Rodney Carmichael.
He wore a dark brown suit with a yellow shirt and red tie. His short, black hair was slicked back and he offered her a beaming smile. "Hi, Grace."
"Mr. Carmichael," she said coldly, even though her heart was pounding. There was something indefinably creepy about this little, wiry man. "What are you doing here?"
"I just wanted to stop by and say hi. I thought we could-"
"You need to leave."
He frowned at her. "Why? I just want to talk to you."
"Because I don't see patients in my home."
"Yeah, but I'm not-"
"Mr. Carmichael," she said sternly. "I really need you to leave. If you don't, I'm calling the police."
Unaffected by the anger in her voice, he nodded with saintly patience. "Oh, so you must be busy. I can relate. I have a lot of stuff to do, too. How 'bout I come by later? We could have dinner tonight."
Dumbfounded, she stared at him. "No."
He smiled at that. "C'mon, Grace. Don't be that way. You know we're meant for each other. If you'd just let me-"
"Leave!"
"Okay, but I'll be back. We have a lot of things to talk about." He turned around and headed across her porch.
Her heart hammering, Grace shut and locked the door.
"I'm going to kill you, Luanne," she said as she made her way to the kitchen. As she passed through the living room, a shape in her window caught her attention.
It was Rodney.
Aghast, Grace picked up the phone and called the police.
It was almost an hour later before they came. Rodney stayed outside the entire time, moving from window to window to watch her through the closed slits of her blinds, and it wasn't until he saw the police car pulling into the driveway that he ran across her backyard and vanished.
Grace took a deep breath to calm her raw nerves, then went to let the officers in.
They stayed only long enough to tell her there was nothing they could do to keep Rodney permanently away from her. The best she could do would be to swear out a restraining order, but since she was required to treat Rodney until Luanne returned, that was useless.
"I'm sorry," the officer said in the doorway as she showed them out. "But he didn't break any laws that would allow us to really get him out of your hair. You could swear out a warrant for trespassing, but unless he has priors, there's not a whole lot they're going to do to him."
The young officer gave her a sympathetic look. "I know it's not much comfort. We can try to patrol the area a little more, but the summer is a really busy time of year for us. Personally, I'd advise you to stay with a friend for a while."
"All right, thanks." As soon as they were gone, she rushed through the house making sure all the doors and windows were locked tight.
Apprehensive, Grace looked around the house, half expecting Rodney to enter through a crack in the wall like a cockroach.
If only she knew whether or not Rodney was dangerous. His report from the state hospital mentioned his routine deviant behavior of butting into women's lives, but he'd never harmed anyone physically. He'd just terrified his victims with his blind persistence, which was why he'd been sent to the hospital for evaluation to begin with.
The psychologist in Grace said there was nothing particularly dangerous about Rodney, but the woman in her was scared anyway.
The last thing she wanted was to become a statistic.
No, she couldn't stay here waiting for him to come back and find her alone.
Rushing upstairs, she went to pack.
Chapter 11
Selena watched as Julian paced back and forth in front of her stand while she gave a reading to a tourist. Ooo boy, she could watch that man walk all day long. He had such an eye-popping gait that it made her yearn to rush home to Bill and do some wicked things to him.
Over and over, women approached Julian, and he kept sending them away. It was actually funny to watch women strut around him while he remained oblivious to their machinations. She'd never known such a man existed.
But then, even she could get sick of chocolate if she ate too much of it.
Judging by the way women responded to Julian, she was sure he had quite a bellyache from overindulgence. Worse, he looked terribly troubled.
And she felt awful for what she had done to both of them. Her idea had seemed flawless at first. If only she'd thought it through a little more.
How was she to know who Julian had been? If only his name had rung a bell. But her specialty was Bronze Age Greece which had been ancient history even in Julian's time.
Even worse, she hadn't really thought about the man in the book as being a real person. She'd thought he was some kind of genie-like creature without a past or feelings.
Boy, when she screwed up, she always managed to do it in a big way.