Pete followed her to the door and stood patiently while she opened it. “It’s not so bad, you know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“No one got hurt, and we got to go to a neat party.”

“You crashed that neat party. And you insulted poor Sam Gundy.”

“Hey, I even got dressed up. I wore my tux.”

Louisa let her gaze travel the length of him. “What about the jeans and sneakers?”

“What about them?”

Louisa unlocked her door and stepped into the foyer. Pete followed. “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.

“I figured you’d want to offer me a drink or something.”

“Nothing! I’m not going to offer you anything! And I don’t want you in my house.”

“How about coffee? Do I get a cup of coffee?”

“How about a knuckle sandwich? How’d you like that?”

He smiled and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “I suppose this means a good-night kiss is out of the question.”

“Out!” She pointed stiff-armed to the door. “Out, out, out.”

Pete came awake with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He lay perfectly still, waiting for the confusion of sleep to leave him, wondering what had nudged him toward consciousness. He felt the cat shift at the foot of the bed, heard it growl low in its throat.

Pete’s gaze fastened on the DVD display across the room with the LED lights glowing red in the darkness. The lights went black for a moment, then reappeared, and Pete knew someone was silently moving around his bedroom. A body had passed between him and the LED lights.

Reason told him to stay calm. Instinct told him to panic. Instinct won out. He sprang from the bed in one quick movement and hit the floor running, heading for the door. Halfway across the room he collided with the intruder, and they both went down in a heap on the floor.

Louisa sat at her kitchen table, elbows resting on the table, chin resting on her hands. She glumly looked at the clock on the wall. Three-fifteen. She couldn’t sleep. Once again, it was all his fault. The fiend upstairs was keeping her awake. This time he was stomping around in her mind. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. She sighed and slumped a little lower.