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physique that must have required some careful eating. He was enormous, but most of him seemed to be muscle. He had a broad face, almost leonine in look, with large dark eyes under a jutting brow. His eyebrows were bushy, but they suited him, like his imposing nose and square chin. He was even good-looking in a rough sort of way. He had hands like hams, and Maureen thought that she wouldn’t have liked to run afoul of him if she’d been another man instead of a woman.
    â€œHave you gone into hibernation?” he asked. He folded his arms across his massive chest and leaned back against the door with the nonchalance of a man who never doubted his instincts for an instant.
    She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
    â€œYou’ve been studiously avoiding me for two weeks,” he replied. “Not an easy task when you’re living next door to me.”
    â€œI didn’t think you’d noticed,” she murmured.
    â€œThat yellow car is hard to miss,” he replied. “Prepared flower beds seem to appear by magic in your backyard. Clothes go up and come down under invisible hands. I never see you, or hear you except accidentally.”
    She put the chili down. “God forbid,” she said. “I’d hate to be accused of moving next door to chase you, even if I was there first.”
    â€œYou’re blushing,” he observed, noting her heightened color with an odd expression.
    â€œYou make me nervous,” she said. She didn’t look at him. “The last tenant was hardly ever home, and when he was, he was playing hard rock so loud that he didn’t know what was going on around him.” She sighed heavily. “I’ve been afraid that you’d mind Bagwell.”
    â€œYour live-in lover.” He nodded. “I never see him, but I hear him,” he said with a contemptuous smile.
    She hated that smile. The blush got worse. “He’s not my lover. He’s a bird. An Amazon parrot,” she said uncomfortably. “He gets noisy at dawn and dusk, but he’s…he’s sort of all I’ve got.” She looked up then, her eyes wide and soft and eloquent. “I can’t afford to move, and if you complain, the authorities might cause me some trouble. I can’t give Bagwell up. I’ve had him since I graduated from high school.”
    He was scowling. “A parrot?”
    â€œA yellow-naped Amazon,” she confirmed. “He’s seven years old and very vocal. He can even sing a little opera.”
    His dark eyes went over her face very slowly, as if he hadn’t really looked at her before. “You’re very young.”
    She shifted in her chair. “I am not. I’m twenty-four,” she protested.
    â€œI’m thirty-seven,” he said.
    He didn’t look it, but she didn’t dare tell him that. “Much too old for me,” she said quietly, not believing a word of it. “So that ought to prove that I’m not chasing you,” she added with quiet satisfaction.
    He frowned. Her attitude irritated him. It had flattered him a little at first to think that she’d been interested enough to make a play for him, even though he was frankly suspicious of her. She wasn’tmuch to look at, but she had a figure that was disturbing. Odd, that, since women had lost their attraction for him in the past few years.
    â€œI know that you’re not chasing me,” he replied, much more curtly than he meant to. He wasn’t that much older than she was, and she didn’t have to rub it in. “You’ve made it obvious that you’d run a mile to avoid me.”
    â€œIt wasn’t like that,” she murmured demurely. “I just thought…Well, if I started hanging around the canteen and spent a lot of time working in my flower beds at home—” she shrugged “—I didn’t want you to think I was trying to catch your eye. You’d already accused me of