Playing Games. Dianne Drake

leak, lady?” he interrupted, his lack of interest in neighborly chitchat made abundantly clear by his testy intonation.

      Roxy’s eyes went back up to his face. Except for the furious scowl it wasn’t bad—not bad at all. Probably the first time she’d looked past his…endowments, and she sure liked what she was seeing. Whiskey-brown eyes, dark eyebrows, and that nighttime shadow of stubble. Now, that would be something real nice to wake up to. She remembered waking up to Bruce. He looked more like the bad end of a mop in the mornings. “Please come in…um…neighbor.” She unlatched the chain, opened the door and pointed to the kitchen. “It’s through the living room…”

      “I know where the kitchen is,” he snapped, his testiness booting up another notch.

      “I guess you would…did you mention your name, by the way?”

      “Ned,” he grunted in passing. “Ned Proctor.”

      “Well, Ned Proctor. Welcome to my apartment.” Stepping back as he whooshed by, Roxy caught a trace of his scent. He smells great, too. Could this get any better? He was like a fresh splash of something bold and virile, unlike her one and only date in the past three months. What was his name? Michael? Or was it Rupert? Whichever…he’d shown up smelling like an array of discount cologne samples, and she’d sneezed her way around the first block with him before jumping out of his car and hoofing it all the way home—in the fresh air. It took a whole month for her aching sinuses to completely recover from that redolent attack.

      “It’s been driving me insane,” she said, watching from the doorway while he tried to manipulate the faucet’s single handle to stop the drip. “And that won’t work. I’ve tried.” For Ned, it was scarcely dripping now. Barely one drop every five seconds, and a puny little drip at that. An ugly plumbing conspiracy meant to make her look silly.

      “You couldn’t have lived with that drip until morning, Mizzz Rose?” Glancing down at the floor, he shook his head, letting out the impatient sigh she was already coming to know quite well. “It’s not exactly pouring over, getting ready to flood the apartment below, is it?”

      “I’m on…a project. All the dripping was breaking my concentration.”

      Frowning, Ned glanced across at Roxy’s makeshift, make-a-house desk area next to the pantry. “It needs a washer, and I don’t have a washer.” He tucked his tool in the waistband of his jeans and headed for the door. “Tomorrow.”

      “Tomorrow? Come on, Ned. I’ve been calling you for days.”

      “One day, two times,” he grunted. “And you were on the list.”

      “Well, I don’t want to go back on the list.”

      “First thing in the morning.”

      “I sleep all morning.”

      “Then I guess you’ll know what it’s like to be awaken during a sound sleep, won’t you?”

      Not to be thwarted on this, the night of her bathroom design, Roxy scooted in next to Ned and yanked at the faucet handle impatiently, hoping to…Well, she wasn’t sure what she hoped to do other than what he wasn’t doing—which was fixing it. But the only thing that happened was a drip that doubled in both frequency and resonance. “So, now what?”

      “I’d tell you to live with it, but that’s not going to get me back to bed any quicker, is it?”

      “My contract said maintenance emergencies twenty-four seven. All I need is a lousy washer.”

      “All you needed was a lousy washer, lady. Heck if I know what it needs now, and I’m not going to find out until morning. What time did you say you get up?”

      “Ten.”

      “Then I’ll be here at eight.” He grinned at her. “G’night.”

      “But what about the leak?”

      “Wrap a towel around it, for Pete’s sake.” He pulled the pipe wrench out of his waistband and handed it to her. “I’ve changed my mind…be my guest.”

      The wrench slipped from his hand and landed with a hollow thunk on the old wood-and-linoleum countertop. “Well, now you’ve done it,” Roxy warned, her face poker-straight.

      “Done what?” he asked.

      “Ten…nine…eight…seven…” Pounder next door started up on the five count, and the beat went on for nearly half a minute. “That,” she said, smiling. “That’s what I was warning you about. And this.” She opened a drawer then shut it, not particularly loud, either. With that came the encore, a sequence half again as long as the first chorus, accented, at the end of the performance, by one last clap that knocked an old, black trivet right off Roxy’s wall and into the sink. “So like I was saying, Ned,” Roxy continued, without missing a beat, “it’s driving me nuts—the dripping—and I have a lot of work to do tonight, and if you can please stop it for me, I’d be grateful.”

      “How often does that happen?” he asked, nodding at the wall.

      Roxy shrugged. “Not more than three, four times a night.” Grinning, “Someone over there’s a Listening Tom. Too bad for them it’s only my kitchen and not my bedroom.” Yeah, right. Sounds from the Roxy Rose boudoir were guaranteed to put anybody to sleep, including Roxy Rose herself.

      Ned cleared his throat, turning back around to face the sink. “And what do you do every night to annoy her? Georgette Selby’s her name, by the way. She’s eighty-two. Sweet. Bakes chocolate chip cookies. Used to be a schoolteacher.”

      “Normally, it’s just breathing.” Roxy grabbed up the pipe wrench, but he yanked it away from her. “Once in a while I eat Twinkies, and I have this little TMJ thing in my jaw…it sort of pops occasionally.”

      Stepping back over to the sink, wrench in hand, Ned bumped into Roxy. “I’m going to bend down now, Miss Rose. Take a look under the sink. If you don’t mind moving back…”

      Did she mind stepping back to get a better look at him bending down? About as much as she minded chocolate and orgasms and lots of money. “Just trying to see what you’re doing so I can do it myself next time. So tell me what you’re doing,” she said, struggling to reign herself back in.

      “Turning off the water at the valve. That’ll stop the drip and when I get back over here at seven-thirty…”

      “Eight.”

      “Seven, I’ll get everything fixed up the right way.”

      “Think it’s gonna work for tonight? No more drip?” The valve handle was tight and she watched him put extra muscle into his next twist—translating into something so sexy on his backside that it almost made Roxy squirm right out of her skin. Damn those baby-making hormones, anyway. They sure were in overdrive tonight. Success now, the rest later, she reminded herself. “Need another…” a slight tuchus wiggle caused her to gulp “…another tool?” she sputtered. Okay, Rox. Success now, blah, blah, blah. Remember?

      “There!” he declared, rather than answering her question. “That should hold it, temporarily.” Ned’s head had barely cleared the open space under the sink when the valve groaned a plumbing obscenity, then let the full force of a geyser rip, shooting water everywhere—the walls, the ceiling, Roxy, Ned. Springing to his feet, Ned yanked the faucet handle, only to have it break off in his hand. No simple fixes now. It was a full-out water cataclysm in need of some instantaneous plumbing surgery, and Ned’s only surgical instrument or know-how, it seemed, was a pipe wrench that clunked to the floor when he leapt back from the deluge.

      Scrambling to avoid the fat force of the spray, lest she be caught up in a full-frontal wet T-shirt look, Roxy darted into the bathroom, grabbed up an armful of towels, and dashed back into the kitchen only to find Ned standing there in the middle of Niagara Falls clutching a cell phone, staring down at his pipe wrench. “Don’t just stand there,” she cried. “Stop it. Turn something. Or plug something