Free Wolfe Wanting by Joan Hohl

really,” Royce replied. “Something bothering you? Something about me, I mean?”
    “Oh, no,” she told him, giving a sharp shake of her head to reinforce her falsehood. “I had dozed off on the recliner in the living room, you see,” she babbled. “The doorbell startled me, and I guess I'm still not quite awake yet.”
    “Uh-huh,” he murmured, eyeing her speculatively. Then, his voice taking on a note of understanding, he asked, “You afraid to go to bed?”
    “Afraid?” Megan repeated, bristling at the mere suggestion of a lack of inner fortitude...even if it did happen to be true. “Why would you think that I'm afraid?”
    “Elementary, my dear Megan,” Royce said, dryly paraphrasing a famous fictional detective. “Your falling asleep on a chair in the living room with every light burning in the house would naturally lead one to deduce that you are afraid of placing yourself in the vulnerable position of being in a bed in a dark house.”
    All the fight went out of Megan, and her rigidly held shoulders slumped in defeat. “Okay,” she admitted tiredly. “I was afraid to go to bed.” She looked past him, as if seeing the night beyond the closed front door. “It's pitch-black, and I don't know who might be skulking about out there.”
    “But I do know,” he said. “There isn't a soul skulking about out there.”
    “How do you know?” Megan asked, without pausing to think or reflect.
    “I looked.” His lips tilted into a chiding smile. “I peeked behind every tree and bush.”
    “I should have known,” Megan confessed, giving him an apologetic smile in return. “You are exceptionally thorough in your work, aren't you?”
    “Exceptionally,” Royce agreed, without so much as a shadow of underlying conceit. “Besides,” he went on, shrugging, “I asked the local municipal patrolman to keep a sharp eye on the place while making his sweep of the area.”
    “Thank you, Royce,” Megan said, in quiet recognition of his dedication beyond the call. “I appreciate your concern for my safety.”
    “Enough to offer me a hot drink?” he asked, arching his burnished brows over eyes beginning to sparkle with inner laughter. “It's cold work beating the bushes and peering behind trees, especially when said bushes and trees are coated with a fine film of ice.” His mouth quirked in an invitation for her to share his amusement. “Bites the fingers, you know.”
    As had happened before, Megan succumbed to his whimsical appeal to her sense of humor. Though her gurgle of laughter was faint, it was genuine, unforced.
    “Coffee or tea?” she asked, turning to hang up his jacket in the foyer closet.
    “Tea sounds genteel, and more suited to the midnight hour, but I'd prefer coffee,” Royce said. “If you don't mind?”
    “Whichever,” Megan replied, shrugging to show her unconcern and pivoting to lead the way into the kitchen.
    She had no sooner crossed the threshold than her glance settled on the half-eaten sandwich and barely touched glass of milk she had left forgotten on the table.
    “I'll just clear away my supper things,” she muttered, crossing the room and sweeping the plate and the glass from the table. “Then I'll start the coffee.”
    “That was your supper?”
    Megan winced at the note of censure in Royce's voice. “I wasn't very hungry,” she said defensively, moving to the sink. Dumping the milk and the remains of the sandwich, she rinsed the plate and glass, then turned to the coffeemaker.
    “Besides nourishment, you need to feed your nerves, Megan,” Royce said, sauntering across the room to stand beside her. “Or else you're going to come unglued.”
    A retort telling him to mind his own business sprang to her lips, but Megan held it in check, recalling the emptiness she had experienced on rising from her stool at the worktable, the weakness of needing to hear her mother's voice, the panic that had gripped her at the jarring ring of the doorbell.
    “You're right, I