Step Into My Parlor Read Free

up for the night when he noticed the briefcase on the floor. She'd forgotten it.
    Maybe he could catch her. He grabbed the case and loped to the front door. That's when he heard her scream.
    Yanking open the door, he saw Anne struggling with a man by a white Jag. "Hey!" he yelled, dropping the briefcase and charging toward them.
    The guy flung her to the pavement and leveled his gun at Spider. "Back off, man, or your brains are gone!"
    Spider stopped and raised his hands, palms out and shoulder high. He looked from Anne, who lay sprawled on the ground crying, to the man holding her purse and fur coat. He could see that the robber was wild-eyed and nervous. "We don't want no trouble, buddy. Take what you got and go."
    The thief tossed the coat and bag in the car, and, switching the gun to his left hand, yanked the keys from the door and got in the Jag. When he peeled out of the parking lot , Spider ran to Anne.
    He squatted down beside her and raised her up. A scrape on her forehead, just above her right eyebrow, was bleeding. "Sugar, are you okay?"
    She clutched the front of his leather jacket and sobbed. "He took the money. He took my car. He took everything I own. Now I don't even have a place to sleep."
    "Ah, darl i n', it'll be all right." He folded her in his arms and patted her back as she wept against his chest. "Come on inside with me. Well call the police, and they'll probably catch him in a few minutes."
    "No!" Anne cried, pulling back with a terrified look in her eyes. "You can't call the police."
    "But, darlin', we have to report—"
    Grabbing the lapels of his jacket, she pleaded, "No, please, please, don't call the police. Preston will find me, and he ’ ll kill me." Her face was dead white.
    "Sugar, the police will protect you. They won't let him hurt you."
    "But you don't understand. Preston and his friends are very powerful. I'm not safe from him anywhere. Not even with the police. If he finds me, he ’ ll kill me. I heard him. Nobody will listen to me, but I heard him. I swear it's the truth. You've got to believe me."
    He gathered her in his long arms and held her close. He could feel her shaking. "Shhh, darlin'. I believe you. We won't call the police. You come inside with me. Ol Spider won't let him hurt you.”
    He felt her relax against him, and he laid his cheek on the top of her head. She smelled like flowers.
    Lifting her as if she weighed nothing, he carried her inside the pawnshop. If he could have gotten his hands on Preston right then, he would have decked him. Or worse. Spider had been dealing with slimeballs like him for most of his thirty-four years. After all, his father had been the biggest slimeball of them all.
     
    The first thing Anne saw when she awakened was the head of a wild boar. It had on a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a tie and was mounted on the wall alongside what, if she wasn't mistaken, was an original LeRoy Neiman painting of clashing football players.
    The next thing she noticed was that the pillow her cheek rested on smelled of citrus and sandalwood and virile male. Her eyes widened and she sat up with a start. She was in the middle of a huge brass bed that was in a roomful of the strangest assortment of furnishings she'd ever seen.
    A mahogany Chippendale tall-case clock sat between an outboard motor and a scarred pump organ. An eighteenth-century Venetian armoire rested next to a lead birdbath, a racing bike, and two sets of water skis. The bedside lamp was Tiffany, but it sat on a wooden packing crate. Her pearls lay at the base of the lamp.
    Where was she? How had she ended up in a brass bed with red satin sheets and a fake fur spread? Was this some kind of bizarre dream? She looked down at herself.
    Dear Lord, she wore a silk chemise and lace panties. And nothing else.
    "Good morning," a deep voice said. "I thought I heard you stir."
    Anne jerked the sheets up to her chin as Spider Webb came striding into the room with a tray. The black leather jacket was gone, but,