Ready & Willing by Elizabeth Bevarly Page A

would change that, as soon as she found something besides pastry chef to which she was suited that didn’t require her to be around men—straight men, anyway. Not that changing her friends had been very difficult, since Vincent had started systematically separating Cecilia from what few friends she’d had in San Francisco virtually from the moment she’d met him.
    Besides, he probably wasn’t looking for her anyway. As soon as she’d found her backbone and stood up to him, he’d lost interest in her. Though, granted, not without giving her a send-off she wasn’t likely to forget.
    I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe, she chanted to herself. I’m strong. I’m independent. I’m self-sufficient. And as God is my witness, I will never date assholes again.
    Cecilia knew that, because she would never date anyone again. And after what she’d been through with Vincent, a haunted house—hell, even a burglar—was nothing.
    She made her way up Audrey Magill’s front walk and lifted the big brass knocker on the door, letting it fall three times before stepping back again. The house had been empty when Cecilia accepted Finn and Stephen’s offer to rent the apartment upstairs six months ago, and it hadn’t been in the best shape. But even after the short time she’d lived there, Audrey had already made some marked improvements to the place. She’d had the whole exterior pressure-washed, had fixed the cracks in the walk and porch stairs, had painted the wrought iron and shutters a cheery white. The front door, too, had been freshly painted, a rich violet color that always made Cecilia smile when she saw it, and which matched the semicircle of variegated stained glass overhead. Newly blossomed bleeding heart spilled from planters beneath the overhang in a tangle of red, pink, and purple, and bright, mosaic pots lined the porch and front walkway, awaiting more spring planting.
    She was about to lift her hand to knock again when she heard shuffling on the other side, then the rasp of a deadbolt and the creak of a hinge. So she pasted on her best carefree smile—gee, she hoped she remembered how to do that—and, when Audrey appeared on the other side of the door, said brightly, “Hi.”
    Judging by her neighbor’s appearance, it was obvious she’d been in the act of creation when Cecilia knocked. A stream of radiant ribbons in a dozen colors cascaded over one shoulder, and a handful of flamboyant feathers sprouted from the pocket of her white, man-style shirt. Straight pins were stuck haphazardly through the fabric of the shirt on its other side, and her blue jeans were littered with bits of thread and straw. Wisps of black hair had freed themselves from a not-especially-tidy braid that was slung over the unpinned shoulder, and her face was smudged here and there with bits of what looked like glitter.
    Audrey pasted on a smile that looked almost as carefree as Cecilia hoped hers did, but it was clearly no more genuine than her own. “Hi,” she replied. “Cecilia, right?”
    Cecilia nodded.
    “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your last name.”
    “Havens,” Cecilia told her. Not that that was the name she’d been born with any more than Cecilia was. She’d chosen both because of her love of sixties rock ’n’ roll, even though she hadn’t arrived in the world until more than a decade after Simon and Garfunkel and Richie Havens were first played on the radio.
    “You work at the restaurant with Stephen and Finn, right?” Audrey asked. Then, before Cecilia had a chance to answer, she continued, with a smile that looked a little more genuine than the first, “The day they played Welcome Wagon, they brought me a basket full of food from the restaurant, including a caramel swirl cheesecake you made. It was incredible.” She patted her flat tummy. “Not that my waistline thanks you, but my taste buds sure do.”
    “Cheesecakes are my specialty,” Cecilia said. “But my tortes are coming along nicely. And I