Mad About You

T-shirt, then padded into the kitchen to turn on the coffeemaker. While the dark liquid brewed, he toasted a couple of slices of hearty bread and straightened his small kitchen. Betsy would be over during the day to clean for the week, but he hated to leave too much of a mess.
    Betsy, his curvy, red-haired housecleaner, had made it clear she wouldn't mind going to dinner with him sometime, but he needed a reliable housecleaner more than he needed a date. He frowned as he carried a small breakfast tray outside to his customary spot on the front porch. Maybe he should give up this ridiculous fantasy about Jasmine Crowne and get serious about finding a woman who wanted to share his life.
    He set the tray on a glass-topped, wrought-iron table, then wiped the dew from one of the matching chairs. Barefoot, he loped off the porch and down the short flight of stone steps to the end of the cobblestone sidewalk where the practiced paperboy typically left the Daily News .
    "Hello, Ladden," Mrs. Matthews called from next door.
    He lifted his hand in a friendly wave, smiling at her brightly colored robe. She scooped up her paper and disappeared inside the house where she and her husband had lived for more than twenty years. Ladden turned and scrutinized the front of his home, critically comparing the worn red brick, jutting dormers, and wide, inviting porch to the sleek lines of Jasmine's pale-colored townhouse. Her tiny yard was professionally landscaped. And although his sprawling lawn was neatly clipped, his homey vegetation was out of control. English ivy practically obscured the white block foundation under the porch and boldly encroached on the wood railing.
    A house, he'd always thought, told a lot about the person who lived there. Which only reinforced his observation that he and Jasmine were polar opposites. He was a shabby brick home, full of thoughts as old-fashioned as his furniture, and she was an upscale condominium, safely gated against the likes of him.
    He slowly unfolded the newspaper to scan the headlines, then stumbled and stubbed his toe on an uneven stone in the sidewalk. Cursing and hopping, he stared at the headline that covered the entire first page: A wise second wish, Master.
    The note the bartender handed him last night at Tabby's flashed before his eyes. Some guy with a turban , Malone had said.
    With shaking hands, Ladden climbed the steps and fell into his chair, unable to look at the newspaper. He downed the cup of coffee before he took a deep breath and smoothed open the front page. To his dismay, the headline had not changed. His fingers tingled and he felt light-headed. The rest of the paper looked normal—weather, movie reviews, obituaries, but the front page...
    "What the heck is going on?" he mumbled. Ladden lunged off the porch and marched through the grass to the Matthewses' front door.
    Mrs. Matthews answered his slightly frantic knock. "Ladden, how good to see you. Won't you come in and join me for oatmeal?"
    "Thanks, Mrs. Matthews," he said, feeling foolish. "But I was wondering if I could see your paper. M-mine was missing the front page."
    She disappeared, then came back and extended the paper with a smile. "Harmon isn't up yet, so just drop it off before you leave for work."
    With his heart thudding, he opened the paper and glanced over the headline that announced Governor McDonald trailed his opponent in the polls by a growing margin. Ladden inhaled and exhaled slowly, then folded the paper and handed it back to his neighbor. "Th-thanks anyway, Mrs. Matthews. It looks like more of the same old stuff."
    "You're right." She sighed and wagged her graying head. "It appears the governor is going to lose the race for sure. Too bad, I think he's a nice young man, don't you?"
    Ladden swallowed hard and nodded, offering what he hoped was a convincing smile. "Yeah." He backed away slowly, barely restraining the urge to bolt. "Tell Harmon hello for me, Mrs. Matthews."
    He waded through the damp grass, ignoring the wetness oozing between his toes and climbing the legs of his jeans. "There's something weird going on here," he muttered, squashing the panic that ballooned in his chest. His newspaper lay scattered on his porch, strewn by the wind. He gathered up the flimsy, damp sheets, but now the front page really was missing. Ladden scoured the yard, searched the neighbors' bushes, and looked up into trees, to no avail.
    He strode inside to his bedroom, yanked the shirt he'd worn last night off