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I left the TV on even though Kylie was asleep. I hoped having some background noise would be soothing to her.
I hoped I’d done the right thing by bringing her to my house. When I saw her look of terror as she stared at the word written on her wall, I knew I couldn’t leave her there by herself. I planned on calling an alarm company in the morning and adding another chained lock to each of her doors. Kara texted and told me she would send a cleaning crew at noon.
If Kylie wanted to stay in her house by herself, then I was going to make sure she was as safe as possible. The sergeant told her that the perpetrator had probably learned her routine before he broke in. That didn’t sit well with me that someone had been studying her habits.
Kylie’s phone chimed where it sat on my coffee table. I glanced at her, but she didn’t stir. I picked it up. It read “Mom” with a heart emoji. I debated on waking Kylie up and asking if she should call her parents, but she looked so peaceful that I didn’t have the heart to.
I unlocked her phone—she didn’t bother to have a password.
Mom <3: Hi sweetie! Your dad and I are getting ready for our anniversary trip. Just wanted you to know we’ll be leaving early tomorrow morning and the kids will be staying with MiMi. Love you!
As I was debating whether or not to call her mom, the phone lit up with a call from “Mom <3.” I answered.
“Hi, honey!”
I cleared my throat. “Um, hello, you don’t know me, but—”
“Is Kylie alright?” the voice shrieked across the line. “Come here, Todd! A strange man answered Kylie’s phone!”
This wasn’t good. I wasn’t easing anyone’s worries with this. I reached down and hit the FaceTime option and waited for a few seconds as it connected. Kylie-in-twenty-years filled the screen. A man’s face crowded in. That must have been Todd.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m her neighbor.”
“Oh, you’re the disgustingly good-looking neighbor. I’m Rose.” She smiled.
Todd scowled, and then his face smoothed out. “Are you dating my daughter?”
I leaned back from the phone and sat up straight. “No.”
“Well, why not?”
Not exactly the question I was expecting. “Because I don’t think she likes me much.”
“But you have her phone,” her mom interjected.
“Yeah, about that...” I gave them a quick rundown of what happened with the break-in and watched their faces change from disbelief to horror, and then Todd disappeared from view.
Rose called after him. “Put the gun away. No, you are not driving there tonight. Come back here and sit down.”
I couldn’t help smiling at the one-sided conversation, glad that Kylie had parents who worried about her.
I flipped the screen around so they could see Kylie sleeping on my couch. “I didn’t want her to be home alone tonight, so I brought her over here to stay. I’ll call an alarm company in the morning, and a friend is sending someone to get the house straightened up so she won’t have to worry about it.”
“Thank you for keeping her safe,” Rose said as she pressed a hand to her chest. “We’ll cancel our trip and be down there as soon as we can tomorrow.”
Todd didn’t say anything, so I took it as my chance to speak. “Nothing was taken out of her house, but the whole place was trashed. It was as though they were looking for something. Since they were interrupted, I’m worried they’ll be back.”
Todd nodded, and this time, Rose was standing up and walking off with the phone in her hand. I heard the jingle of keys before the screen jerked around and Rose was sitting down, arguing with Todd that she was going to drive down here tonight.
Todd steadied the phone. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you and Kylie, but I doubt Kylie has been passive in this little war of yours.”
I shrugged. “She shot me with a paintball gun and gave me a bloody nose.”
Todd nodded like it was the most normal thing in the world. “She’s definitely the calm one of the family. Now, Rose and I are getting ready to go on our trip for our anniversary. I’d like to still go, but I’d need your help.”
“What can I do?”
“Would you mind letting her stay with you for a couple days? I’ll send someone to stay with her, but it might take a day or two for them to get there since they’ll need to take time off of work first.”
“Yes, that’s fine. She might not be real happy with that, but I’ll keep her safe.”
We chatted a little while longer. I learned they were going to San Diego for their anniversary trip and that the kids were staying at the grandparents’. They even told me some embarrassing stories about Kylie that I would be saving to use at a future date. I talked about my family and my job to help put them at ease and know that I didn’t moonlight as a serial killer.
With a promise that we would talk soon, they hung up, and I had a chance to get some sleep. I slept in the recliner, afraid that if I went to sleep in my bed that Kylie would wake up and forget where she was.
The next morning, I woke up early with a kink in my neck. My recliner was perfect for binge-watching sports and the history channel. It wasn’t perfect for trying to get a good night’s sleep.
Standing up, I popped my back and glanced at the couch.
Kylie wasn’t there.
Quickly searching the house, I found her asleep in my bed, still wrapped up in the fleece blanket I had tucked around her last night.
As quietly as my mom sneaking chocolate on a diet, I shut the door then headed to the kitchen to cook some breakfast. We were caught up enough on work that I didn’t need to work on a Saturday. I texted Jack to let him know I wouldn’t be working today, but if he needed some more hours, he could head in. I asked Alexa to turn on today’s hits and pulled some bacon out of the fridge and pancake mix from the cupboard.
I’d never cooked breakfast for someone else before. This was new territory. The box of pancake mix had been a companion of mine for eight years. It was a dry mix, so it couldn’t possibly go bad.
I followed the directions and fried it in a skillet next to the bacon, dancing to the music while I flipped the pancakes.
“Something smells good.” Kylie stepped into the kitchen, and I immediately stopped dancing. She’d had enough frightening experiences; she didn’t need to add seeing me dance to the list.
She grabbed a few pieces of bacon off the plate I held out to her, then she sat down at the bar. I poured her a cup of coffee, adding some creamer to it. I remembered she liked it sweet from the last time we had breakfast together. She whispered “Thank you” and sipped the coffee and nibbled the bacon. I stood there, mesmerized, watching the messy-haired girl sitting at my bar. Dark hair tumbled around creamy skin, her cheeks still rosy from sleep.
Something started smoking, and I realized I’d forgotten about the last pancakes in the pan. I grabbed the pan and dumped them onto a plate. The underside of the pancakes were completely black. At least the first couple batches I’d cooked had turned out decent. Kylie snickered behind me, but when I turned to glare, she stuffed an entire piece of bacon in her mouth.
“Not a word from you, Snow White,” I told her.
She shoved another piece of bacon in and shook her head. She looked like a chipmunk and she was still cute.
“You know, it’s okay to breathe in between bites of bacon.” I grabbed a few pieces for myself while I dug around in my fridge for some syrup.
“It’s bacon,” she said. “It’s never okay to take a break.”
Grinning, I put together two plates of pancakes and passed a plate to her. There were three barstools, and she sat on the middle one, so I sat down to her right.
I watched as she took a bite of the pancakes and chewed—and chewed. Her forehead scrunched up as she kept chewing.
That wasn’t a good sign.
I took a bite of my own pancake and had the same problem. It was like I had cut up my work boots and tossed them in a pan. I spit the bite out and snagged both of our plates to toss them in the trash.
“That was bad.”
I turned around to see Kylie had her head resting on her arms, her shoulders shaking. The pancakes had sent her over the edge. I didn’t know that being a bad cook would cause someone to cry. Then again, those pancakes were pretty bad. She might have lost a tooth with how tough they were—just what she didn’t need after a stressful night.
I walked around the island, hesitated briefly, then patted her back. “Are you alright? I didn’t know they would be like that.”
She sat up and looked at me. She was laughing—a tears-streaming-down-her-face, shoulders-shaking, silent laugh.
“Okay, they weren’t that bad.”
She nodded her head and kept laughing. “I thought I was going to be eating that pancake for the rest of my life.”
That was it. She was getting hysterical, and she was making me want to laugh with her.
She took a sip of coffee. “Thanks for this. I needed something to laugh at. Besides, you make great coffee and bacon.”
“I should have probably thrown out the pancake mix. It’s been around a little while,” I admitted with a smile. It was good to see her relaxed.
“Sorry about last night,” she said.
“What happened last night?”
“I didn’t mean to steal your bed. I don’t remember moving from the couch.”
“The couch must have been uncomfortable.” I grabbed some more bacon off the plate.
“Wow. I didn’t think I ever sleepwalked.”
“Well, now we know.” I smiled. “We’d better get those chains on your doors as soon as possible then.”
Her face fell, and I could have kicked myself. She must have forgotten why she was sitting in my kitchen. I wished I hadn’t made even a remote mention of danger. It brought back the very real problem of a burglarized house. Her relaxed posture disappeared.
“Thank you. For last night. I didn’t want to stay home by myself, but today I’ll get everything cleaned up, and it’ll be back to normal.” She smiled, but it was weak.
“Come on, we’ll go over there and get whatever you need, and then we’re going out for the day.”
“What do you mean we’re going out? It’s my day off, I have to get the house cleaned up.”
“It will be taken care of. Now, come on. Put on some of those stretchy, comfy pants women like to wear.”
“You mean yoga pants?” She smiled.
“Whatever. Grab some tennis shoes. Wear something comfortable. We’ve got some errands to run.”
I walked into the living room, grabbed her phone off the table, and handed it to her.
“I met your parents last night on FaceTime. They wanted you to give them a call sometime today. I told them about the break-in.”
Her eyes scanned my face for a minute before she took the phone from my hand. “You must have made quite the impression if they aren’t already here.”
I shrugged. “They’re leaving for their trip this morning.”
She threw her hands in the air. “Oh great, they don’t care if their oldest daughter gets murdered as long as they don’t miss their anniversary trip.”
I snorted. “I promised them you’d be safe with me until they catch the person who broke in.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but I pressed my hand to her back and began pushing her toward the front door. She grumbled at me but slipped on her shoes.
We crossed the street, and I made her wait on the porch while I ran through the house to make sure no one was there.
It was empty.
“You can come in,” I told her as I swung open the front door.
She rolled her eyes at me, but it didn’t hide her smile as she said, “Thanks for permission to go into my own home.”
I waited at the entryway until she disappeared into her bathroom before I started snooping around.
I opened cupboards in her kitchen, looking for something—anything—that could make me end this strange infatuation I had. She was too cute, too nice, too fun to be around. People weren’t like that.
Her cupboards were full of food, and it wasn’t all pre-made food. It was real ingredients. She must have cooked all the time. I snatched a handful of chocolate chips before I closed her baking cupboard.
It had been a while since I’d had good, homemade food. Mom and Dad had been asking me to come to family dinners. It’d been too long. I was even ready for Mom’s chicken noodle soup that everyone hated but pretended to love just to make her happy.
Oh well, I didn’t want to sit through a dinner that Brooke would have, no doubt, wrangled an invitation to.
I’d rather think of ways to distract Kylie from the break-in. Our war had been fun. Entertaining. All-consuming. When she barged into my house last night, it was all I could do to keep from grabbing her and kissing her right then and there. That would have really set her off.
Once I realized what had happened, I wanted to scoop her up into my arms and never let her go.
She had stayed in her house with a baseball bat while the intruder was still there. What had she been thinking? I had never considered myself an overprotective guy, but I wanted her to make wise decisions—like, maybe not confronting a mugger by herself with a baseball bat. I’d never felt this protective toward someone else—not even Brooke.
I grabbed the garbage can from beneath the sink and picked up shards of pottery off the living room carpet. Kylie didn’t need to walk into this house with reminders that it’d been violated. I picked up a piece of pottery that had “Landon” written on it with a marker. There was dirt scattered across the living room floor, along with pieces of a cactus plant.
“Okay, I’m ready.”
I stood up and looked at her. She was wearing a pink...something. It was like a dress, but it had pants. “What is that?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “It’s called a jumpsuit. Where have you been living? Under a rock?”
I smirked. “Same place you’ve been living, Neil Armstrong.”
She smacked my arm as she walked by me and out the door, but she wasn’t quick enough to hide her smile.
It was going to be a fun day.