“You have me at a disadvantage,” I say. “I don’t have a key to just let myself in to your apartment.”
He rolls his eyes at me. “I apologized for that, Kelly. I told you why I did it. I was concerned.”
“Maybe I’ve been concerned about you. Where have you been tonight?”
He walks to his door, unlocks it, holds it open for me to enter. “It’s not really any of your business where I was tonight.”
“Why not? It seems to be your business where I am every second.”
“Did you come here to argue? Because you know as well as I do that it is my job to know where you are. To see to your safety.”
“Even if it means barging into my bathroom.”
“I can apologize again, but I don’t think it will do any good.” He shakes his head. “To say that I regret it would be an understatement, but I have my reasons for barging in.”
“Yeah. To peek at me. What are you? Some kind of peeping Tom?”
“Oh my God.” He rakes his fingers through his blond hair and looks up toward the ceiling. “What the hell did I do in my godforsaken life to deserve any of this?”
“I ask myself that on the daily,” I mutter.
“What?” he asks, his tone exasperated.
“Never mind.”
“What can I do for you, Kelly?”
“I just want to know where you were.”
“Do you? Fine. I’ll tell you. I was on a date. With our waitress from this afternoon. Terry. And by the way, I think you were supposed to give me her number?”
My cheeks warm.
How the hell does he know about that?
“You see, Kelly, the reason I put you in a cab and stayed after lunch today is because I wanted to apologize to Terry. I was going to apologize for your behavior, even though I personally had nothing to apologize for. So I went in, and I—”
“Then you found out I wasn’t lying, didn’t you? I did apologize to her.”
“Yes.”
“So now you owe me an apology,” I say.
“I don’t owe you shit.”
“You owed me an apology for barging in on me.”
“Yes, I did owe you an apology for that. And I apologized. That’s done.”
“And you also owe me an apology for not believing that I apologized to Terry.”
“You’ll be waiting a long time for that one. Now, why the hell are you here?”
“I told you. I wanted to know where you were.”
“You know. I was out on a date with Terry. Now I’m home.”
“She’s too young for you,” I say.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I agree. I won’t be seeing her again.”
“So it doesn’t matter that I didn’t give you her number, then.”
“Actually, it does matter. She asked you to give it to me, and you said you would. But you didn’t. Why?”
“I just told you. She’s too young for you.”
“She’s over twenty-one. Maybe I like younger women?”
“You just said you didn’t. That you agree.”
“But you had no way of knowing that when you didn’t give me her number, did you?”
He’s right, of course. No matter how much I fight. No matter how much I strike first and strike hard, I always know, in my own mind, when I’m not being fair. It happens a lot lately, and this is certainly one of those times.
I have no claim on Leif Ramsey. Why would he want me anyway? I’ve been nothing but a bitch to him since we were introduced.
“If that’s all, Kelly,” Leif says, “I’m exhausted, and I’d like to go to bed.”
I set my hands on my hips. “It’s not all, actually.”
“Fine. What the hell do you want?”
“I want you to…”
“What? I’m ageing here.”
“I want you to come and have a look at my apartment. To make sure everything is secure.”
He rakes his fingers through his blond hair again. “Fine. Come on.”
He follows me out of his place, and next door to mine, where I slide the card through the reader and open it. He allows me to go in first, and he follows.
“So what’s the problem? What don’t you think might be secure?”
“Could you just have a look around the perimeters? Make sure that everything’s okay?”
“Of course, but do you have any reason to believe that it’s not? Did you get another text?”
I could lie. I could tell him that I got another text. Then he would demand to see my phone, and I wouldn’t be able to produce a text.
“No. It’s just that, after you barged in this afternoon, I’ve been a little concerned.”
“There’s no need to be concerned. I had a key. No one else can get in here.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like you to check things out.”
“Absolutely. Glad to do it.”
His tone doesn’t indicate that he’s glad at all, and I want to call him out on it.
But I zip my lips shut.
I’m so wildly attracted to him, and that scares me more than anything.
Leif walks around the apartment, searches every corner, picks up the landline telephone, takes the back of the receiver off, and then checks the main unit. He looks under every lamp, rolls back the carpet sitting under the coffee table. He even goes to my bookshelf and looks inside all of my books.
I don’t know what could be hiding in a book, but he’s the expert.
Once he’s cased the living room, he moves into the kitchen, opens my refrigerator, looks through all the produce and other items. He doesn’t check the freezer though.
Then he walks to the door of my bedroom and looks at me. “May I enter?”
“Yeah.”
It was nice that he asked. He didn’t have to, and if he hadn’t, I probably would’ve said something.
He is a nice guy, and I’ve been treating him like complete crap.
He enters the bedroom and begins a thorough search as he did in the living room. He looks under the bed, between the mattress and box springs. Underneath all the lamps. And again he takes apart the phone units sitting on my nightstand. He looks through all my dresser drawers, and I open my mouth to say something, but then I close it.
I asked for this.
He’s just being thorough.
Still…he’s going through my bras and panties.
My skin heats.
But he’s done with the top drawer soon, and he goes to the next drawer, which houses my socks.
Next are T-shirts, and below that, what I call a junk drawer.
Then he goes into the closet—a walk-in closet, so there’s a lot of ground to cover. And he covers it. Again, he’s very thorough, checking through all my garments that are hanging. Would someone really stick a bug in clothes?
But where he’s really thorough—as if I didn’t think he were thorough before—is with my shoes.
He looks at every single one, and he plays with the heels.
“What exactly are you doing?” I can’t help asking.
“You asked me to check things out. Shoes are a great place to hide a bug.”
“They are?”
“Yeah. No one ever thinks to look there, except for people like me.”
I have several pairs of shoes, so his task takes some time. When he finally puts the last one down—
“Only the bathroom now.”
My flesh heats again. The bathroom. Where he saw me naked.
Where my body burst into flames at his gaze.
He looks at me, cocking his head. Is he waiting for permission?
“Okay.” I shrug. “The bathroom.”
He walks to the door—a little more slowly—draws in a breath, and opens it.
The first place he looks is inside the medicine cabinet behind the mirror above the sink. Great. Now he’ll see my birth control pills and my anxiety meds.
What the hell? This was my idea, not his.
He moves all the bottles of medication, opening them and looking inside. Then he looks behind the cabinet itself, attempting to pull it off the wall, but he’s unsuccessful.
“If you have a screwdriver, I can check behind here and make sure there’s nothing, but I doubt there is. Depends on how thorough you want me to be.”
“Sorry. I don’t have a screwdriver.”
“No worries.”
He takes the lid off the toilet tank next, peers inside. Then he removes the toilet seat and takes a good look inside the toilet as well.
Then the cupboard below the sink, and lastly, the shower.
Once he’s done, he turns to me. “This place is clean, Kelly. Nothing to worry about.”
“Are you sure?”
“You just saw me look. There’s nothing. No hidden cameras, no bugs, nothing. You’re secure here, Kelly. I assure you.”
Which means he’s going to leave.
I don’t want him to leave.
I want him to…
Damn. I don’t know what I want. I just know I don’t want to be alone. Which is strange in itself, because I’ve never minded being alone. When you spend half your life locked in a closet, you get used to it.
I bite my lower lip. “Thank you for doing this. Can I get you a drink or something? To repay you?”
“No, you don’t need to repay me. I’m already paid. This is my job.”
“Fine.”
I’m feeling indignant, of course. Nothing new there.
“If that’s all, then.” He heads toward the door.
But I grab his arm, and I tingle at the warmth of it.
He looks over his shoulder. “Yes?”
“Don’t go. Please.”