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Without waiting for him to respond, she yanked the door open and walked out. He didn’t follow her.
No one looked up as she emerged from the back. They were all in the same positions they’d been in a few minutes ago, like flies trapped in amber or an exhibit at the natural history museum. Twenty-first century humans at a coffee shop.
It felt like Penny had stepped out of a time machine back into the present day. Like the last five minutes hadn’t happened to anyone but her. She called out a goodbye to Elyse and hurried out the door without looking back.
Penny had made her offer. It was up to Caleb now to accept it. Or not.
Chapter Eleven
She couldn’t believe she’d done it.
Just…thrown herself at Caleb like that.
Even more amazing was that he hadn’t seemed to mind. In fact, he’d seemed to enjoy it quite a lot for a minute there. Until he’d changed his mind.
At least she’d tried. She could feel proud of herself for that much. She’d made a pass at a super-hot guy without completely making a fool of herself. How about that for New Improved Penny’s first foray into uncharted territory?
She spent the rest of the day trying to catch up on work while visions of Caleb tried to superimpose themselves over the prior art for the thermoplastic polyurethane cell phone case on her computer screen.
At five o’clock, she logged out and drove to the hospital to visit George. He was looking better tonight. Sitting up in bed, talking a little easier. She stayed a half hour this time, and George even did some of the talking, complaining about the food and the noise and the nurses who woke him up at all hours of the night.
When she got home, she was lucky enough to squeeze her small Kia Soul into a cramped space on the street two blocks from her building. Her apartment didn’t have an assigned space, and this time of day the street parking situation resembled a scene from Mad Max. In the year since she’d moved to Los Angeles, she’d become an expert parallel parker.
As she walked up the sidewalk, Penny noticed a man standing in front of her building, staring up at it. Fear prickled at the back of her neck until the stranger’s silhouette resolved into a familiar build with a slouch she knew well, and a dizzying shot of adrenaline surged through her veins.
It was Caleb.
She said his name and he turned to her in surprise, his face contorting into the guilty expression of a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar—or standing outside the cookie jar creepily staring at it, in this case.
Penny stopped in front of him. He smelled like coffee, even standing outside with two feet of space between them, and it immediately triggered a sense memory of their kiss in the storeroom. Her mouth watered in response.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to sound calm.
It had been disorienting enough to see him at the hospital, outside of Antidote. But that was nothing compared to seeing him here, where she lived. On her turf. It was like a character from a television show had stepped off the screen and materialized at her front door.
He looked sheepish. “Definitely not stalking you outside your apartment.”
“It’s not stalking if you’ve been invited.” She could barely hear herself speak over the racing of her pulse. The Indy 500 was thrumming inside her ribcage.
He plunged his hands into his pockets. Was she really such a temptress that he felt the need to handcuff himself around her all the time?
“Where’s your boom box?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to hold it over your head and play Peter Gabriel at me? I assume that’s why you’re here.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I guess I must have forgotten it.” She adored that mouth twitch. She wanted to devour it.
“That’s too bad. I love Peter Gabriel.” She stared into his eyes, caught in their mesmerizing spell. Outdoors, the gold in them seemed to glow even brighter, taking on glints of copper and bronze.
“I’ve been trying to talk myself out of knocking on your door.”
A little spike of hope kicked her in the back of the knees. “For how long?” she asked, fighting off the urge to do a little victory dance right there on the sidewalk.
“About ten minutes.”
“How’s it going?”
He shrugged, hands still deep in his pockets. “So-so.”
She was starting to feel faint. “Caleb?”
