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“Just drive us to your apartment, hm?” he encouraged as he took out his cell phone and made his call. “And Martyna’s whereabouts isn’t the only unresolved issue we need to work on together,” he warned.
Persy tensed. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, I think you do,” Casper said knowingly. “But don’t worry about it, because we will deal with it all in time.”
Persy only half listened after Casper put through a call to Sinclair and then turned it on speaker. It was obvious from the amount of talking and replies on the other end of the line that all of Casper’s family were in the same room. Probably in the kitchen, where, when they weren’t in their individual private suites, the Kingston family seemed to spend a lot of time together.
They all murmured their regrets and sympathy after learning Rachel Somers was the person responsible for the attacks on Casper’s car.
Persy could tell by those responses that Mike was a favorite of the Kingston family.
Casper chatted with his brothers for several more minutes before ending the call, by which time Persy had parked the SUV outside her apartment building. Jeff was once again in the parked vehicle behind them.
* * *
“So,” Casper turned in his seat to look at an obviously puzzled Persy. “Does your building have an owner or supervisor on site you can go to who deals with any problems, or do you have to go through a letting agency for that?”
“Jonathan Walker on the ground floor usually does it,” she supplied slowly, obviously puzzled by the question. “He’s the nephew of the owner and pays a reduced rent as recompense for reporting or dealing with any of the tenant’s problems.” She grimaced.
“I’m guessing he told you all that.”
“Yes.”
There was something in Persy’s voice… “Has he been bothering you?”
She grimaced. “I wouldn’t say bothering exactly…”
But the other man had obviously done or said something in the past to make Persy feel uncomfortable.
“He asked me out and seemed to think his connection to the owner of the building gave him more kudos,” Persy supplied the answer to that puzzle.
“Did it?”
She chuckled. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not into men who are shorter than me and a hundred pounds heavier. No offense against any short or slightly overweight men. Those things wouldn’t have bothered me about Jonathan if he’d also been a nice person. Truth is, he’s a bit of a sleazeball.”
“Did he accept your refusal gracefully?”
“He…accepted it. Eventually.”
“Okay, let’s go.” Casper slid his arm from the sling as he got out of the SUV.
“You’re going to make your arm ache again,” Persy warned when she joined him.
He shrugged. “I might need both hands.” To strangle the nephew of the owner of the building with if the other man attempted to flirt with Persy in front of him.
Persy’s eyes narrowed as she watched him slide the gun from the sling into the waistband at the back of his jeans under his T-shirt. “You really shouldn’t keep carrying that around with you.”
“You never know when I might need it.” A gun would be far more of a deterrent to the owner’s nephew.
He and Persy might not have sorted out the minor details of their relationship yet, but the amount of time they had spent together in the last twenty-four hours surely had to be the equivalent of at least a week of normal dating.
Whether it was or not, Persy was his, damn it, and he wasn’t about to let some other man think for a moment that she wasn’t.
The man who opened the door after Casper had kept his finger on the door for at least five minutes obviously wasn’t expecting visitors this early in the morning. He appeared to have just crawled out of bed, and his wispy dark hair was standing up in tufts. He was wearing very loose gray sweats and a red muscle shirt. He also seemed to have dropped half his breakfast down the latter, and probably not today’s if he had only just gotten up.
