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Maybe I should have listened to my mother and secured a “safe house” nearby, just in case. We’d always had one wherever we went, no matter if it was Tahiti or New Zealand. I always thought it was overkill because the Selene family had never once appeared. But my mother feared mortals more than anyone. Perhaps she wasn’t wrong. But for now, my heart was telling me to stay. I would say it had never steered me wrong before, but it had told me to do that interview with Raine. Why had I felt so strongly like I should? A better question was why I felt so strongly for the man who could ruin it all for me.
When I reached the top of the steps I stopped, suddenly feeling like I wasn’t alone. My shoes fell from my hand, and I swallowed hard. I stared at my door and didn’t see anyone, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched from the shadow of darkness that shrouded the corner where I had placed a large potted plant. Maybe I should have gone through the bakery and used the indoor entrance.
I grabbed my cell phone, ready to dial 911. “Is anyone there?” I timidly called out, feeling silly for talking to myself. Riverhaven was a safe place, and aside from its one nonmortal resident, completely boring, just the way I liked it. “Okay,” I said to myself as I approached my door, still not seeing a single soul. “I’m going to open my door now, and I know like ten different kinds of martial arts, but I’d rather not kick your butt because I don’t want to get any blood on my pink blouse. You’ve been warned.” I swore I heard a snigger, which had me opening my door at lightning speed and rushing in to close it just as fast. I immediately flipped on the lights, locked the dead bolt, and leaned against the door, my heart about ready to beat out of my chest. I melted into the floor, my head falling onto my knees. I stayed that way for a couple of minutes, trying to calm down by convincing myself I was hearing and seeing things. It didn’t help when someone loudly knocked on my door. I jumped and a decent scream escaped me.
“Are you all right in there?” A distinctive masculine voice—one that had filled my dreams—came through loud and clear.
“What are you doing here?” I asked through labored breathing and massive heart palpitations. “And how do you know where I live?”
He paused for an uncomfortable moment, making me feel as if I had almost imagined his voice, just like I had imagined someone lurking in the shadows. Maybe I really was going crazy. First, I was falling for the dream version of my enemy. Second, I wasn’t totally repulsed by said enemy; in fact, I was kind of excited he was on the other side of my door. Third, that was utterly insane, but it was like I had no control over myself.
Finally, he cleared his throat, which made me feel better, or at least that I wasn’t crazy for imagining his voice.
“Everyone in this town knows where you live, and I came to apologize.”
I grabbed my stomach as more butterflies erupted. He’d apologized last night in my dreams, and I’d woken up wishing he would in real life. Wishing so many things I shouldn’t, because we could never be together. I could never be with anyone. Yet all I’d wanted to do since I met him was be with him.
“Well, thanks, I guess,” I eked out, hopefully loud enough for him to hear. It was taking all I had in me not to open the door.
“Sorrel.”
The way he said my name made goose bumps appear all over my body.
“Will you please open the door? I’d like to give you a proper apology. And I believe I have your shoes.”
I smiled at how absurd I’d been, dropping my shoes because I was afraid of a shadow. “You can leave them at the door.”
“Or I could hold them for ransom until you let me apologize.”
I really did love those Italian leather pumps, but were they worth the angst Eric stirred in me?
“Sorrel, I don’t blame you for not wanting to see me, but . . . I . . . I had to see you,” he admitted.
I stood, turned around, and leaned my forehead against the door. Did he feel the pull too? “Are you still going to write your article?”
“I have no choice,” he sighed.
“Then we have nothing left to say.”
“I don’t believe that’s true. Neither do you.”
I unlocked the door and whipped it open to glare at the beyond handsome man who was in tight jeans and, unfortunately, not shirtless, though his snug tee did him justice. “You listen here, you don’t speak for me. You don’t even know me.”
