It was going to be one of those days.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit!”
“You okay?”
“Jesus!”
I whipped toward the sound of the voice, my hand shooting toward the knife in the drainboard as my heart flew up into my throat.
Then there was Christopher, his hair a little damp, his hands raised in surrender.
“Sorry. I thought you would have heard the chime.”
“I was too busy knocking the coffee pot around.”
“Did it have it coming?”
“The bastard stopped working.”
“After only forty-five years? The nerve.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“You’re soaked.”
“It’s raining.”
“I know you live inside a movie set from the 1930s, but there’s this brilliant new invention out there. They call it an umbrella. It keeps the water off of you.”
“And that would be a great idea if one would fit in the alley leading to my apartment.”
“Leading to? I thought you lived above the pawnshop.”
“Been looking into me, huh?”
“Leo mentioned it.”
“Mmhmm.” Liar. “Well, in what I can only assume was greed, when the buildings around this one got built, they squeezed them right together, sealing off the door I used to have leading up to the second floor. Well, technically I still have the door. You just can’t open it anymore.”
“So how do you get upstairs?”
“The next street over. There’s a long, narrow alley. I pretty much scrape my shoulders just moving through it. No room for an umbrella.”
“I know the way this city inconveniences its residents shouldn’t surprise me, but damn.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, reaching for some paper towels to squeeze some of the water out of my hair. “Has it been a week already?”
I hadn’t been counting or anything. Or adding him to my board.
“Went fast,” he agreed.
“How has settling in been going?”
“Been invited to four different dinners already.”
I tamped down the jealousy that sprang up.
I would saw off a toe for an invite to certain members of this family’s tables. And not only because they were all annoyingly amazing cooks.
