“Are you even listening to me?” Trace asks.
“Of course I am.”
Kind of . . . Maybe they went into town for groceries?
“Really . . . you sound distracted.”
“I’m standing outside the loft about to meet my mysterious tenant,” I say.
“Keep me on the phone.”
I roll my eyes and climb the last few steps. “You’re nothing if not boring and overbearing, but I have a roommate to meet so you’ll have to excuse me.”
I can practically hear the steam coming out of his ears all the way in Chicago. “He’s not your roommate. There’s no reason he needs to come into your house. You don’t even need to meet him.”
“Bye, Trace,” I say as I knock on the door.
“Aspen. Keep me on the phone you?—”
I hang it up.
Well, that was fun.
“Aspen?” The rough scrape of Emmett’s familiar voice has my head snapping up from the phone in my hand.
CHAPTER
TEN
EMMETT
The hand holding her phone falls to her side, and her eyes move over me slowly, like she doesn’t quite believe what she’s seeing.
Hell, I don’t either.
She sucks in a harsh breath. “Emmett!”
She’s at my goddamn door.
Aspen is at my goddamn door and can’t tamp down the thrill racing through my veins.
I shake away the disbelief.
“What are you doing here?”
“Me? What are you doing here? This is my place—well, my rental. I own it.”
“Wait . . . I rented it from some firm out of Chicago.”
I’m stunned—that’s all I can be. An hour ago, I was saying goodbye to her—resigned that it was for the best. And now, she’s standing in front of me.
Her teeth dent her bottom lip as her dark hair swishes around her face, catching the sun. She glows, almost unreal.
Every bit of the angel I thought she was in the helicopter.
But as she stands in front of me, a gift I don’t deserve, I realize there’s so much I like about Aspen, all of it more important than how we met or what she looks like.
I like the way she doesn’t give up when things are hard. There’s grace in how she handles herself. She’s sweet but not too sweet. She knows when to push and when to relent. Aspen reads people without trying and she gives them what they need. I like her quick tongue and her soft eyes.
