Page 94 of No Headlines Please

"Oh." I turned and looked toward his apartment door. "You mean on this floor, or…?" I didn't bother finishing, because the last thing I needed was more temptation.

When I looked back to Walt, he was frowning. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Totally." I plastered on a smile. "Anyway, I should let you get back to the game."

"Hold on. If you're in trouble—"

"I'm not."

"You sure?" He studied my face. "Want me to call the cops?"

Panic surged in my chest. "No. Absolutely not." Forcing another smile, I released my grip on the recliner. "I'm sure it was just a misunderstanding."

He gave me a dubious look. "It doesn't sound like one to me."

Yeah, me neither. But I refused to drag a perfectly nice stranger into my drama. And besides, I wasn't even sure what I was going to do.

Run?

Hide?

What I wanted to do was march up there and give Whatever-His-Name-Was a piece of my mind.

That's what the old Delaney would've done, especially during those teenage years when I'd been just a little reckless.

But that was a long time ago. I was a new-and-improved version, right?

All too soon, I had my answer.

Forget improvements.

Turns out, I was still reckless.

And very, very pissed off.

38

Sundress of Doom

Maddox

Thirty minutes came and went with no sign of Delaney. Normally, I wouldn't have been counting. But today, I was doing a lot of things I wouldn't normally do.

Like right now, I was eyeing the unfinished Monopoly game while imagining what Delaney might've heard from that woman in the elevator.

To me, the woman was a stranger. But judging from her glare, I was no stranger to her.

By now, I knew her type. She had opinions and wouldn't be shy about sharing them.

What I didn't know was how Delaney would respond. The only upside was that by now, I knew Delaney well enough to know she wasn't unreasonable. From what I'd seen so far, she gave everyone a fair shake, even if they didn't deserve it.

The wedding fiasco I had already explained. Sure, I still needed to fill in the gaps, but I'd gotten a decent start.

The favor for a friend was complicated, but not so complicated that she wouldn't understand why I hadn't told her everything right away. I hadn't wanted her to run. Simple as that.

But now, we knew each other better. And once I came clean about why I was here, we might even have a good laugh about how we'd been thrown together by Ryder Vaughn and her sister.

I almost smiled. Funny, it was the kind of story people told their kids – not that I was thinking that far ahead.