Page 14 of The Tiger in the Sack

“There’s a thing.” He was genuinely giddy.

“It was that tree.” I nodded toward the west window. “She lives in the building.”

Fox straightened up very slowly from the counter, his eyes and his smile getting bigger by the second. “She’s in our building.”

“She said she moved in a week ago. I checked with the management company this morning.” I paused. “She’s in 4C.”

Fox stared at me, shaking his head, and pressing his lips together. I gotta give it to him. He tried.

Then he started laughing. Not the polite kind. The full Fox Daws laugh, the one that his publicist had once described in a profile as his most devastating weapon, which... fair, but also extremely unhelpful right now.

“She lives,” he said, when he could, “in your building.”

“Yes.”

“That you own.”

Sigh. “Under an LLC, yes.”

“And she doesn’t know.”

“Nobody knows. That’s the point of the LLC.”

“Right, right, right.” He was still laughing, wiping at the corner of his eye with the back of his hand. “So she doesn’t know you’re Isak Kingman, she doesn’t know you own the building she lives in, and you asked her out? With the helmet on.”

I dropped my chin to my chest and waved a hand in defeat. “This is the way.”

“Did she say yes?”

“No.”

“Ouch. Dude.”

“But she took my number and saved it as—” God dammit. He was going to tease the fuck out of me.

“Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.”

I might as well because there would be no end to this if I didn’t. “Cat Daddy.”

Fox lost it again.

I waited. There was nothing else to do when Fox got like this except wait. Vito wandered in from wherever he’d been sleeping, assessed the situation, and sat on my foot. Solidarity, man.

“Okay.” Fox pulled himself together with visible effort. “Okay. What’s her name?”

“None of your business.”

He stared at me. “You don’t know her name?”

“I know her name.”

“Then—”

“Fox.”

He held up both hands. The expression on his face was the one that meant he was filing this away for later and I was going to regret not telling him now. Fine. Later was a problem for later-Isak.

My phone buzzed.