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“Were you not expecting to see me? I mean, you do know this is where I live, right, given you left here on Sunday morning?”
She goes to say something and stops herself. So she can edit what she’s thinking. Who knew?
“Hi,” she says again.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
“I wanted to say thank you for the dress.”
I grin. “I owed you, given what happened to the last one.”
She blushes, and my dick stirs in my pants. Revealing her like that was such a turn-on.
“And the shoes,” she says. “My shoes escaped your knife skills, and I’m still up three pairs.”
“Given how good they look on you, I thought you needed them in every color.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “What, that’s it?”
“That’s what?”
“You just sent me shoes? You didn’t even put a card in with the dress and shoes. They could have been from anyone.”
Now it’s my turn to be confused. “Do you get Bergdorf’s delivering you clothes and shoes on the regular?”
“No, but how was—”
“You knew it was me. Otherwise, why would you be here?”
She sighs. “I…I just thought it would be polite to thank you.”
“Consider me thanked,” I say, a little irritated. I don’t know why she’s waited outside my building to give me a hard time about not leaving her a note with a gift. “You’re off the hook. Any obligation you thought you had because of the Bergdorf delivery is hereby extinguished.”
She grins at me, her smile the widest I’ve ever seen from her, and she’s so beautiful, so lit up, that it genuinely winds me. “You’re pissed off,” she says.
“And that makes you happy?”
She shrugs. “Kinda. I thought you were some kind of perpetually peppy person. It’s good to know you’re human.”
I roll my eyes.
“So, are you going to invite me up?” she asks.
My mouth opens, but words don’t come out. I’m not sure how to respond. “Invite you up?” My go-to response when faced with difficult questions—ask the exact same question back.
“Yeah,” she says. “So we can…chat?”
Normally in this situation, when I don’t have a fucking clue about what’s going on, I’d play along. I’d be friendly and charming and follow Avril’s lead so I could work out what was happening.
Because I don’t know.
But for some reason, with Avril, there’s something about her that refuses to let me use my usual techniques. “Chat about what?” I ask. “Or by chat, do you mean fuck?”
She puts a hand over my mouth. “Ben!”
Her shock cheers me up, and when I chuckle, she takes her hand from my mouth. She glances from side to side. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“I can’t believe you’re embarrassed I said that. You don’t strike me as a woman who embarrasses easily.” I nod toward the entrance to my building. “Come up. We can chat.”
