Page 5 of Sinful Abandon

I’ve never told anyone this because it sounds like the dumbest thing in the world. But, whatever, I don’t have to impress this guy. At all.

“Dr. Seuss,” I say. When he still stares at me, waiting for me to further explain, I continue, “I used to read Dr. Seuss books as a kid to work on my diction. You’d be surprised by how well it works.”

I brace myself for his laughter. Instead, he nods his head and looks back at me, like he’s impressed.

I’m suddenly intrigued.

“What’s your deal, Ryan from Chicago?”

“My deal? I don’t have a deal. Just doing the right thing.”

I hate his answer.

“Wouldn’t the right thing have been to let me have the cab in the first place? I could have been long gone and out of your life by now.”

He smiles a perfect white-toothed grin and speaks with sarcasm, “Yes, but you wouldn’t have had any money to pay for your cab. Aren’t we lucky that things worked out this way?”

I purse my lips at him but feel my cheeks rise.

Damn him.

The cab pulls up to my building, a gorgeous glass and steel apartment tower. Ryan opens the door and then stands to let me out. When I’m on the sidewalk, I spin around and see he’s getting back into the car.

“Don’t you want to come up?” I ask him, the breeze off Lake Michigan lifting my hair off my neck.

He stops moving, waits a beat, and then turns around to face me. “Why would I come up?”

My body falls with his peculiar sense of aloofness. “You paid for my cab, so I’m offering to pay you back.”

Standing by the open door of the cab, he puts his hand in his pocket. His tousled dark brown hair becoming ruffled in the gentle wind. “I’m not looking for sex.”

I roll my eyes to the heavens. “And I’m not offering it to you. Just a drink. I might even have some cash upstairs to pay you back.”

He thinks this over for a second.

I find myself growing impatient. “Any minute now.”

“How do you know I’m not a serial killer or a rapist?” he asks.

Oh, for the love of Christ.

I walk over to the cabbie and motion for him to lower his window. When he does, I talk to the driver, “I want you to record the time and place of this conversation. My name is Heather McCallister, and this is Ryan…” I pause and then look over to Ryan. “What’s your last name?”

“Pierson.” His brows are furrowed.

“His name is Ryan Pierson. If I go missing tomorrow or am found hanging in my bathroom, I want you to alert the media that you dropped off a devastatingly beautiful brunette name Heather McCallister at her residence at ten thirty-two in the evening. Got it?”

“The fare is twelve dollars. You gonna pay or what?” The driver sounds very concerned for my safety.

I turn to Ryan for the fare. Instead of handing it over, he just looks at me. It’s an odd look, one I’m not used to sharing with men, and quite frankly, it makes me a little uncomfortable.

His eyes are slanted ever so slightly. His brows gently curve in. There’s an intensity. A knowing aspect that makes me want to tell him that he knows nothing about me, so he should stop trying to figure me out.

Ryan gives him twenty and then closes the door.

When the two of us are alone on the sidewalk, we stare at each other for a moment. I turn and walk into the building, him following me like some sort of lost puppy.

Charlie, the doorman, is on duty. I pull Ryan by the hand and walk him to Charlie’s desk.