Page 22 of Merciless King

“Thank you,” I said again, hoping he’d let it drop.

Thankfully, he did. “You ready to head in to work?”

I nodded. He filled a travel cup with coffee, and we headed out.

When we reached the store, he followed me in, checked the back room, and then went over the security system with me again.

“Keep this on at all times and the door locked.”

“I will.”

“You gonna be okay here on your own?” He seemed reluctant to leave.

“Yes, and I won’t be on my own. Erin will be here with me.”

He studied me intensely for several long seconds. Taking in my puffy eyes again, no doubt. “Between us at the agency and the police doing their drive-bys and drop-ins, you’ll be covered.”

I smiled to reassure him. “I know.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth.

He seemed to do that a lot. I licked my lips self-consciously and his eyes darkened.

Erin knocked at the door and I stepped back.

“I’ll be here to pick you up at six.” He opened the door for Erin then turned back to me. “Make sure you lock this after me,” he said before he walked out.

I watched him go, then smiled at Erin, thankful that every trace of what happened was gone. She gave me a hug but didn’t ask me a lot of questions about it, which I was grateful for. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to think about it. I needed to get back to work, to keep my mind occupied. The last thing I needed was to start going over and over what had happened or what that creep had said to me through the door.

I didn’t need to be thinking about what he would have done to me if I hadn’t been quick enough and locked myself behind that door.

If he’d gotten to me.

Instead, I got busy. We had a lot of orders to fill, most of which had come in overnight. I also had quite a few apologies and refunds to organize after having the shop closed the day before and forgetting to turn off the online orders.

At around five-thirty, Detective Daniels tapped on the shop door.

I smiled at him and hustled over to open up and let him in.

The alarm started up instantly, all hell breaking loose. “Oh! Crap.” I quickly keyed in the code, but it didn’t work. I rushed to the counter and rummaged around, found the piece of paper with the code written on it, which I needed to lock away, and rushed back to punch it into the keypad.

I glanced at Detective Daniels. “It’s, ah…new.” His lips were curled up on one side, and he was looking at me in a way that made me feel all flustered and jittery. Not in a bad way. But yeah, if a good-looking man was looking at me, I was flustered and jittery.

My phone started ringing and I glanced at the screen. Van. My heart did a little leap before I could stop it. “Hello?”

“Talk to me,” he said.

“Huh?” I frowned. About what? The weather? What we were having for dinner later?

“Your alarm, London. It was triggered.”

“Oh! Sorry. I forgot to turn it off when Detective Daniels arrived.”

“Daniels is there?” His voice had dropped lower.

“He just got here.”

“Tell him hi from me.”