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“She said if I had trouble with the lock, I could ask her neighbor.”
“Fine,” I said, eager to get on with my night. I thought briefly about getting changed before I helped with the door, but that meant that my bath was over and that my night had gone officially off-course, and I stubbornly refused to entertain that notion. So grabbing my phone off the kitchen counter, I stepped back out in the hall and closed the door, saying nothing to Lukas as I shot Tess a quick message.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I took my time to reply. “Confirming with Tess that you’re her brother,” I said. “And not some guy who wants to loot her apartment.”
Lukas’s smile was slight, but it teased me something fierce. “Do I look like a robber to you?”
No. But I still took the opportunity to check him out. On second glance, he was built much more like an athlete than a model. Maybe a football player or some kind of fighter. The knots of muscle in his arms and shoulders were visible under his shirt, and his dark-wash jeans fit well enough to give me an idea of rock-like thighs under there. My eyes were still on him when I heard him laugh.
“It was a rhetorical question but by all means, keep looking.”
My cheeks burned but I still managed to shoot him a look. “Are you usually this unpleasant with people you’ve just met?”
“How was I being unpleasant?” he challenged. “I just figured if you mentally undressed me, we could call it even for what I saw when you opened the door.”
I flashed him another look. “I thought you said you didn’t see any – ” Nope. I cut myself off, refusing to give him the chance to say the word nipple again since clearly, he enjoyed the hell out of making me blush. So clenching my jaw, I muttered, “Never mind,” and faced away again, avoiding his eye even as he tilted his head to try and catch mine.
“Hey.” His voice was gentler now but I didn’t look up. “I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong foot.”
“It’s fine.”
“I know it’s late.”
“It is. And I have an early meeting tomorrow.” Petty detail to add but whatever.
“I promise I’ll be out of your hair soon,” Lukas murmured. A beat of silence passed as he continued watching me. “And at some point, you’ll let me know how to make this night up to you.”
I sucked in my bottom lip while pretending to text. Maybe it was the pause or the way he dropped his voice, but his offer somehow sent my mind straight into the gutter. My dormant libido rarely pictured anything racier than a kiss, but tonight it was giving me the image of Lukas making it up to me shirtless, doing things to me in bed I was always too scared to ask for.
Ohhh-kay, wow, Lia. No more of that, I scolded myself, touching the hot back of my neck while hastily muttering, “Don’t worry about it.”
“Then at least let me buy you a drink.”
“Thanks, but I don’t really drink.”
“Hence the wine key I saw on your counter.”
“That wasn’t mine.”
“Are we really playing this game?”
“We might be.”
“Coffee then?”
“I make my own.”
“Christ,” he laughed under his breath. “Fine. Nothing I can do then?” When I shook my head, he breathed out in surrender. “Alright. I’d just rather not have you angry with me if I’m going to be your new neighbor.”
I paused in the midst of typing and looked up. “Come again?”
He smirked at my reaction. “Tess didn’t tell you about France?”
“She said something about a trip, but I thought it’d be brief.”
“We all thought that, but seems she decided to extend her leave,” Lukas said. “By at least a couple weeks. And I happen to be renovating my apartment for the next month, so I’ll be staying here in the meantime.”
