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It was a funny state they found themselves in and he bet she was equally unsure how to proceed. Vance stuck out a hand toward her.
“Hey, I’m Vance. Come here often?”
She snorted then, covering her nose and mouth with a hand. His mystery woman was pretty in the edgy, funky, outsider way she seemed to be going for. She and Halli would probably be able to swap fashion tips, maybe Twyla and Plum too for that matter.
But what the hell was he thinking about that for? He was never going to bring this girl—whose name he still didn’t know—back to Clover City to introduce her to his friends as his…what? Tenant?Getting a little carried away there, Yardley. Jesus.What the hell would they think of her anyway?
After a beat and a hard exhale out her nose, the woman took his hand and shook. Her grip was hard but her hand was small, like the rest of her. Little but fierce, tiny but she would fuck you right up.
“Lilith. And, um, no. First time. Well, sort of. I…I used to live at Lake Pines.”
That was a campground/RV park kinda thing down the road. Not one of the nicer ones around town, either.
“I, uh, used to work there too,” she volunteered, taking her hand back and wrapping it around her glass of water, looking into the clear liquid instead of at him now. “But I don’t anymore.”
Ah. He was curious about what’d happened—had she been fired? Vance doubted she’d quit—tenacious seemed like an accurate word to describe her—but maybe she was impulsive or maybe something really bad had happened. He wanted to pry but that hadn’t been one of their terms.
“Room was part of your compensation package?”
“Sure. Like all the terrible coffee I could drink and anything that was still left in the lost and found after two weeks if day shift didn’t grab it first.”
She shook her head, and muttered under her breath, “Compensation package? Who the hell talks like that?”
“So,” he said, feeling his face flush, because yeah, he sounded like one of those stuffed-shirt assholes him and his buddies would make fun of when they’d hung around campus in his rougher days.
All those fucking professors with their blazers and ties and pants suits and leather briefcases, all those fucking rich kids with their expensive SUVs they’d park in front of the apartments they rented off campus because they couldn’t have a car if they lived in one of their fancy ass residential colleges. Yeah, he’d envied and loathed them in equal measure and now he was one of them.
He could do the math with what information Lilith had given him—lost her job, lost her housing, didn’t make enough to have a cushion to get a new place, hadn’t had time to get a new job. Didn’t have a car to get out of Dodge.
“So what? I told you what you wanted to know, right? So we’re good?”
Lilith looked anxious for him to get out of here and he couldn’t blame her. Hell, if he wanted to get home without plowing his car into a guardrail after falling asleep at the wheel, he should get going.
Right on cue, he had to stifle a yawn behind his forearm. Yeah, he’d better get out of here sooner rather than later because it was going to be a long drive back to Clover City. It would help to get some caffeine into his system but he wouldn’t do it here. He’d grab some coffee on his way out of town at the first open gas station he could find.
And he would be on his way, but there was something they should do first. To protect him, protect her. When he was a kid, a spit-shake would’ve sealed the deal but he was a grown-ass man and an attorney so that wasn’t going to cut it.
“Before I go, we should draft a contract and swap contact information.”
Murder flashed in Lilith’s eyes again and he held up his hands. “To protect you too. I’ll give the development office a heads up you’ll be staying here but they’re not always great at passing on messages to security. If someone comes banging at the door and you answer instead of me, wouldn’t it be nice to have a piece of paper that says it’s cool for you to be here?”
Murder faded into arch annoyance.
“Fine,” she bit off.
Vance pulled his wallet from his pocket, slid out his license and handed it to her.
“Anyone you want to send a pic of that to, tell them what’s up? Let them know you’re here?”
The look she gave him was suspicious, but he was used to this. Did it with play partners all the time. Not so much at Hive because unless it was a membership recruitment night or an open event, everyone there had been thoroughly vetted and he knew most members anyway, but when he played at home or on the road with someone he didn’t know well it was a given.
With another stifled yawn, he grabbed his laptop while Lilith snapped a pic with her phone and hopefully sent it off somewhere. Sounded like she was close with her sister, so maybe to her? Or maybe not because it sounded like her sister had her hands full already.
