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Her voice whipped out, fierce and angry.
“I know most people wouldn’t have given me the space, but—”
Her shoulders crept up toward her ears. Soft music drowned out most of the loud voice on the other end.
“But you told me the electricity would be fixed! I can’t come in every morning wondering if my refrigerators are going to be out and all my flowers dead.”
Curiosity morphed into quiet anger. He’d dealt with plenty of disreputable landlords in his time.
“I can’t afford another thousand dollars!” A note of desperation crept into her voice. “Please, there must be something you can do. I have a big job that just came in, and I’m getting the first payment Friday.”
The pleading in her tone catapulted him back into the past, to the night before Alexandra had turned on a dime and revealed her true colors. They’d been lying on the beach, sand and waves and her naked body bathed in silver moonlight, tangled up in each other after he’d made love to her on a silky blanket.
Let’s run away.
He’d chuckled, one hand drifting lazily over her belly, the other cupping her breast. He’d asked where. She’d responded anywhere, as long as they could be together. At first, he’d thought she’d just been teasing. They hadn’t discussed what would happen when the summer ended. But somehow, he would find a way to keep seeing her. He had another semester of school. He’d keep his search for graduate programs to New York City. He’d do anything to keep her in his life.
But she had turned to him, fingers fluttering against his face with an almost frantic energy as she’d suggested Paris, the Caribbean, South Africa, anywhere but the United States. Her questions had grown desperate, pleading, as she’d begged him to make a plan with her to escape so they could be together.
Except when he’d pressed her as to why, she’d shaken her head, bitten her lip and said she was being silly, that the thought of summer ending was making her melancholy.
And then she’d pushed him back onto the blanket, straddled him and eased herself down onto his hard length, chasing away his questions and destroying all rational thought.
The memory unsettled him. When she’d banished him the next day in her father’s library, he’d chalked up the incident on the beach as a spoiled heiress’s melodramatic antics. That and his own unease that had lurked in the back of his mind ever since he’d met Alexandra, that he wasn’t good enough for her.
Alexandra’s voice broke through his thoughts.
“Look, I’m getting paid Friday. Either schedule the electrician to come in and start work or I walk.” There was a burst of noise on the other end of the line, but Alexandra cut them off with an impatient jab of her hand. “I can walk because it’s in my contract that you’ll take care of associated utility repairs within fourteen days of my request. It’s been eighteen days. This place sat empty for twelve months before I moved in. It’s your choice if you want to lose a paying tenant.”
Alexandra hung up the phone and swore under her breath. She turned around, her face paling when she saw Grant standing in the doorway.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to know your landlord is a bastard.”
His answer startled a small laugh from her.
“He is. A greedy one, too.”
Grant cast an eye over the water stains on the ceiling and the peeling linoleum in the corner by the refrigerators. When his gaze landed back on Alexandra, she was watching him with pink cheeks, arms crossed defensively over her chest.
“I know. Location, location, location.”
“Why here?”
The shrug she gave him failed to mask her embarrassment.
“Cheap. Available.”
“You said most people wouldn’t have given you the space.”
The pink deepened into a fierce red as her eyes skittered away.
“You were standing there quite a while.”
“Tell me what that meant.”
Her head snapped back around, her eyes narrowing as she frowned at him.
