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“If we can narrow it down enough, I could probably look through some purchase records, see if I find shit about lighting and bugs or whatever else Skinks need.”
“That’s good,” I said, nodding. “I’ll let you get started. Just drop by when you figure out your bill,” I suggested, making my way to the door. Which took an obnoxious amount of time since his place was so massive.
“Will do. Hey,” he called.
“Yeah?” I asked, turning back in the doorway.
“Bring her a coffee back. Doesn’t have a lot of pictures on her profile, but there’s a cup of coffee in all of them.”
With that, he spun back around in his chair and got to work.
I mean, Junior was notoriously single and had no sisters, so taking advice with him when it came to women seemed odd, but it was hard to argue with the fact that she’d asked me to get her coffee at the hospital. And that she had a nice-ass coffee maker at home.
Besides, if there was one thing I’d learned from the princesses hanging around all the fucking time, it was that chicks liked random food gifts. Coffee, tacos, ice cream, whatever. They liked that shit.
And as I stood in line at She’s Bean Around to grab said coffee, I tried to convince myself that it had everything to do with being nice to a woman who’d just had a rough couple of days, and nothing to do with the fact that some part of me was into her.
I wasn’t ever into a woman.
That wasn’t how I rolled.
I liked shit casual.
Fuck, if it could be casual enough that we didn’t even exchange names, that was the best.
But now there was this woman. In my room. In my bed. Naked in my shower. Crying on my shoulder. Sharing meals with me.
And the crazy as fuck part of it all was… it was nice.
New, but nice.
Even if I was going to be crashing on the couch or in the prospect room for the foreseeable future.
When I got back to the clubhouse, coffee in hand, I found Sylvie situated on the couch next to the new guy Sully, grimacing at whatever was on the TV.
“Your girl here thinks love is cheesy and unrealistic,” Sully announced when he looked over at me.
“I’m not saying love is cheesy or unrealistic. But grand romantic gestures ar—did you get me coffee?” she asked, brows pinching as she looked at me.
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly feeling weird as fuck about it. “I was getting some. Figured I’d get you one too. We gotta discuss some shit,” I told her.
“Oh, actually, yeah,” she said, using the arm of the couch to get up, then swiveling around to carefully drop down onto her office chair. “I have some things to talk to you about too. Hand me the coffees and give me a push,” she said. “And you,” she said, looking back at Sully with a head shake. “You are hopeless if you like this kind of movie.”
“Hopeless… romantic, maybe,” he shot back.
“No, just hopeless,” she teased, getting one of his surfer guy smiles out of him before I pushed her away.
Nitro, her new best friend, trading me for her so easily that you wouldn’t have thought I’d rescued the junkyard dog, followed behind us as I pushed her into my room.
She got herself onto the bed, reaching for a notepad she’d found somewhere, so I dropped down onto her chair.
“What do you got there?” I asked, sipping my coffee. Black. I got hers on the light and sweet side. When I’d asked Gala at She’s Bean Around about flavors, she’d claimed that they were ‘tricky,’ and that I was better going without them than adding the wrong one.
“A list of people who could, in some crazy world where things like this could happen to nobodies like me, have stalker abilities,” she said, looking over the list again, then handing it over to me. “I broke it down into sections.”
She had.
One list of ‘significant others,’ another for ‘casual stuff,’ a third for ‘residents,’ and then, finally, a small column of ‘randoms.’
“Residents… meaning of the house?” I clarified.
“Yeah. And none of them are current residents, just ones who, you know…”
“No, I don’t. Tell me.”
“Well, they were too flirty. Or too butthurt when I turned down their advances. That sort of thing. Nothing that outwardly said ‘creep,’ necessarily. Just a little red flaggy. Oh, this is perfect,” she moaned into her cup, her good eye closing.
Since her shower, the other eye looked like the swelling was going down. Maybe she’d iced it while I’d been gone. Hopefully, it would start to open up in a day or two.
“So no one ever got aggressive at the house?” I asked.
“With me? No. I mean, Russ has been pushed around a lot. But no one has ever been physical with me. Well…”
