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Speaking of, neither one of the felines had scratched on my door. I hoped they hadn’t killed each other in a fit of pique.
Or hangry-induced rage.
I recited German for another couple minutes and then forced myself up to take a quick shower. I fished a giant hoodie and jeans from the clean laundry basket then dressed before turning to look for the furry miscreants.
I didn’t have to look far. They had both crept into the bedroom after me and were now on my bed, one furry butt to a pillow.
“Princess,” I chided. “You’re hanging with a bad crowd. You never sit up there.”
She turned her back on me to wash said butt.
I sighed. Suppose it was good I hadn’t done more laundry yet.
After I fed them both in side-by-side bowls—then across-the-room bowls when Lucky tried to steal Princess’s food three times—I hurried out to my car. I didn’t have to get out anywhere. I could just see if Clint’s truck was parked at Thorny Paw. I only knew what he drove from catching a glimpse of it out the window when he left the other day.
“You’re stalking the guy,” I muttered as I waited for my frigid car to warm up enough for my windshield to defrost. Naturally, it had snowed overnight.
What else was new?
I debated getting out to clean off the windshield then put the heat on high and waited, still hoping Clint would text and save me the trip.
Didn’t happen. And his vehicle wasn’t at Thorny Paw when I drove by either. Hmm. Had he gone home? He must have.
Immediately, nightmare scenarios started forming in my mind, the kind of which only someone who edited books for a living and dealt with severe anxiety could manufacture. His truck mangled and crumpled at the bottom of a ravine. Mind you, there were no ravines between the clinic and my place or his, on any route he would take, but I still imagined it. Clint getting held up by gun-toting felons escaped from the county jail when he stumbled bleary-eyed out to his truck in the early morning hours. Clint heading outside to investigate the lights in the sky at night and being abducted by little blue men who wanted to study our kind.
At least the last scenario was more funny than scary.
At a loss, I swung by my parking lot just in case we’d somehow missed each other. Nada. That left me with only one more place to check—Clint’s own apartment, which meant I’d run into Magnus, assuming he’d stayed there after Clint’s offer.
I should’ve swung through a drive-thru for coffee. A large one.
The snow started again as I drove to Clint’s, squinting as I drove past choppy Crescent Lake. I had my wipers on high to combat the snow and it still made me nervous enough to clutch the wheel. I drove into the parking lot for his building, snagging the first spot I found.
Just checking on a friend. No big deal. Not going to come upon a murder/suicide or some other grisly thing. Besides, Clint may not even be here.
I hadn’t seen his truck but I hadn’t checked the wraparound lot, since, now that I was here, I had to talk to Magnus. Even a coward like me couldn’t escape now.
It took me five minutes to gather my wits about me enough to go out into the storm and brave the wind blowing snow directly in my eyes while I trudged up the walkway to Clint’s building. My heart was racing and my breath chugged out in a frosty plume, but I kept moving.
You can do this.
I gripped the key in my pocket between my shaking fingers as I rode the elevator upstairs and hurried down the hall. I knocked twice, waited an appropriate amount of time, then used my key to go inside—and made it approximately two steps inside Clint’s foyer before the sounds of loud, explicit moaning made me stop dead and stare.
All the lights were off in the apartment except for the tea light candles burning low on the coffee table. Down the hall toward the rooms in the back of the apartment, I heard vague sounds of jazz beneath the panting and creative dirty talk—from the woman, not the man.
“Oh, yeah, you know I like it, Daddy. Give it to me just like that. Use more fingers.”
I couldn’t breathe. What was I hearing? It was like one of the books I edited. That couldn’t be Clint in there with her. He’d never indicated he was into the Daddy thing, but we were new…
Maybe we hadn’t reached that level yet. Maybe working all night was a cover.
And he’d dared to act like he trusted me with Magnus when he was really a cheating dog!
But why would he give me a key? Did he want to be caught? And where the hell was Magnus?
I pressed a hand to my spinning head. What was happening right now?
A key turned in the lock behind me, and panicked, I dove into the corner of Clint’s foyer. A large, voluminous fern on the tall plant stand I wedged myself behind provided very little cover, but I was now at the level of pregnancy-level panting and had to grab the base of the plant for support. Dots swam in my vision. I gripped the ornate stand and sucked in air while very familiar broad shoulders filled the doorway, blocking the light from the outer hallway and providing confirmation that Clint was not into such stuff.
