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“These days, yeah.” He nodded. “Both Mike and Charles have access to weapons and are qualified to use them.”
She looked startled. “That’s … that’s a surprise. I never realized they were armed.”
Raul wasn’t surprised. He would have been disappointed in BHSS otherwise. “Fire doors and emergency exits are secure. Swipe cards and fob access are state of the art. Once a month either Mike or Charles does a building walkthrough with the building manager and they check all systems. The last walkthrough was a week ago. So, for a residential building in a good part of the city, your security is decent.”
“Thank you for that,” she said softly.
“No problem.” Their eyes met and held.
She looked at her watch and started. “We should get going. It’s a nice evening. I propose we take the Number Seven. It’s a tram line of old restored trams that are charming. It goes to Fisherman’s Wharf where the restaurant is, and swinging back it ends up in the Castro where Heaven is. And it’s a really pretty route along the Bay. We could catch an Uber back from the club.”
“Sounds like a plan. You wearing that?” Raul indicated a frothy thing on the back of the sofa. It was a swirl of turquoise and emerald green, the turquoise the exact color of her eyes.
“Good guess. Yes, I am.”
“Then allow me.” Raul picked it up. It was light as air in his hands, bigger than it looked when he opened it up. Some kind of shawl. He hesitated. His sisters did big complicated things with shawls and scarves, twisting and turning them into what even he recognized as fashionable … things around their necks and shoulders. He should just hand it to her.
But that pale slender neck, those delicate shoulders…they were right there. It was a perfect opportunity to touch her. It was maybe skeevy but also a temptation like no other. When he shook the thing out, it billowed like a cloud. It was soft and light. He just folded it into a triangle and smoothed the ends over her shoulders. Her skin was somehow even softer than the material.
She turned and they stood there for a long moment, face to face, his hands still on her shoulders. He stared into her eyes, fascinated. She was facing the windows that looked out over the city to the west and the slanting sunlight lit up her face and turned her eyes into gemstones. It was fascinating. He’d never seen a color like that in a person’s eyes before.
He wasn’t making a move and she wasn’t either. He was transfixed, hand on her shoulders, looking into those remarkable eyes. For a moment, he completely forgot himself, something he never did. He was always present in the moment. But for this instant, he forgot everything. That he was here to do a job. That they needed to get going. That this was a woman he barely knew.
Didn’t make any difference. His hands became bricks he couldn’t move. His feet were nailed to the floor. He could barely breathe.
Time floated by and all he could do was look her in the eyes. She had some makeup on, but it seemed invisible. All he could tell was that her eyes were enormous, cheeks high and well-shaped. Mouth a wet dream, red and moist. Hair held up by a miracle with a few locks down around her temples.
A siren went by downstairs, the loud waaah-waaaah made her blink. “We should, ah…”
“Yeah. We should,” he answered. What the fuck just happened? He’d gone into a fugue state like some moron.
Emma locked the door when they walked out into the corridor of her apartment building. He’d had a talk with Mike about the key system and was reassured that the keys were hard to copy, not that he expected Emma to be careless with her keys.
Unless of course she’d given a set to a male companion. Raul repressed the spurt of jealousy that thought gave him. He had no right to be jealous, what the hell?
“Have you given your keys to anyone, even for a limited time?” he asked as they walked down the corridor to the elevator.
She looked up at him, surprised, red eyebrows drawn together in a frown. “What?”
“The keys to the doors in this complex are hard to copy. There are very few places where it can be done, but it can be done. Takes about forty-eight hours. So, have you given your house keys to anyone for a day or two? I’m asking for security reasons.”
Which was a lie. He was asking because he wanted to know about her love life. Like, really badly.
It was sheer luck that Emma didn’t tune into his keen interest because she answered calmly. “No, I’ve never given the keys to anyone. I haven’t lived here long and no one’s come to visit me. Hope kept promising, but the time was never right. So, no.”
He blew out a breath in relief. If she’d had anything resembling a serious affair the guy would have the keys, right? He almost caught himself asking out loud and had to refrain from slapping himself upside the head.
“Good. The building supervisor has the master set of all the keys and the company that manufactures the keys is obligated to inform them if duplicates are made, but bootleg keys are possible. Hell, these days a 3D printer could make a copy. So, with your permission, I’d like to install a lock with keypad access. Maybe even biometric access.”
They were in the spacious lobby now. Raul nodded to Mike, who nodded back. He held the big plate glass doors open for her.
“Well, ah, sure. If you think that would be safer.”
They walked out into the balmy air. It was a beautiful evening, the setting sun making all the colors intense. They walked along Emma’s street for a block and turned onto Market Street.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” Emma looked up at him and smiled. “Makes the high rent worth it, eh?”
