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She makes an amused, disbelieving sound. “No you don’t.”
I stroke her cheek once, smile glued to my lips. “I do.”
Her jaw drops. “But I live here.”
I snort. “Apparently.”
I see the exact moment she realizes I’m telling the truth. She shuts her mouth, her teeth clattering as she does, and drops her arms. Her brows pinch in confusion and then soften. “How long have you lived here?”
“Two years.”
“But I…you…how have I never seen you before?”
I shake my head, because I don’t fucking know, and I’ve been asking myself that question the entire car ride over. “I’m wondering the same thing. How could I have missed you?”
She keeps blinking. “What floor are you on?”
I reach forward and tap on forty-seven. It’s located below all the other buttons and requires a special code, so I punch it in.
“Forty-seven? But that’s the top floor! That’s a pent…house…” She trails off, staring up at me with mortified wonder.
I smirk and touch her chin, closing her mouth. Guess she didn’t realize how much a highly successful investment banker in the city of Toronto makes, one that owns his own firm and has dealings across North America.
For the next eight seconds, she does her best to keep from meeting my gaze in the mirrored elevator walls. She fails. Our eyes meet three times.
The elevator dings and the doors open on the twenty-sixth floor. She makes no move to get out.
Finally, she turns her glare on me. “You know, you have a completely private elevator so you don’t have to ride with us peasants.”
In truth, this is the first time I’ve taken one of the public elevators. “And miss irritating you a minute longer? Nuh-uh.” I smile down at her and kiss her cheek, then give her a gentle push out into the hall. “Goodnight Claire.”
She slinks slowly down the hallway, glancing back at me every couple of steps, shock still pouring over her features. I wait ’til she stops at her door so I can see which apartment is hers, and then I disappear back into the elevator.
Two minutes later, I’m greeted by two giant paws on my torso when I step through my door.
“Hey Sully,” I whisper, planting a kiss on my dog’s black nose. “How’s my handsome guy?” He drops to his side and rolls over, tongue lolling out of his mouth as I rub his belly.
“Daddy made a new friend. I think you’d like her. I know I do.”
***
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Claire
“You need some make up tonight.” Charlee prods the bags under my eyes and frowns. “You look like crap.”
“Gee, thanks, Charlee.” I throw her a cynical, tight-lipped smile. “You’re so sweet.”
“I’m just saying. You’re fucking purple under there! Did you sleep at all last night?”
“Barely.” I was too busy thinking about the long limbs and stupidly sexy dark brown waves sleeping twenty-one floors above me.
The man has given me nothing but sleepless nights since I met him. Every night this week I had laid in bed and re-read whatever messages he’d sent me that day, flirting with me in one way or another. Then I’d think about his irritating smirk, his perfect hair, his fingers on me, his lips…
Ugh. I can’t stand it.
And now? Now that I know he’s in the same building? How can I sleep now? I left the condo once today, looking a whole lot like I was sneaking out of Tiffany’s with a five million dollar diamond hidden in my back pocket the way my wild eyes darted anxiously around every corner before I made a mad dash across the front foyer, glancing over my shoulder seventeen thousand times for any sign of Avery.
