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I ignored that barb. “It’s not creepy to notice a place is well kept. This is a palace compared to the places we crashed after we ran away from our uncle and aunt.”
She shrugged. “I like a clean living space,” she admitted. “My mom was a neatnik, and I guess I got it from her. I’d like to have a better apartment, for sure, but one of the sad things about being on the run and living under the radar is that the jobs that you can get and leave easily never pay well. To make real money, you have to commit, and I never had that luxury. But I can’t tolerate squalor, no matter where I am.”
“I don’t like it either,” I said. “But I never kept house as well as this. Not with Shane and a little sister to look after. Something always slipped through the cracks.”
We froze for an instant. The thought of her lost sisters hung heavy in the air. I saw Kat push the thought away from herself by sheer force of will.
“Excuse me,” she murmured, fleeing to the bedroom.
She slapped the door open again a moment later, a disapproving look on her face. “Really, Masters?” she said. “I do get that you were trying to ascertain if I was a honeypot deathtrap, so I forgive you for breaking into my house. But pawing through my clothes and my underwear and my shoes? That’s just weird and pervy.”
“I didn’t do that,” I protested, craning my neck to look into her bedroom, and her open closet. Everything looked like it was in perfect order. Shoes neatly organized on a shoe shelf, stacks of T-shirts and sweatshirts, organized by color. A bag with carefully paired socks each in its own little slot, hanging on the closet door, like something out of a fucking lifestyle blog. “Who pawed through what? Looks neat as a pin to me.”
“I leave things in such a way that I know if anyone has handled them,” she said.
I raised my hands in protest. “I did not handle your underwear! Not judging, but that’s not my kink. Too derivative. I prefer to go straight to the source.”
Kat huffed out a sharp breath and closed the bedroom door smartly in my face.
Well, shit. I couldn’t get too huffy. I had literally broken in and trespassed here yesterday, so I had no moral high ground to take. I’d been pushing her boundaries and taking liberties since the first moment I’d met her.
Still and all. I had not touched her damned clothes. As fucking if.
A knock on the door jolted my lacerated nerves. “Ethan?” Shelby’s voice
“What is it?” I asked.
“There’s a woman here to see Kat,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”
Kat marched out of her bedroom, pushed past me, and peered through the blinds. “Oh, it’s just my friend Joanna,” she said. “Let her in.”
Shelby hesitated. “Boss?”
I met Kat’s narrowed eyes. Here it came. Another scolding. “Yes. Let her in,” I said, resigned.
“So,” Kat said. “These bodyguards answer to you. Not to me.”
“I’m the one who pays them,” I pointed out, and then wished immediately that I hadn’t said it. Not a detail that was going to endear me to her.
“Ah,” Kat said. “Which makes them less like bodyguards, and more like, oh, I don’t know. Jailors, spies, informants, babysitters? What’s the right word for it?”
“Let’s discuss it another time,” I suggested, as Joanna burst through the door.
“Damn, Kat!” Joanna said. “What’s up with the tattooed prison guard out front? What is this, the frickin’ gulag?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Just a security precaution.”
Joanna spun around, open-mouthed. “Holy crap!” she breathed. “This is the guy who broke into your house yesterday! I caught him in the act!”
“I know,” Kat said. “He’s also been pawing through my underwear drawer. What the hell were you looking for, anyway?”
“I never touched your damned underwear!” I snapped back.
Joanna glared at me. “You said you’d tell Kat to call me!”
“And I did,” I said. “It is not my fault she got distracted.”
Kat turned back to Joanna. “Sorry, Jo,” she said. “I meant to call, and I would have, eventually. But things have been intense lately.”
