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Just like her new life.
Even if she had to ignore the scary scampering noises of things crawling across the floor late at night. Or the upstairs neighbor who’d been muttering somewhat terrifying things under his breath as he passed her on the stairs early this morning. Or the fact that the water ran brown a good two minutes before it was clear enough to risk using.
Still. It was her life. Good and bad.
It also gave her immense joy to imagine the horrified look on her father’s face if he saw his only daughter living here.
No, not just living here in this apartment or this town but working as a receptionist for a private investigator—who he’d mentioned somewhere before were an unsavory lot. He would no doubt find the job far beneath what an Abbott should be doing, even if technically she wasn’t doing anything less than what she’d been doing working at the foundation.
She wondered what her father might think of Reynolds and his inability to string two words together to form a sentence half the time. One thing for sure, Reynolds Cavanaugh was the complete opposite of every other man who orbited her old world.
And she liked it.
She had just dished some of the casserole into a bowl and grabbed a diet soda from the fridge—the one thing she didn’t want to drink full-sugared as she preferred the taste of her old favorite—when someone knocked on her front door.
It was nearly seven at night. Well past time for some of her neighbors to want to visit.
Curious, she went to the door and, with the chain in place, cracked the door open.
Reynolds.
Immediately, the ball of energy was back in her belly as she stared up at the guy.
Had she somehow brought him here merely by thinking about the man?
Probably not, or he might have appeared here last night as she’d snuggled into her bed with Mouse against her side, wondering what he might have done had she walked over to him in the darkness of the shed and reached out to touch the thick scruff along his jaw, maybe even leaned up to kiss the his mouth to see if the scruff felt as pokey as it looked against her chin or maybe soft and—
“You going to let me in or wait to see if someone picks me off out here in the hall?”
Right.
Just remember, Waverley. This is your boss. No, not just your boss, but your one good shot at finding Spencer. So don’t do anything that you’ll regret.
But first things first.
Chapter 9
The woman shut the door in his face.
His mouth dropped open, and he was about to pound on the door again when he heard the chain slide across the lock before the door swung open.
Better. For a second, he was worried maybe she was trying to hide something—or someone—and was refusing him entrance.
“Come in,” she said as she blinked back at him with those pretty brown eyes. He stepped past her and into the dark, shadowy apartment that, aside from the probable mold growing behind the walls, smelled delicious. “Is something wrong?”
Wrong? Probably not, unless you counted the fact that he seemed to have taken complete leave of his senses by coming here to her place tonight when what he was going to tell her could have waited for morning.
But this evening, as he stared at the photo of the two of them posted to his fake account, he had found himself wanting to know more about this new Waverley, in particular what she did on her nights off when she wasn’t out trying to catch lost cats.
And here he was. Not that he was going to tell her any of this.
He took another tactic. “Anything wrong? Not unless you consider the fact I know of at least one former drug dealer who lives across the hall from you, and I think the lobby might have been the spot of Blue Haven’s first double homicide.”
It could be true.
She rolled her eyes. “Everyone I’ve met here has been very kind. You just need to try and see the good in people. How did you even know which apartment was mine?”
“The welcome mat and the heart-shaped wreath seemed like things you might be responsible for.” Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “That and you put your address on the 1099 IRS form when I hired you.”
