AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Adam stared at the stairs leading up to the bright red door of the house in front of him.
Hell, calling Angel without asking for her phone number had seemed like a pretty bad idea, which is why he’d put it off last week. Then he’d gone and done it anyway this morning, calling her at least five times. But at least he’d gotten her number from Michael and not from the club, that was less creepy right?
Of course, now he’d gone way beyond the creeper factor by showing up at her house, uninvited. When Angel hadn’t answered her phone or texted him back, he’d ended up getting a little panicky and had called Michael to make sure she’d gotten home okay the night before. She had, and was still at home, holed up in her room with the music turned up and her bedroom door locked.
He didn’t like the idea that he’d done something to upset her enough she would react this way. On the other hand, she might be a crazy drama queen and acting like this to get his attention, but he didn’t think so. A part of him was still pretty doubtful as to her intentions, leftover feelings from when he’d found out she’d been posing as a Domme, but he wanted to find out.
And if it did have to do with him, then he wanted to fix it.
Sitting around his house and waiting for her to call him back was not how he dealt with things. He was hands on and looking for immediate results. Which is how he’d ended up at the address Michael had texted to him. It looked like a pretty nice house. She’d mentioned housemates but she hadn’t said how many. Several, probably, going by the size of it.
With a sigh, he picked up the book he’d left on the passenger seat and put it in his pocket. It was the first book in Robin Hobb’s Assassins trilogy. He’d liked talking to Angel about books and she’d seemed interested in the authors he’d told her about which she hadn’t read before. Robin Hobb being one of them. If it turned out she wasn’t being a crazy drama queen and she had a reason for leaving the way she had last night and not answering any of his calls this morning, then he figured this was a pretty good peace offering.
Knocking on the door, he heard the low mutter of male voices. Was Michael here? Did he have friends over?
Adam didn’t particularly like the idea of the other man feeling so comfortable in Angel’s house that he had people over.
The door opened and Adam found himself looking eye to eye with a disheveled looking twenty-something wearing a Cthulu t-shirt. He looked Hispanic, with dark hair and eyes and slightly tanned skin. They weren’t the same height, it was just that the man was standing up a step.
Crap. Had Michael given him the wrong address?
“Hey, are you here for the LAN? You’re a couple hours early.”
“Um... no.” Whatever response Adam had expected, that wasn’t it. “I’m looking for Angel Jones.”
The man’s eyes narrowed and swept up and down Adam’s body, as if sizing him up. “She’s upstairs. Come on in.”
Adam stepped through the door, but the guy only backed away a few steps, obviously standing between Adam and the rest of the house. Because of the couch, which was on his immediate left, facing a gigantic television hanging on the wall, there was no way Adam could get by him without using brute force.
“Hey, who’s this?”
There were two guys sitting on armchairs on opposite sides of the room, playing what looked like a first-person shooter game. One was like a mini-Jared, stocky and muscular, with a similar dark skin tone and a shaved head. The other one was a skinny, gawky looking white guy with glasses. They glanced over at Adam.
“Are you here for the LAN?”
Before he could answer the question, the guy who’d opened the door answered for him.
“He’s here to see Angel.”
The game immediately paused, and Adam found himself on the receiving end of three hostile stares. Great. With the game paused, he could hear the faint strains of music coming down from the second floor and he assumed that was where Angel was, which meant he had to get through these guys first. Maybe he could get some information from them, since they seemed to know something was up, before he decided whether or not it was worth it to try and get by them.
But before he could ask anything, the mini-Jared stood up to face him, still glaring. “Are you the Cowboy Casanova?”
“Excuse me?”
“The Cowboy Casanova,” the guy repeated.
“He doesn’t know what that means, Q.” The white guy, who was still sitting in his armchair, groaned. “It’s a song. She put it on repeat for two hours this morning. Two hours. I can deal with the angry-girl-country shit, but not the same song over and over again. I almost cried with relief when she finally switched over to the Dresden Dolls.”
“So, are you?” Q demanded again. Adam might have taken offense except he suddenly realized he was facing what he and his friends would look like to Lexie’s dates. Obviously, these guys cared about Angel and knew she was upset, which meant he had to soothe their ruffled feathers before he could get any useful information from them.
“I don’t know,” he said evenly. “I’ve never heard the song.”
The guy in the armchair immediately launched into song, the twang vaguely country. Basically, sounded like the song was reviling liars and players. Great.
The guy stopped singing and looked at him expectantly, waiting for an answer. Adam’s lips twitched. This was not at all how he’d imagined this visit going. He didn’t think the translation of the song to the situation was literal, but he had to admit he liked the sound of ‘feelings that you don’t wanna fight.’ The rest of it wasn’t good though.
“I hope not,” he said.
