“But it’s bright outside.”
Nurse Miranda nodded, taking the glass from me. “It’s Saturday morning, dear.”
My heart sped up again as I struggled against the blankets, kicking them away, scrambling to get them off me. “No, it can’t be. I have to leave. I’ve got to see my—”
“You can’t go anywhere.” She crossed her arms, looking down at me with the sternest of expressions, sending a clear message she wouldn’t put up with any of my nonsense. “You took a severe blow to the head and you were unconscious for a while, drifted in and out all night. We’ll wait for the doctor—”
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine,” I said, trying to ignore the fact my head pounded so hard, I thought I’d pass out. Nurse Miranda’s face, the walls—the entire room—began to spin, making my stomach churn. Not quite defeated, I slumped onto my side, refusing to give up. I needed to get out of there. “You don’t understand. My dad’s sick. I have to see him. Please let me—”
“Eleanor?” Lewis’s deep, gravelly voice made me stop fighting and turn around. He stood in the doorway, his blond hair looked damp, as if he’d not long ago stepped out of the shower. As he moved closer, he brought the unmistakable scent of sandalwood with him, the one I’d smelled last night as he’d held me, whispered everything would be okay. The familiarity of his aftershave, the instant security it provided, made me choke on my tears.
“Mr. Farrier.” Nurse Miranda’s face lit up, looking like a kid who’d been presented with an ice-cream sundae for breakfast. “Good to see you again. Maybe you can help me talk some sense into this young lady. She’s trying to leave.”
“Oh, no, no. You can’t.” Lewis only needed two strides to get to the bed, where he reached out and patted my hand, making my skin tingle. “You have to stay here so they can make sure you’re okay. There’s no way you can leave.”
Nurse Miranda looked down at me with a told-you-so expression, and as Lewis removed his hand from mine, a scarlet blush shot straight up my arm, all the way to my face, where it set my cheeks on fire.
As neighbors went, Lewis and I didn’t know each other well, had crossed paths in the apartment building a few times since he’d moved in last August. The first instance was when I’d gone to the mailboxes, hoping to find a check from one of my clients, the funeral home called Worthy & Moore. They hadn’t paid the final installment for their website for over two weeks, despite three calls from me and multiple assurances from them they were satisfied with my work.
“Ours is but the most important of businesses,” Mr. Moore, an impossibly tall man with a glass eye, had said in a grave voice as we signed the contract a few weeks prior. “After all, it’s the last purchase you’ll ever make.”
Obviously, paying their suppliers on time wasn’t important to Mr. Moore, because when I got to my creaky old mailbox, it was still empty. “Crap,” I said. “Crap, crap, crap.”
“Anything I can help with?”
The voice made me jump. I hadn’t noticed anyone come down the stairs behind me, or the man who now stood three mailboxes away. He looked about my age, and I tried hard not to stare at his smooth olive skin, big green eyes and blond hair reaching his wide shoulders. Not nearly as hard as I fought against letting my gaze linger on how his T-shirt grazed his flat middle and strained against his toned arms.
A familiar voice crept into my head, whispering I should’ve changed out of my panda-print pajamas before lunchtime. At least attempted to put on makeup. Done more with my hair than shove it on top of my head, where I’d secured it with an old, faded, blue velour scrunchie that probably had its heyday in the ’80s. Chasing the words in my head away and chastising myself for caring one iota what he—or any man—might think, I’d muttered, “No, thanks, I’m fine,” and scurried back upstairs.
The next time we’d met hadn’t been less embarrassing; in fact, it had been worse. I’d decided to do laundry in the basement, a place I ventured only in desperate times. It was creepy, dark and dingy, and the hallway should’ve been nominated as “most probable place for a Portland murder.” That hadn’t happened so far—the nomination or the murder—not as far as I knew anyway, but I tried to spend as little time down there as possible. As I rushed around the corner to the laundry room, I collided with the person coming in the opposite direction, sending his bottle of detergent, my basket and all the clothes in it crashing to the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, realizing who I’d rammed into. The mystery mailbox man.
“Totally my fault.” He took a step back and looked at me. “Hey, it’s you.”
I frowned, unsure what he’d meant with his comment. To avoid further humiliation, I kept my face down while bending over to pick up my clothes.
“I wondered where you’d got to,” he said. When I looked at him with a puzzled stare, he quickly added, “I mean because I haven’t seen you around. I’m Lewis, by the way. Lewis Farrier. We met at the mailboxes. I think I live in the apartment above you.”
I nodded, my lips glued shut by an invisible force.
He leaned in, stage-whispered, “This is the bit where you tell me your name.”
“Oh, uh, Eleanor Hardwicke,” I said, grateful for the landlord’s penny-pinching approach to lighting the communal areas, and hoping the low-wattage bulb above us would do a good enough job at hiding yet another ridiculous expression that had no doubt taken over my face.
“Pleased to officially meet you.” Lewis held out a hand, and as I extended mine, I looked down at the pair of polka-dot underwear still clenched between my fingers. Unwashed polka-dot underwear. I wished for a meteor to fall on my head or a sinkhole to open up beneath my feet, but no such luck. Instead I pulled my hand and the offending object away as I mumbled something about being late for an appointment and made another run for it.
Mrs. Winchester—my oldest neighbor, who’d lived in the building forever and knew everybody’s business—was only too happy to inform me the next morning that the “rugged man living upstairs” was a personal trainer. She’d secretly named him Luscious Lewis and insisted he should be on the cover of Men’s Health.
“You read Men’s Health?” I said.
“Got a copy in the mail by mistake once. Read it cover to cover. Five times.” She winked and chuckled, then waggled her eyebrows. “Would it surprise you to know he’s single?”
“How do you know?”
“I asked him, silly girl. Invited him in for a cup of coffee and a chat. He’s excellent company, you know. Very polite. Anyway, my point is you’re still single, too, aren’t you? And I can’t understand why. You’re clever, independent and attractive—”