“No thank you,” I replied.
She shut the door between me and her, and for the first time since she’d arrived, I was finally able to take a deep breath.
Chapter 9
Clark
Two days later, when Mason Peterson showed up at my office, I should have known something was up. He came in and walked straight to my desk.
“Dude, you need a receptionist,” he said. He jerked his thumb toward the outer office area.
“Apparently, my receptionist only works nights,” I said absently.
He laid his palm on the back of the chair across from my desk. “May I sit?” he asked.
I closed the file in front of me. “Is this about the vigilante killer?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. It’s about Shelly.”
“What about her?”
He glared at me. “Are you going to keep her?”
He spoke of her like she was a stray puppy that no one really wanted. “I wasn’t aware that I had her to begin with.”
“Oh, you have her. She called Lynn this morning gushing about the case you solved a couple of days ago. She was really proud of you.”
“What case?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
“It was on the news this morning. The cops in another state found a fugitive from here. You called in the tip…” Suddenly he winced. “Jesus,” he muttered, as he rubbed his temple. “Shelly strikes again,” he sang out.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“At her apartment, I’d assume.”
I jumped up and rushed across the room, sliding into my jacket as I went. “Where is her apartment?”
Mason stood up too. “Why? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to tell her thank you, of course.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“No, I’m a really good liar. What’s her address?”
He pulled out his phone and started to dial. “I’ll just need to ask her if it’s okay to give you her address.”
“Never mind,” I muttered as I breezed past him. As long as she hadn’t moved, I knew where she lived.
He yelled my name and sprinted to catch up with me. “What are you doing to do?” he asked.
I was going to get rid of Shelly Punter. That’s what I was going to do.
He followed me all the way to street level where I’d left my car. “Are you really mad at her?” he asked, cutting his eyes toward me in the elevator.
I said nothing.
Hell yes, I was mad. With one misplaced word, she could ruin my reputation, my business, and my life.
I got in my car and slammed the door. I saw Mason pull his phone from his pocket as I pulled away, but I really didn’t care if he warned her. She was going to see me. We were going to finish this. Shelly Punter could not enter my life and then whirl around like the tornado she was, ruining everything in her path.
I stopped in front of her apartment building and pushed buttons until someone buzzed me in. Then I took the stairs up three flights and stopped at her door. I didn’t even wait to catch my breath. I knocked. Hard. So hard that my knuckles throbbed.
No one answered. I knocked again.
The lock slid free on the other side of the door, the scraping sound of it doing nothing to calm my nerves. The door opened, just a crack. I leaned forward to look inside. I saw no one, so I laid my palm on the door and slowly pushed it open. “Shelly,” I called out.
I didn’t step inside. At least not yet.
The first thing that hit me was the slight scent of perfume. It smelled like Shelly, like cherry lip balm and freshness. The next thing I noticed was how tidy her apartment was. The last time I’d been here, the white tile floor had been covered in Mason’s blood and Shelly had been confessing her desire to kill him as Lynn sat, stunned, on the floor next to her.
Now the apartment was clean, and empty. Someone had just opened the door. I knew someone was here.
I turned and closed the door behind me, and then I nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized she was standing behind the door, her gun aimed at my forehead. She was a dead shot, she’d told me the other night. I had no reason not to believe her. I held up my hands, because that’s what a smart man does when he’s facing a crazy woman with a gun, particularly when he’s just let himself into her home.
“Shelly,” I said calmly.
“Clark?” she asked. She squinted at me. “I don’t have my contacts in, so you had better start talking.”
Holy shit. She couldn’t actually see me, but she had a gun pointed at my forehead. “Yes, it’s Clark,” I said succinctly and slowly.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, as she lowered her weapon.
“Mason didn’t call you?”
She spoke over a yawn. “I just woke up when some idiot started banging on my door like the building was on fire.” She lowered her weapon and set the safety. Then she put it in the top drawer of the entryway table and closed it with a gentle shove. “What are you doing here?”
She walked by me going toward the kitchen and I suddenly noticed what she was wearing. Or rather, I noticed her ass, because that was all I could see. She had on a pair of tiny little boy-shorts and a grey t-shirt. She turned halfway toward me and I could read the front. It said, “I never said that. ~Jesus.”
I’d never seen Shelly looking less than perfectly put together, so this version of Shelly, this was an anomaly. It was like seeing Belle from “Beauty and the Beast” dressed in leather and metal. But quite the opposite. Shelly had morphed from someone I had no desire to touch into someone who made my fingers itch.
“Did you tell me why you’re here?” Shelly asked as she poured herself a cup of coffee. She lifted it to her lips and blew across the rim, making the liquid ripple. That breath shot straight to the center of me.
And I couldn’t remember why I was here. “Um…” I scrubbed a hand down my face.
She arched a brow at me and reached into a kitchen drawer to retrieve a pair of glasses. They sat crooked on her face, but her confusion cleared when she could finally see me. “Oh,” she said, and she rolled her eyes.
“Oh, what?” I asked.
She glanced down toward my crotch and then back up, a smile hovering around her lips. “Men are so predictable,” she said. She sat down at the kitchen table and crossed her legs. They went on for miles, it seemed. I jerked my eyes away.
“Men are not predictable,” I scoffed.
I started opening her cabinets until I found her coffee mugs. The one I picked up matched her shirt with the Jesus comment. I happened to agree with it, since in my opinion people put a lot of condemning words in Jesus’s mouth that had never been there. I poured myself a cup of coffee while I gathered my thoughts. She said nothing as she sat quietly at the table.
“Make yourself at home,” she finally muttered. She raised an eyebrow at me.
“Could you go and put some clothes on?” I asked.
She smirked even louder. Or at least it sounded loud in my head. I was pretty sure there was no actual sound to it, but inside my brain, it reverberated like a cathedral bell.
She set her cup on the small table. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?” she said succinctly.