“I miss you, too. But you’re going to come down and visit soon, right?”
“Of course. I can’t wait.”
“Alright, well… That’s how we’ll get through this—looking forward to vacations and visits. But listen, I gotta run. Alex is down the block at his new friend’s house. I just finished cleaning out the attic in the B&B, and I really need to jump in the shower. It was so hot and dirty. I think I might smell. The heat down here is enough to roast a lizard.”
“They roast lizards down there?”
I chuckled. “Not that I’ve ever seen. But my mom said that the other day, and Alex looked at her like she had two heads. The lingo is going to take some getting used to for him.”
She laughed. “I’ll talk to you in a few days, my little buttah biscuit.”
“Bye, Harp.”
After I hung up, I peeled my yoga pants down my clammy legs, unstuck the thong glued to my ass, and stood in front of the unimpressive air conditioner in my bedroom. The thing was producing the equivalent of me filling my cheeks with hot air and blowing out. I needed to add find an AC repairman to my mile-long to-do list if there was any hope I was going to make it through the summer heat.
A Bose SoundLink speaker sat on the nearby nightstand. I’d turned down the music when my cell phone rang, and the low sound of Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” wafted below the loud clanking of the dysfunctional AC. I walked over and cranked it up, pulled the tie from my ponytail, and returned to let the air blow my blond hair back, Beyoncé-video style. Shutting my eyes, I began to move to the rhythm of the song.
It felt like forever since I’d danced. I used to love it. In high school, I’d been the head of the dance squad, and Harper and I liked to go out dancing on occasion. But really dancing? Dancing like no one was watching? It had been years. So I went with the urge. Why not? I was the only person in the B&B, and the blinds were shut.
I started slow, swaying back and forth, until my hips decided to join in on the fun. By the time the chorus came around the second time, I was full-on shaking my goods all over. Tanner had been an ass man. Years ago, after the Miley Cyrus VMA twerk had gone viral, I’d caught him watching it on his laptop. So I’d surprised him and learned to twerk. Now, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, I wasn’t sure I could move like that anymore. But when Justin asked to see what I was twerking with, I obliged. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t still have it. So I went to town—twerking my jiggly, naked ass like nobody’s business while the air conditioning continued to blow my hair back.
When the song ended, an odd, euphoric feeling came over me, and I couldn’t stop smiling. Maybe being back in Beaufort, South Carolina, would be good for me after all.
And maybe naked dancing was just what I needed.
Or maybe not.
I turned around to head to the shower, and my heart leapt into my throat as I found a man leaning casually against the bedroom doorframe.
I jumped and let out a blood-curdling scream. My self-defense mechanism kicked in, and I picked up the nearest thing I could get my hands on and hurled it across the room. Fortunately, I’d grabbed the Bose SoundLink, and that thing packed a wallop. The hard plastic connected with the intruder’s head, and he went down for the count.
Shaking, I looked around for another weapon, but the room was pretty sparse. So I grabbed my cell phone from the bed and called 9-1-1, hoping they’d arrive before he came to.
The operator asked my name and address and then said the police had been dispatched. “Is the intruder breathing, Presley?”
My eyes widened. Could I have killed him? Oh my God. I thought I might throw up. “I don’t know. But he’s not moving.”
“Okay. Just stay on the phone with me. The police are en route. Can you make your way outside safely?”
I shook my head, though the woman obviously couldn’t see me. “He’s lying in the doorway, and there’s no other way out. There’s an air conditioner in the window.”
“Okay. Try to stay calm. Let’s just keep talking until the police arrive.”
I nodded, but couldn’t focus on anything else the woman said. What if I killed him? My heart ricocheted against my ribcage as if it were trying to escape. I peered over at the man. He was dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt, but his face was turned away from me, and I couldn’t get a good look from where I stood huddled in the corner.
Though something struck me as odd. An intruder didn’t usually dress that well, did he? Shouldn’t he have a stocking over his face and filthy clothes from his years of doing drugs and living on the streets?
I pushed up on my tippy toes to get a better look. His crisp, white shirt had a little horse embroidered on it. My intruder wore a hundred-dollar, Ralph Lauren dress shirt?
A bad feeling settled into the pit of my stomach. I needed to see this man’s face. “Are you still there?” I asked into the phone.
“I’m here. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. I’m going to take a few steps toward him. He’s still out, and I want to see his face.”
“Okay. Stay on the line, and see if it’s safe to maneuver around him and get outside.”
I nodded. Realizing I was still naked, I tugged the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around me. Then I took one hesitant step and waited to see if the man moved. He didn’t. So I took another step, and then another until I was close enough to lean to one side and get a look at the intruder’s turned-away face.
I gasped.
“Presley? Are you still there?” the 9-1-1 operator asked. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh my God!”
“What’s going on, Presley?”
“I think it’s Levi!”
“You know the intruder?”
“Yes. He’s Tanner’s brother.”
“And who’s Tanner, Presley?”
“He’s my ex-fiancé.”
“What’s Tanner’s last name?”
“Miller.”
“Miller?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. So the man on the floor is Levi Miller, then?”
“Yes.”
“The same name as the football player?”
I shook my head. “No, not the same name as the football player—the actual player. I think I just killed the Super Bowl MVP quarterback.”
***
“I’m fine,” Levi growled at the paramedic from the other room.
The police had separated us, asking me to take a seat in the kitchen and keeping him in the adjoining living room. I peered around the police officer sitting across from me to see what was going on.
“Sir, you lost consciousness. There’s a good chance you have a concussion. Plus, you need a few stitches.”
“I’ll walk over to Doc Matthews’ house down the block. He’ll stitch me up and check me out.”
The paramedic frowned. “That’s not a good idea. We need to take you to Memorial.” She fussed, trying to wipe his head with gauze.
The police officer sitting across from me finished writing notes in his pad and shut it. “So you didn’t know it was your ex-fiancé’s brother when you attacked him? You didn’t recognize a famous football player you’ve known all your life?”