Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
But…the house had surprised me.
What if the inside was immaculate? Say, designed by an expensive interior designer?
This visit was important. I had to stay on target. I didn’t need to be blindsided by Darius’s fabulous décor.
“Right, yes, just go peek in, make sure he’s there and get the lay of the land. You aren’t chickenshit and delaying,” I told myself. “This is reconnaissance.”
On my pep talk, I got out of my car, again lamented my choice of dress when the blast of cold hit me, and as casual as I could, I strolled up his lawn, in the dark, in a cute, bright, flirty, sexy dress and high heels and ducked to the side in hopes there were windows there (there were).
And then I realized I was right. The windows were high off the ground. I had to reach up with my hands, curl my fingers on the ledge and try to pull myself up to see inside.
This, I did.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I squawked, dropped, turned my ankle and would have gone down if Darius hadn’t shot forward and caught me.
I got my feet under me, pushed away from him, brushed my skirt in a nervous gesture since there was nothing to brush off, looked up at him and said, as nonchalant as I could, “Hey.”
“There’s a reason cat burglars wear black, woman,” Darius drawled.
God, how embarrassing was this?
“And they don’t sit in their car psyching themselves up for twenty minutes right in front of the joint they’re gonna knock over before they go do a job,” he went on.
Okay, we needed to move away from this. It was mortifying.
“Um…are you busy? Can we talk?” I asked.
He took a step back and did a top to toe.
As I mentioned, it was dark.
But that light was shining out of his window, and I could see all of him (and all of it looked good, just a red thermal (skintight) and jeans (that fit too well and had a fade mark that made me salivate a little), but it worked on me), so he could probably see all of me.
“You wanna try the front door?” he asked. “Or you want me to go in, open a window, come back out and heft you through it?”
All right, that was it.
“I was curious about your décor,” I snapped.
“Good way to find out is knock on the door and say, ‘Hey, Darius, got a second to show me your crib?’”
“Hey, Darius,” I said sarcastically. “Got a second to show me your crib?”
He threw an arm out for me to precede him.
The ground was cold, not frozen (even though my legs were close to that), the trek to the side of the house had to be on my toes so my heels didn’t sink in, as did the trek to the front door.
We finally made his walk, and I breathed a sigh of relief I hadn’t made an even bigger fool of myself.
Once I hit the top of his steps, I stood aside so he could open the door.
He did but held back so I could go first.
When I did, moving through the entryway and into the living room, I really wished I had better sleuthing skills and upper body strength because I was blindsided by his fabulous décor.
I saw a boxy, creamy-beige couch with creamy-beige toss pillows with odd width black stripes running through them. Two square, low-sitting, black leather armchairs, and the leather looked soft and inviting. A massive fern on a stand. Interesting-based lamps. And a coffee table that looked like it was a slab shorn off a huge, gorgeous piece of wood, the top finished to a high shine.
There was a built-in low cabinet on the back wall on which was an African mask on a stand in the corner and an expensive-looking stereo with turntable in the middle. Over these was a triptych in blues and grays with a shock of white and some inlaid finished wood.
Last, there were stacks of hardback books everywhere.
“Meet your inspection?” Darius asked.
“It’s very…stylish,” I murmured my understatement.
“Yeah, Liam thinks it’s the shit,” he murmured in return.
I was sure he did.
I tried to decorate in gender neutral, but I’d pretty much failed (it was impossible, what could I say? I’d explained the dress I was wearing—I was all girl), and Liam had no choice but to live with it.
“Wanna see where he sleeps?” Darius offered. “He’s got the whole lower level.”
Every cell in my body which held the mother gene (which was every cell in my body) screamed, Oh God, NOOOOOOOOO! at the idea of my sixteen, nearly seventeen-year-old, who started casually dating last year, and now had his own car, having a whole level to himself.
I sounded choked when I asked, “Does it have its own door to the outside?”
“Yeah. It was once reno’ed to be an apartment. But he comes in the back, from the garage, like me, into the main house, and goes down the stairs.”