Very pretty, Connor, I thought. Then again, what was I expecting? Naked women, or maybe a nice picture of a ritual sacrifice?
The urge to snoop through his email or his browsing history was almost overwhelming, but I had a more important goal in mind. I opened a new tab in his browser, then went to Google and the Gmail web interface. My aunt had an email account, of course, but she maybe looked at it once a week, since she didn’t really interact with much of anyone outside Jerome. Sydney, on the other hand, was religious about checking her email, even if she preferred to text.
I logged in, then hit the “compose” button and typed “
[email protected]” in the “to” field. No point in lengthy explanations; I just wanted to let her — and by extension, my family — know that I was okay.
For the moment, anyway.
I threw a quick glance over my shoulder, as if to reassure myself that Connor hadn’t suddenly reappeared and wasn’t standing in the door, watching me use his laptop. But I appeared to be alone still, so I typed quickly, Syd, please let Aunt Rachel know that I’m all right. Tell her I’m in Flagstaff. She’ll know what to do. Thanks, Angela.
Then I pressed “send” and let the message wing its way through the ether. I closed the tab and made sure to clear the browser cache so Connor couldn’t immediately figure out what I’d been up to.
My fingers reached up to close the laptop…and then I paused. Would I get another chance to peek, to give myself the opportunity to learn something more of Connor Wilcox?
One minute, I told myself. That’s it.
His bookmarked sites weren’t all that salacious — a blog about hiking trails in northern Arizona, Amazon, Overstock.com, Facebook, DeviantArt, which I knew about because some of the artists back in Jerome had accounts on the site. He wasn’t logged in to Facebook or any other social media sites, so I couldn’t do any snooping there. And when I allowed myself a brief scan of his email, that all seemed pretty innocuous, too. The usual advertisements from places where he’d bought things online, a few exchanges with people about planning a skiing get-together, fundraising solicitations from ASU. So that part of his story had been true at least, although he’d admitted that it had been a few years since he attended college. What did that make him…twenty-five, maybe twenty-six?
I didn’t have time for any more speculation — or snooping. Connor had said he’d be back in “a while,” which could’ve meant anything from fifteen minutes to an hour or more. I really didn’t want to find out what his reaction would be if he caught me poking around in his room.
Just to be safe, I took the hem of my shirt and wiped down the laptop’s lid in case I’d left any fingerprints behind. Then I hurried back to the guest room, and knelt down and rummaged through the duffle bag. Sure enough, there was the underwear I had picked out at Nordstrom Rack in Phoenix, and the bras, although the tags had been removed, and they felt as if they’d been washed. Someone was being conscientious, that’s for sure.
I took the underwear and a pair of jeans and a lace-trimmed silver-gray tank with me to the bathroom. The room was larger than I’d expected, and the shower far more up-to-date than the claw-footed monstrosities I’d used in both my aunt’s apartment and the house I inherited from Great-Aunt Ruby. Here was warm rustic tile and a huge square shower head in an equally huge glassed-in enclosure.
Big enough for two, part of my mind whispered at me, and I shut that notion down as soon as it popped up. Goddess, was I going to have to fight these thoughts even when Connor wasn’t in the immediate vicinity?
Scowling, I locked the door behind me, then wiggled the knob just to make sure the mechanism had caught. Not, of course, that a locked door was much good in keeping out a witch or warlock determined on getting in, but it gave me a spurious sense of security.
The hot water came on fast, strong and steady. I quickly climbed out of my night clothes and got into the shower enclosure, letting the water from that amazing shower head run all over me, rinsing away some of the dregs of last night’s terrors. Not all, but it’s hard to feel completely depressed in a hot shower.
Connor had some kind of natural-brand shampoo and conditioner for dark hair, and a big bar of a creamy soap that smelled of cloves and mint. Obviously he wasn’t getting his toiletries at Walmart. Wherever he’d bought it, it all felt wonderful, and I soaped myself up well, then let the water wash away the richly scented suds.
I didn’t lose myself so much that I allowed myself to linger, however, and it was probably only about ten minutes later that I shut off the water and reached out to the rack for a towel. The one closest to me felt damp, which meant that Connor must have used it earlier that morning. I lifted my hand quickly and grabbed the other towel, which was big and brown and fluffy. A fast dry-off, and then I wrapped it around my hair and got out, and just as hastily put on the underwear and the tank top and the jeans. At least now if Connor decided to burst in on me, I was covered up.