One Lucky Vampire(27)

“Right,” Nicole nodded, her mind now on peppercorn sauce. It sounded hot. She wasn’t much into hot, but she kept that to herself and turned to her office with her cheese-and-fruit plate. She was wondering now, though, what time it was if he was starting dinner already.

A glance at the clock as Nicole entered her studio told her it was only two in the afternoon. She’d slept an hour and a half. Put that with the four hours from earlier, and it was five and a half. Six would have been better, but five and a half would do. Her gaze slid to Cody now as he stepped off the stepladder and carried it over to the sliding glass doors. She looked at the window now, noting the little white box, and frowned. There were three windows on the back wall of her studio; one large center window and two narrower ones on either side. The center window was the only one that opened though, but there were now boxes on all of them.

“The side windows don’t open,” she began. “Why—”

“They have glass break detectors,” Cody explained. “The center one is fitted with a sensor for breaking glass and opening and closing.”

“Oh.” Nicole peered at the windows again. She hadn’t realized they had sensors for glass breaking. It was clever though, she supposed. Her gaze slid back to Cody and she held out the plate of cheese and fruit. “Cheese?”

Cody grinned and moved forward to take a slice of apple, cheese and a cracker. “Thanks.”

Nicole nodded and took a slice of apple herself, then set the plate on a table by her easels. “The coffee should be ready in a minute. Do you want one?”

“Oh, yes please. That would be great,” he said, and then popped the fruit, cheese, and cracker in his mouth all at once and headed back to the sliding glass doors.

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to get any work done until he finished and left, Nicole settled on the daybed to eat her slice of apple.

“This is a beautiful house,” he commented as he began to attach another white box and a magnet sensor on that door.

“Thank you,” Nicole murmured, her gaze skimming around her studio. She agreed, she loved this house, and had from the start.

“So your husband must make a load to afford it. What does he do?”

She stiffened briefly with surprise, and then said, “I’m not married. Or won’t be in two weeks,” Nicole added reluctantly, because technically she was still married. Though, frankly she’d never really felt married. She’d always thought of marriage as a merging of a couple, not just their assets, but their lives, their dreams, their futures. She and Rodolfo hadn’t merged anything.

“Ah. I see. Divorcing,” Cody said and nodded. “So you got the house in the divorce settlement?”

Nicole stiffened. What was it with people thinking the man was the breadwinner all the time? As if the woman couldn’t make it herself. “No. The house is mine. I bought it . . . twice,” she added dryly. “Or one and a half times. I paid for it when we moved back to Canada, and then I got to buy my soon-to-be ex out of it as part of the divorce because it was considered a marital asset.”

Cody raised his eyebrows with surprise. “You bought it?”

“Women can make money too, you know,” she said dryly and he flushed guiltily.

“Sorry,” he muttered, but his gaze slid to the three covered canvases in the room. “An artist?”

Nicole nodded. She always covered her paintings between sessions. It prevented her looking at them and picking out all the flaws when she wasn’t working on them. She was her own worst critic. Turning her gaze back to Cody, she commented, “You seem to know Jake well.”

“Oh, yeah. Met him on the job when he first moved out here to Ottawa,” Cody said easily. “Being in the same business, we got along well. Went out for a drink after work.” He shrugged. “A friendship was born.”

“The same business?” Nicole asked with surprise. “You’re in security and he’s a cook/housekeeper. I wouldn’t think that was really the same business.”

Cody stilled briefly, but then continued working and said lightly, “House security, housekeeping, it’s all about the house.”

Nicole eyed him briefly, but his back was to her as he worked and she couldn’t see his expression. She stood up. “The coffee should be done. How do you take yours?”

“Just regular, please,” Cody said, his gaze now extremely curious as he looked again to the covered canvases on their easels.

She deliberately took her time making the coffees, wanting to avoid any more questions. In the end, she timed it perfectly. Cody was folding up his ladder when she re-entered her studio.