“Well, you’re sure not acting like it.”
“Good thing I’m leaving soon, then.”
Rand grabbed another tool and ducked back under the hood. “For how long?”
“I don’t know. Long enough for my trail to go cold over here.”
“That’s good.” Rand straightened and grabbed a rag to wipe his hands. “Because I’ve offered to let her stay in the RV until she can find a place over here. Depending on how long you’re gone this time, Mel could be back by then and Olivia will have found a new job. I’ll have James help move her things from her apartment.”
“James?” Asher jerked his head up and slanted a glance toward the body shop entrance. The guy was too bloody unstable to be spending all that time alone with Olivia.
“Got a problem with that?” Rand asked carefully.
The guy was always defending his cousin, but Asher didn’t care. He didn’t want Olivia alone with him. No fucking way.
“Yeah, I do. The guy’s a fucking mess. I’ll help her move and then I’ll leave. Just keep him away from her.”
Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance by Jennifer Ashley, Alyssa Day, Felicity Heaton, Erin Kellison, Laurie London, Erin Quinn, Bonnie Vanak and Caris Roane
CHAPTER 17
Olivia’s apartment was located on the second floor of a three-story building that contained five other units. All of them had outside entrances and were accessed by a single, enclosed stairway in the center. Despite the fact that the man who lived across the hall was gone because he worked nights and the elderly couple below were heavy sleepers, Asher was still on edge.
“I don’t like this,” he said from the open doorway. “We shouldn’t have come.”
He cast a wary glance at the dark stairway they’d just climbed, uneasy that he couldn’t see the road from here. This was the only way out of her apartment, unless you counted jumping off the balcony as a viable exit. If the army blokes drove up, they wouldn’t see them until it was too late and they’d be trapped inside.
Olivia frowned at him as if she’d bitten into a lemon. “What did you expect? That I was going to simply stuff some clothes into a bag and grab a few things, while you waited by the door?”
“Yeah.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I did.”
“I came here to pack up my stuff. All of it. I can’t just abandon my apartment and leave everything. I don’t have a ton, but what I do have, I love.”
He considered invoking Rule Number One so that she’d have to do what he told her, but when he saw the determined glint in her eye, he changed his mind. That was a game. This was the real thing, and he’d like to keep his balls intact.
He looked around the neat but lived-in apartment. In the center of the living room was a comfortable-looking sofa and a square coffee table with a distressed, whiskey-colored leather top. Various pictures hung on the walls—black and white vintage photographs and charcoal drawings in matching black frames. She didn’t appear to have a television. She didn’t have a dining room table, either, just three barstools tucked under the kitchen counter. That must be where she ate.
A few dishes were stacked neatly in the sink, probably the remnants of her last meal before she’d driven her car in to work on the day of the explosion. He noticed there were two identical cups and plates. Had she had company? Maybe she’d had a girlfriend over for dinner. Or the guy across the hall. Or maybe it was two meals’ worth of dishes for only one person.
Was Olivia a loner? When you were always on the run and looking over your shoulder, your lifestyle wasn’t exactly conducive to building friendships.
Her place had a comfortable vibe that he could easily get used to. If things were different and they weren’t caught in the middle of a deadly war, he could imagine curling up on the sofa, his head in her lap as she read a book to him. A science-fiction story about alien battles on faraway planets. Or maybe an epic fantasy with dragons.
“Possessions can be replaced, Liv. You can’t. No wasting time packing things perfectly. Throw what you need into these boxes and we’ll get the hell out of here.”
Her expression softened considerably, but the hard set of her jaw still remained. She set her messenger bag on the kitchen counter and strode toward him. “If they are looking for me, wouldn’t it be better if they found an empty apartment? They’d assume I moved out as a result of having no job after the explosion destroyed where I worked. If my things are still here, it’ll look as though I left in a panic, which would confirm their suspicions that I’ve got something to hide.”