Page 25 of Playing With Danger

“Fucker,” I muttered, then stared at the mattress and added, “I hate you.”

“Good. You’re putting all that GFY to good use.”

I whirled around to find Valentine in my bedroom doorway.

“You!” I pointed at him. “This is all your fault.”

He glanced around my bedroom with a smile on that criminally Hot Cop mouth.

“All of it?”

“I almost died today because of you.”

“Come again?” he grunted as he did a top-to-toe visual search of my body.

I ignored the tingle that gave me, picked up the flat sheet off the floor where the rest of my clean bedding lay in a pile, and shook it out over the mattress.

“I’ve answered one email today. One. How am I supposed to build my empire when my ass isn’t in a chair in front of my computer working?”

I tugged the sheet into place and folded down the top. When I felt I’d given him enough time to answer and he remained silent, I glanced over my shoulder.

“Well?”

“I’m waiting for the ‘almost died’ portion of this explanation before I comment. I’m also waiting for an appropriate time to chew your ass out for leaving your front door open for any whack job to walk in.”

“The building is perfectly safe,” I defended, and picked up a pillowcase.

“Me standing here is proof it isn’t. And what the hell are you wearing?”

I glanced down at my once-white-but-now-dingy Justin Bieber concert tee with a very faded picture of the man himself circa the early 2000s, then down to my cut-off cleaning sweats and looked back at Valentine in confusion.

“You don’t like The Biebs?”

“Baby.” His voice was vibrating with humor. “No self-respecting grown man is a Bieber fan.”

He was probably right.

Moving on…

“I’m in my cleaning outfit,” I told him. I tossed the now cased pillow on my bed.

“I’m talking about what’s on your head.”

I lifted my hand to my head and encountered plastic.

Shit.

“Oh my God. I forgot!” I dashed across my room, stopping at the doorway when he didn’t remove his big body from blocking my path and pointed up at him. “This is your fault, too.”

“You wearing a shower cap is my fault?”

“Yes,” I hissed and pushed past him.

I stomped my way to the bathroom but paused in the doorway to sniff the air. Once I ascertained I was no longer going to die from fumes, I marched in and tore off the cap, avoiding the mirror so I wouldn’t expire from humiliation. I didn’t need the baby blue with bright yellow rubber duckies visual as a reminder of my ridiculousness. I was bent over the tub with my head shoved under the spigot when I heard Valentine’s voice muffled by the water. Yet I still heard his question.

“No, my hair’s not going to fall out!” I shouted back.

Thank God I’d chosen to deep condition my hair this afternoon and didn’t get a wild hair and decide today was the day I was going to bleach my brown hair blonde.

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