Page 51 of Landlord Wars
For the firsttime in forever, I didn’t bring work home. And it was a good thing too, because I couldn’t get the lights to turn on in the kitchen or the living room, where I typically sprawled out my designs.
I walked up and down the hallway, flipping switches on and off to see what worked and what didn’t. “Jack?”
No answer.
The guy was always home, eating my stash of snacks. Had he gone out to forage in the real world?
This was what I got for not orienting myself better to the new apartment; I had to rely on a guy to help me find the fuse box.
I was scrolling through my phone, searching for Jack’s number, when a knock sounded at the front door.
The room was growing darker now that the sun had set, and I was still in my work clothes, only barefoot, as I’d kicked off my shoes the moment I got home. I was tired and cranky after the rat stress with my mom, but I padded over and looked through the peephole. And my heart raced.
Max Burrows had the worst timing.
I’d planned on avoiding him until the whole kissing incident blew over. But it was still vivid in my mind, and I wasn’t ready for a post-kiss confrontation. I didn’t know what the kiss had meant, and I was too scared to find out. Too scared it meant nothing and my hormones were overreacting, or that it meant something and I wasn’t ready for that either. In short, I was an emotional hot mess.
Spinning around, I searched the room as though the answers were somewhere inside the couch cushions or the lampshade. Why the hell had Jack chosen today of all days to leave me on my own?
I smoothed down my pale blue shift dress, making sure it lay straight. I could do this, I thought, and opened the door.
And nearly fainted.
My chest locked up, and my head felt woozy. Max was in a tan suit this time, only he’d taken off his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his dress shirt.
Was it me, or had he gotten even better looking? He spoke, and my gaze rose from the patch of tan skin at his throat to his lips, and then I was having flashbacks to the kiss that had taken place in nearly this exact same location.
“Sophia?”
“Yes?” Why did I suddenly sound like a smoker of thirty years?
The corner of his mouth pulled up. “You okay?” He looked past me. “I’m trying to get a hold of Jack, and he’s not answering his phone.”
Right,Jack. “He’s not here.”
Max’s head tilted as he glanced down to my bare feet and the room behind me. “You just getting home?”
“I got home a little while ago,” I said, glancing back nervously.
He crossed his arms and tapped his finger on his biceps. “What’s going on?”
This conversation would be a whole lot easier if I could look him in the eye and not at the small patch of flesh he was recklessly revealing. Had he no idea how hopped up my hormones were after that kiss? “Jack’s not here, and the power is out in part of the house.”
His arms dropped to his sides and he frowned, swiftly moving past me. “What do you mean, the power is out? Did you blow a fuse?”
I frowned at his immediate assumption that I’d done something wrong when I hadn’t even been home. Some things never changed.
He headed down the bedroom hallway, and I followed close behind. “What are you doing?”
He looked over his shoulder. “I’m checking the circuit breaker.” He stopped, hesitating, and looked back as though just realizing he might have overstepped. “Is that okay, or do you already know where it is?”
Of course I didn’t know where it was. I’d only recently discovered my shallow orientation of the place. I knew none of the important things for an emergency. Did we even own a fire extinguisher?
I shook my head, and he rounded the corner to my room.My room.“Wait!”
Max had already entered the bedroom and nearly tripped over the tennis shoes I’d switched my heels for before going to my mom’s this afternoon.
He frowned at the shoes and looked up. “Is there a problem?”
