Page 14 of The Crush Next Door

"I work the front desk at a plastic surgeon's office."

His eyebrows shot up. "Wow. That sounds interesting."

"It definitely can be."

"But you're always home by lunch," he said, his forehead creased in confusion.

"What? Are you stalking me or something?"

"God, no. Why would I do that?" He gave me that Josh smirk I was beginning to recognize. "I'm always trying to write and your stairs make that weird croaky noise when you clomp up them."

"Clomp? I clomp?"

"Yeah, you make a lot of noise."

"I make a lot of noise?" My God, I couldn't even believe my ears right now. "Every time you sneeze, I nearly have a heart attack. Your squeaky shower knobs scare the crap out of me whenever you shower, which seems to be often. And yesterday, when you slammed your front door shut, I dropped my banana on the floor."

He feigned shock. "Well, okay then. You told me. I'm really, really sorry about your dear banana. You must have been devastated."

"It was my last banana. So yeah, I was pretty damn annoyed."

"Jesus." He laughed, running his hand through his sandy brown hair. "You could have just rinsed it off or something."

Tilting my head, I glared at him. "It had hair all over it."

Giving my place a once-over, he imitated my dirty look. "Is it any wonder? Do you even own a vacuum?"

I put my hands on his shoulders and tried to turn him. Why was his skin so hot? Ignoring it, I said, "The door. Please use it."

Laughing once again, he let himself be turned towards the exit. "All right. All right. I'm never one to overstay my welcome."

"Your welcome expired before you ever walked in."

"Whew, bro, that hurts. I'm doing you a favor here."

He was right. I was just sweating my ass off in this hoodie and tired and cranky. "Right. Sorry. And I really appreciate that. Thank you very, very much."

"No problem," he said, opening the door. "I'll be by in the morning to pick him up. He's great about holding it."

Boy, was I glad to hear that. "Cool. Thanks again. Honestly, that was really sweet of you to even think of this."

On the landing just outside the door, he turned to face me again, a soft smile on his face as he shrugged. "No biggie really."

I felt a strange little something deep inside my belly that I decided to completely ignore. "Well, good night then."

"Good night." He started to turn away, then paused. "Hey, and just a heads-up. Magic's a total cover hog."

Oh, great. This was going to be an interesting night.

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