Like he wanted what I had wanted earlier. To cross the distance between us and wrap his arms around me. While I wanted to run to him in this moment, I couldn’t do it.
Closing my eyes, I took several deep breaths and reopened them. “Until I know what’s happening here, I don’t want her stressing out. And this has nothing to do with her. No one has been bothering her. It’s . . . it’s about me.”
Cole looked like he wanted to argue further, but inhaled roughly. “That’s your decision. I just want to go on record to say I don’t agree with it.”
“Duly noted.”
“I know the trooper asked who knew you were driving your mother’s truck tonight, but I have another question for you.”
“Ask away.”
“Is there anyone you can think of in particular that would be upset with you?”
I immediately knew where he was heading with this. “You mean upset enough with me to vandalize my car and leave a dead deer in the truck? No. I don’t know anyone who would want to do that.”
He lifted a hand and clasped the back of his neck. My heart did a stupid little flip, because that was a habit of his I remembered from before. I used to be fascinated with that act. Truthfully, I still was. “Maybe a boyfriend—”
“I told you I wasn’t seeing someone,” I reminded him, cheeks flushing.
“An ex-boyfriend?” he corrected, lowering his hand.
I didn’t want to answer the question, but felt like I needed to. “None of the . . . relationships I’ve been in have been serious enough for someone to get upset with me.”
The skin around his eyes pulled taut. “That sounds hard to believe.”
“Why? Actually, don’t answer that. There is no guy in my past upset enough to travel here.”
He raised a brow. “What about your boss?”
I shook my head. “He was . . . disappointed to lose me, but he got over it in about five minutes when he saw the twenty-five-year-old redhead I was interviewing to replace me.”
His lips twitched briefly. “I want you to think about it, Sasha. I don’t care if it’s someone you ticked off three years ago while at the grocery store. I want you to really think about who could be upset with you. You don’t have to answer it now. Take a day or two.”
I didn’t need to take a day or two. While living in Florida and Georgia, I mostly kept to myself. Went to work. Sometimes had drinks with coworkers. Every so often met someone who wasn’t looking for more than a few good nights.
Now that I thought about it, what in the hell had I been doing these last ten years? Pretty much nothing. Frustrated, I walked over to where my purse sat on the barstool. I reached in, pulling out my cell.
“It’s something—what are you doing?”
I looked up from my phone. “Getting ready to call Miranda. I need a ride home.”
“I can do that.”
Of course he would offer. He’d made me dinner because of—God, I didn’t even know why anymore. My earlier freak-out seemed like hours ago, but I didn’t need him doing anything more for me. “That’s not necessary.”
“Sasha,” he said, tone firm. “I’ll take you home.”
I stared at him a moment and then nodded, suddenly too weary to argue over something so pointless. “Okay.”
We didn’t talk as we headed out into his garage and I climbed into his truck. I couldn’t head toward my mother’s truck even though the deer wasn’t in there anymore.
So many questions plagued my mind, but mainly why would someone do something so disgusting? Why would someone break out the windows in my car? The answer was right in my face. It had to be because of my past, but the why was what didn’t make sense.
I was freaked out though. Thoroughly. The vandalized car was one thing but this . . . this was ratcheting things up to a whole new level. They felt like . . . like warnings, and I knew to some that would seem irrational but the thing was . . . after everything that had happened ten years ago, I spent many sleepless nights, still did, obsessing over if there had been signs. If there had been warnings about what was about to happen to me that I’d blindly ignored.
And I felt that way again.
Halfway home, something occurred to me as I glanced at Cole. His profile was pretty stoic, jaw a hard line and steely eyes focused on the road. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” Not a moment of hesitation.
“It’s about your job,” I clarified, holding my purse in my lap.
“If I can answer it, I will.” He glanced over at me. “What do you want to know?”
I took a deep breath, not sure if I wanted to know the answer. “Are you working on the case of the . . . the missing woman who was found near the old water tower?”
“The FBI hasn’t been called in on the case yet,” he answered after a moment. His hand tightened on the steering wheel. “But I know the department head has been in talks with both the Maryland and West Virginia State Police.”
Turning my gaze to the window, I watched the dark blur of the trees zooming by. “Do you . . .”
There was a heartbeat. “Do I what, Sasha?”
I swallowed hard. “Do you think it’s weird that her body was found there, of all places?”
Cole didn’t immediately answer. Not until I found myself looking at him again did he say, “Yeah. I find it weird.”
“I’ll walk you to your door,” Cole said as he turned off the engine.
Before I could tell him that wasn’t necessary, he was already out of his truck. Sighing, I opened the door and climbed out. He walked me to the porch and started toward the front door. “I’m not going in that way.”
He stopped, then turned toward me. “You’re going in the back entrance?”
I nodded. “There’s a private entrance to the apartments in the back.” I could easily just go in the front door, but I hadn’t come up with a good reason to why I had Cole drive me home and I didn’t want to risk running into my mother. “You don’t have to do this. I’m home.”
“I’m doing this.” He started walking toward the side of the house and I sighed. “Do you guys lock the door at night?” he asked.
Frowning, I nodded as I stepped off the porch. “We usually make sure all the guests are back.”
“And what do you do if the guests aren’t back?”
“The doors are locked at ten o’clock, no matter what. Guests have to use the keys they’re given upon check-in if they stay out later,” I explained.
Cole moved ahead of me. Motion detectors kicked on, lighting up the path. As we rounded the back of the house, I stepped around him and headed for the flight of stairs hidden behind the tall oak. Of course, Cole was right behind me. Once we were in front of my door, I already had my key in hand.
“Thank you for the dinner and for helping out with the whole . . . truck thing,” I said as I opened the door, keeping my voice low just in case Mom was in her apartment. “If you could just text me and let me know when I could pick it up, I’d appreciate—”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
Stopping, I turned around and faced him. The balcony light cast deep shadows along his cheekbones. “What?”
Cole stepped inside my apartment, forcing me to take another step back. “I’m staying here.”
I blinked, knowing I didn’t hear him right. “What?”
Crowding me in, he grabbed the door and closed it behind us. There we stood near the kitchen, my mouth hanging open in what was probably the most unattractive manner. “I’m staying here.”
My hearing must be experiencing technical difficulties. “Why?”
“There are a couple of reasons.” He paused, squinting as he glanced around my apartment. I’d left the lamp on by the sofa, and since the room wasn’t large, it was fairly lit up.
I stood my ground. “How about you start explaining those reasons?”
Busy checking out my apartment, which I thought was a totally cute space, but nowhere near as nice as the hous
e he owned, he stepped around me. Dumbfounded, I turned toward him. “Can I help you?” I demanded, dropping my purse on the small table by the door.
He faced me, one side of his lips kicked up, and the look on his face was nothing like the way he’d looked at me earlier. It was teasing and mischievous. My belly flip-flopped. “That is a loaded question, Sasha.” He tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter. “There are a lot of things you could help me with.”
Our gazes met, and a tremble coursed down my arms. Was he . . . flirting with me? I sucked in a sharp breath, needing to focus on the fact that somehow Cole had ended up in my apartment. “Why do you think you need to stay with me?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious.” He turned and walked toward the couch, and I stood there, sort of shell-shocked as he sat down . . . in the center. “Someone is messing with you.”
The words sent a very different kind of shiver over my skin as I walked over to the couch. “That might be the case, but that doesn’t explain why you think you need to be here.”
He tipped his chin up, staring at me as he scooted forward. “I don’t like you being here alone when someone is messing with you.”
I opened my mouth, but there were no words, because okay, that was sweet of him. That was actually very sweet, but he couldn’t stay here. “You being here is unnecessary.”
“How is it unnecessary?” he challenged as he reached down, lifting the hem of his shirt. What was he doing? Undressing? I didn’t know if I should tell him to stop or just let him continue. My heart rate kicked up until I realized he had a gun holstered at his right hip. Had it been there the whole time? I needed to be more observant.
“Because I’m not alone,” I whispered-yelled. “Obviously. I live above an inn, and my mother is literally a room or two away.”
He smiled, and my heart did another jump. Perhaps a cartwheel, because damn it, he was so incredibly hot just sitting there and breathing, but when he smiled, he was beautiful. “Let me ask you a few questions.”
I crossed my arms and waited.
“Are all your guests in the hotel?”
My brows knitted. “I don’t know. I haven’t been here.”
“Correct. So it’s entirely possible that anyone could’ve come into this inn while you were gone, hidden away until everyone is asleep, and then have free rein of the hotel.”
I locked up as my stomach dropped. “Oh my God, do you think—?”
“I don’t think that’s happened, but it’s a possibility.”
I gaped at him.
“My next question for you is do you have an alarm system?”
“We have one—”
“I know you have one for the inn, but what about for your apartment?” he corrected, unhooking his holster.
I shook my head. “No, but—”
“But you need to get an alarm in here stat, and I have a friend who installs them and owes me a favor. I’ll call him tomorrow.”
There was a good chance my face was frozen with my mouth hanging open. Getting an alarm for the upstairs made sense. The way the main one was wired, it would be cheaper setting up a separate one than adding to it. We’d need a brand-new system for the upstairs, a wireless one. “I don’t even know what to say to you.”
“Thank you?”
A surprised laugh burst out of me. “Those are not two words I am thinking of right now.”
“I can imagine what those two words are,” he said dryly, placing the gun on the coffee table.
Was this really happening?
Part of me wanted to grab him by the arms and drag him out to the door, but I knew there was no way that was going to be a successful endeavor. The other half just couldn’t believe this was happening, but there was a small part of me, a stupid and completely irrational part of me, that was secretly thrilled that Cole was here, sitting on my couch.
There was also a part of me that was terrified, because his insistence made me feel like I wasn’t safe, and neither was my mother. If I was being honest, I already knew that, but since I couldn’t figure out why, it all seemed too surreal.
I shifted my weight from one foot. “Should I . . . I be worried about all of this?”
Cole’s eyes met mine, and then suddenly, moving unbelievably fast, he was up and right in front of me. Then he was touching me, his hands carefully cradling my cheeks, and my heart was definitely doing cartwheels now. “Whether or not you should be worried about it isn’t the deal here. You are worried about it.”
Lies formed on the tip of my tongue as I stared into crystalline eyes, but I spoke the truth in a whisper. “I am freaked out about it.”
“Anyone would be,” he said, his voice just as low. “Even if they didn’t have . . . well, if they didn’t have your history.”
I flinched, and then closed my eyes as he swept his thumb along my right cheek, chasing away the reaction. I don’t know why I admitted what I did next. “Sometimes I wonder if I missed things before. You know? Like there had been signs that the Groom was coming after me and I missed them?”
“Even if there were signs, you wouldn’t have known that was going to happen.” His voice was as gentle as his hold. “And I’m not saying that these things are signs now, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I opened my eyes. “If I hadn’t . . . if my past wasn’t what it was, would you insist on doing this now?”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “Sasha—”
I pulled away, slipping out of his grasp and putting space between us. Disappointment filled me, like it had while I’d been at his house. I didn’t want my past driving his actions, and it was absolutely silly of me to think that would ever be a possibility.
The knot in my throat expanded. “You don’t have to do this because you feel sorry for me, Cole.”
His head tilted to the side as his brows drew tight. “I don’t feel sorry for you.”
I almost laughed. “And you don’t need to do this because you feel some sort of obligation to me, because of what happened.”
Understanding flashed across his face. “You know, there are things we still need to talk about. One of them being all that crap that went down in my kitchen before you ran out of my house.”
My spine stiffened. “We don’t need to talk about any of that. What you need to do is—”
“Oh, we’re going to talk about that, but it’s going to wait, and in the meanwhile, you can get angry and you can tell me I’m being unreasonable, and you can come up with any number of crazy reasons why you think I’m doing this, but I’m not leaving. No way in hell,” Cole said, eyes flashing, “am I leaving you again.”
Chapter 10
Cole didn’t leave.
And I also didn’t stand in the living room of my cute-but-not-as-amazing-as-Cole’s-house apartment and argue with him. I’d stormed into my bedroom, only to remember that my bathroom was outside the bedroom.
So after pacing for several minutes, chafing at the idea that Cole felt he needed to be here to protect me from some unseen threat that probably didn’t even exist, I threw open my bedroom door and stomped back out into the short hall. I didn’t see Cole, but he’d apparently found the remote to the TV.
Cole was literally sitting in my living room, watching TV.
I couldn’t believe it.
Quickly completing my nightly routine, I stormed back into my bedroom and managed to resist the urge to slam the door shut behind me. I needed to talk to Miranda.
Except I’d left my phone in my purse on the kitchen counter.
And I refused to go back out there.
Undressing, I grabbed the first thing out of my drawer and I slipped it on over my head. My bedroom door didn’t have a lock on it, and the last thing I needed was to be standing around half naked if Cole decided to roam into the room for some reason.
I all but threw myself onto the bed. It wasn’t late, and normally I wouldn’t be anywhere near bed at this time, but I was trapped.