and this one’s…pretty bad. I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the head. And the nausea…it’s awful…”
He felt like a genuine heel. He’d all but accused her of lying, when, if he’d taken the time to really look at her, he’d have seen that she was in real pain. “If you feel like you need to throw up, let me know. I’ll pull over.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t throw up all over your precious Weekend Warrior Mobile.”
“That’s not what I meant at all!”
She covered her face with her hands and slumped forward in her seat. “Fine, whatever you say.”
Still ashamed of himself, he fiddled with the stereo. “Anything you’d like to listen to?”
“Silence would be great,” she told him from between cupped hands.
He snapped the stereo back off again. “You got it.”
Silence was just what he gave her, all the way to her apartment. He liked this part of town. It was old-fashioned and nostalgic without being run-down. It reminded him of the neighborhood he’d grown up in. He pulled up before her building, squinted at the brass plate fixed to the wall to ensure he had the right place, and alighted before she could bestir herself and try to get out without his help.
They stood on the sidewalk, solemnly regarding each other. “Got your keys?” he asked her.
She looked perplexed for a moment, as though seeing him through a blur of pain, and then rummaged in her purse. “Yes, got them.” She held them up, jangling them as proof. Then she turned toward the stairs. “Thank you for bringing me home.”
She wasn’t getting away that easy. He fell into step with her, locking his car and shoving the keys into his pocket. “I’m walking you inside.”
“You don’t have to,” she began hastily.
“Oh, yes I do. You’re not feeling well. I’m not driving off and leaving you until I know you’re safely inside.”
“I don’t need—” she began, a spark of indignation rising out of the mist of her pain, but just then she stumbled, and he caught her deftly and righted her.
“See? You can’t even make it to your own door.” He took her hand, which was limp, clammy and unresisting, in his. “Come.”
“But, Dorian…!”
Her protest was half-hearted, and he ran over it effortlessly. “But, nothing. A promise is a promise. I’m seeing you inside.” She gave no further resistance, so he unlocked the door to the main entrance and led her to the elevator. “Floor?”
“Third.”
He punched in the number. Once on the third floor, he looked around. There were just four apartments on each floor, and she wearily pointed out her own. By now, pity was consuming him, and he wanted urgently to get her inside so that she could rest. He selected the key that looked like it would fit the lock to her front door and began to insert it into the keyhole…
But the door yawned open before them without any further bidding.
Chapter 5
R ita stared in shock as her door opened at the lightest touch of Dorian’s hand. A creepy sensation overcame her, like worms crawling along the back of her neck. How could that be?
Dorian gave her a wary look. “You have a roommate?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend?”
“No!”
“Anyone have a key to your place?”
She frowned, her migraine making it difficult for her to think. “Cassie keeps my spares for me, but….”
“Stand back,” Dorian instructed, one arm moving her protectively to one side, with her back against the wall so that she was screened off from the entryway by both his broad body and the door. He bent forward, inspecting the keyhole and the lock. “Not even a little scratch,” he commented. “Nothing to suggest that the lock was picked.” He lifted his head to look at her. “You certain you locked up securely?”
Normally, she would have bristled at the suggestion. Did he really think she was enough of a knucklehead to have left her front door unlocked? But as memories of the evening tumbled upon each other, she tried to piece together their fragments. She’d left home in one heck of a hurry. Too much of a hurry to do her hair or put on some makeup, even. That thought made her run her fingers self-consciously through her messy corkscrews. Cassie had been downstairs in the car, waiting. Lord knew, Cassie had enough lip on her to make it very clear that she didn’t like to be kept waiting. So she’d hurried. But had she left in such haste that she had forgotten to lock up?
Dorian was still looking at her, waiting for an answer. “Rita?”
It was ridiculous. There they were, standing in the hallway, with her door agape, nothing inside but quiet darkness…and, perhaps, something, or some one else. She shivered again.
Dorian called her name again, more softly this time.
She looked at him, foolishly wasting precious seconds thinking how awesomely handsome he was, in spite of the concern that was wrinkling his brow. She found herself stuttering. “I…I…have no idea. I wasn’t feeling well, and I’d been a-a-asleep when Cassie came to get me. I rushed out to meet her.” She laughed self-deprecatingly. “I didn’t even have time to do my hair. I know I look a mess.”
His onyx eyes swept over her, once, and then again, more slowly, but if she was expecting a compliment, she was sorely disappointed. “Enough of a rush to forget to lock up?”
She was stumped on that point, but forgetting to lock the door was the better of the two options. “I don’t know.”
He straightened up and expelled air through his nose, shaking himself determinedly. “In any case, it’s pointless for us to stand here staring at the lock. I’m going in. Wait here.”
Was he serious? “I’m not waiting anywhere. I’m coming in with you.”
He gave her a long, sober look. “If someone broke in to your place, they could still be in there.”
A scary thought, but she insisted, “It’s my place. I’m going in with you.”
He sighed again. “Well, stay behind me. If I say to run, run all the way downstairs and outside, and don’t look back.”
She stifled a nervous giggle. “You planning to take a bullet for me?”
He threw her a dark look. “That was not funny.”
She had to concede that it wasn’t. “Sorry.”
She followed him inside, heart thumping. Her own apartment seemed alien to her, lit throughout only by the eerie glow of the bedside lamp she’d left on. Shapes loomed as their dense shadows made bogeymen out of everyday objects. To still her lurching stomach, she flicked on the lights as she followed Dorian from room to room, taking his advice and staying well behind him, even as she cursed herself for her cowardice. For once, she was willing to admit that if there was one thing that men were better at than women, it was hunting down skulking burglars.
They made their way to the last room, the study where she did most of her writing, and stopped. Dorian’s eyes were bright, his nostrils flared from the tension, and his deep chest rose and fell heavily. He stated the obvious. “Nobody here.”
“Maybe I did leave it open after all,” she mused. “You said yourself there were no marks on the lock or anything.”
“Not necessarily. They could have got in somewhere else, and used the door to leave.”
He was making no sense. “Got in where?”
“We’ll see.” Her study