Naked

Alex laughed. “Dude.”

I looked at him. “Now you know the real reason he’s letting you stay.”

My teasing, too, had a ring of truth to it, but Patrick didn’t seem to care.

“It’s okay. I like to cook.”

In the background, the music of the game blared on and on, though I couldn’t blame my inching headache on that. I looked at Patrick again, settled so neatly on his couch with his book, and his friends around him, catering to him. Giving him whatever he wanted. Patrick annoyed me sometimes, the way anyone can on occasion. I hadn’t hated him in a long time, but I remembered, suddenly, how it felt to hate him.

“I’m sure they’ll be delicious, Alex, but I can’t stay. It was nice meeting you.” I reached for his hand, and he took mine. Shook it firmly and let it drop.

He put his palms on his hips. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

“Well, if you ever come back to visit Patrick, I’m sure you will.” I was already turning to go.

“I’m staying in the area, actually. I got another consulting job. Just short-term.”

I paused. Patrick looked up. He put down his book.

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“My contact with Hershey Foods just got back to me,” Alex said. “I’ll be here for about six months. Maybe eight, depending.”

This caught Patrick’s attention and he sat straight up. “Where are you staying?”

“Not here, don’t worry.” Alex laughed. “I’ve got a room booked at the Hotel Hershey for a week, but I’m looking for a place to rent for the rest of the time.”

The sound of heels echoing on the wooden floors of my too-empty extra apartment rang in my ears, along with the ka-ching of a cash register. “I have a place you might be interested in.”

Both men gazed at me then. Patrick’s brows had raised. Alex looked assessing.

“I bought a building,” I explained. “An old firehouse. I live on the second floor, but the ground-floor apartment is vacant and partially furnished.”

“You told me you didn’t want to deal with the hassle of having a tenant.” Patrick’s tone, faintly accusatory, put a small curl in my lip.

Alex, on the other hand, let his gaze drift back and forth between the two of us before his mouth tipped up a fraction at the corners. “Where’s your place, Olivia?”

“Annville.”

I said it just as Patrick said, “The middle of nowhere.”

“Annville,” I repeated, “is about twenty minutes from Hershey. Same distance as from here.”

“Sounds great. When can I see it?”

“How about right now?”

Alex smiled. “Perfect.”

Chapter Three

Alex drove a crappier car than I expected. I hadn’t noticed the baby-shit-brown sedan parked along the street in front of Patrick’s house the night before. It probably looked much better in the dark.

“Rental,” he explained when I stared at it.

I’d parked my own car with the pride of privilege in Patrick and Teddy’s narrow driveway in front of the garage. “Mine’s around back. I’ll pull out and wait for you so you can follow. Oh, and let me get your cell number in case we get separated.”

He had a crappy car but a very, very nice and shiny new iPhone, the latest model. “Yeah, I’d better take yours, too.”

There was nothing strange about this exchange. Hell, random strangers gave each other their numbers all the time. Texting had replaced normal face-to-face conversations. Pretty soon we’d all just implant chips in our heads and never leave our houses. Even so, tapping his long and unfamiliar number into my phone felt somehow intimate and strangely permanent.

“Now you,” Alex said, and held up the phone’s camera. “Smile.”

“Oh, you’re not—”

Too late; he’d taken the shot, and held it up to show me how I had a place now in his list of contacts. I was smiling, my head half turned, and the light was better than I’d thought, the picture clear and crisp. I’d be in his phone forever, or until he deleted me.

Alex unlocked his car with the keyless remote. He’d put on a black wool peacoat with an upturned collar and a long, striped scarf. With his tousled hair and long bangs he could’ve been a catalog model, and I mentally snapped a few shots of him looking into a sunset, maybe standing next to a golden retriever, advertising something sexy like cologne or designer sunglasses. Not that I ever got those sorts of jobs, but someday I might.

He caught me looking and smiled as if he was used to being stared at. “Ready?”

“Yep. Follow me.”

He put a hand over his heart and gave a half bow. “Wherever you may go.”

My mouth opened, flippant words ready to spill out, but somehow they got tangled up on my tongue and all I managed was a smile. It had been quite a while since any man had left me speechless with something as simple as a grin and a few words. No wonder Patrick had warned me off. Alex Kennedy was trouble, unfortunately of the best kind.

And he didn’t like girls, I reminded myself. “I’ll be in the silver Impala.”

I kept my eye on him in the rearview mirror the entire trip, but Alex had no trouble navigating the sparse traffic and keeping up with me. We pulled into the alley next to the three-story building that had once been the firehouse on Annville’s Main Street, and parked in the lot behind it. He got out before I did, and tipped his head back to look up at the building.

“Sweet.”

I felt a rush of pride as we both took a minute to look at the building’s brick backside. The iron fire escape wasn’t pretty, but even so, the building was impressive. And I owned it. The whole thing, just me.

“So, this is Annville,” Alex said.

A car crept slowly along the alley and kicked up a stray grocery bag I snagged to toss in the trash. While living in Harrisburg I wouldn’t have bothered, but since moving to the small town I’d taken more pride. “Yep. In all its glory.”

Alex, hands in his pockets, turned around in a circle to give everything another once-over. “Nice.”

I laughed as I turned the key in the back door’s lock. “It will be quite a change from your international globe-trotting.”

“That’s okay. I grew up in a small town. Not as small as this,” he amended, stepping through after me and stomping his feet on the mat. “But believe me, I wasn’t raised a world traveler.”

The long, narrow hall led to a three-story foyer with the wide, wooden spiraling staircase to our right and the door to the ground-floor apartment to the left. Directly ahead, a front door opened onto the sidewalk along Main Street, and tall windows let in a lot of light. Alex looked up, smiling, and let out a whistle.

I looked over my shoulder at him as I opened the door to the flat. “Come inside.”