Jasmine Guillory - The Proposal

“Okay, please, let’s talk about something that isn’t me. I deserve your best teen-client story, after that.”

He grinned.

“I have a lot of good ones, but my favorite is the kid we nicknamed Santa, because he and his girlfriend tried to hide up the chimney.”

She rubbed her hands together.

“Tell me everything.”

Chapter Four

. . . . . . .

When the waitress brought the check to the table, Nik handed the waitress her credit card.

“This one is on me. I’m still mad at you for paying for our drinks from Saturday. I owed you.”

He pursed his mouth and considered.

“Okay, fine, but you get all of the leftovers. Deal?”

He said that like it was a punishment. Which, considering how spicy some of their leftovers were . . . he might be correct about that.

“Deal. I can have them for lunch tomorrow, in between all of the cupcakes.”

As they walked to her car, he elbowed her.

“Yes?” she said, in answer to his look.

“I know you’re pretty nervous about all of the Fisher stuff. Do you want me to follow you home just to make sure everything is okay? I mean, I’m sure everything is fine, I just thought I’d—”

“Yeah,” she said. “That would be great.”

Why had she agreed to this so quickly, she wondered on the short drive to her house. She usually hated it when men got all protective about her safety, like she was some delicate flower who didn’t know how to protect herself.

But that hadn’t been what Carlos had done, and she’d appreciated it. After her panic from this afternoon, it would be nice to have backup for those thirty seconds it took for her to walk through her apartment. Plus, not to be shallow, but the way Carlos’s T-shirt clung to his biceps . . . she was pretty sure Carlos could take Fisher down easily.

But wait a second. Was she really going to get some dude she hardly knew to do a walk-through of her apartment just because she got a few nasty text messages? That was ridiculous. She was a grown woman; she’d lived on her own for years; she could take care of herself. She should text him right now and tell him that she was fine and didn’t need his help.

Yeah, she’d do that. She reached in her pocket for her phone. When she got home, she’d text her girlfriends and tell them how stupid she’d almost been.

Well, she’d text her girlfriends if she was still around to text them.

She could hear Courtney’s voice in her head.

What do you have to lose here? Are you really worried about looking silly in front of a man you barely know? Who cares?

She cared, damn it.

But her friends would kill her if she sent Carlos away and anything happened to her.

Okay, fine. She put her phone back in her pocket.

She parked in the lot behind her apartment building and met Carlos on the front steps.

“Thanks for coming inside with me. I feel like an idiot,” she said as she unlocked the door.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m a pretty impressive dude; people feel like idiots around me all the time. I’m used to it.”

Despite her rising anxiety, she laughed as they walked up the stairs to her second-floor apartment.

“Did he have a key?” Carlos asked in a low voice.

Nik sighed and stopped on the stairs.

“I never gave him one, but I left my keys around all the time, and it’s easy to get keys copied. And there was one time when I forgot my keys at his house for a whole weekend and had to get my set of extra keys back from Dana. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but . . . I’m paranoid now, I guess.”

Carlos put his hand on her shoulder, and she relaxed against it.

“Are you ready to go inside? Or do you need a minute?”

She pulled away from him. She never should have done this, but she had no choice now.

“No, no, I’m fine. Let’s go in.”

He took the key out of her hand and unlocked the door. She could have done that herself, but okay. He pushed it open slowly. Why had she turned off all of the lights before she left her house? Energy-saving nonsense. Now she felt like one of those women in horror movies. One of the ones who got killed in the first fifteen minutes.

Wait, no. Those women never had the sense to get someone else to come with them when they had a bad feeling.

Carlos pushed the door wide open and stepped through it in front of her.

“If the demon gets me, tell my mother I loved her.”

Apparently they watched the same kind of movies.

She followed close at his heels as he walked into the living room and flicked on the lights. Everything looked the same as when she’d left it two hours before: her laptop on the desk against her big bay window, her remote on the floor by her coffee table, her T-shirt and—oops—bra on the top of the couch where she’d thrown them off after getting Carlos’s text. She saw a smile around his eyes when he turned in that direction, but he didn’t let it reach his mouth.

“Is there anywhere to hide in this room?” he asked her under his breath. She shook her head.

She started to walk down the hallway that led to her bedroom, but he put his hand on her shoulder to stop her.

“Let me go first.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. She stared daggers into his back as she followed him down the hallway. Just because she’d accepted his offer to make sure Fisher wasn’t around didn’t mean she was okay with him ordering her around in her own apartment. This had been a terrible idea.

When she walked into her bedroom, he’d already flung open the closet doors and was running his hands through the crowded coat side of her closet. He turned around well after she was satisfied that there was no one hiding among them.

“Are all of these coats . . . yours?” he asked her. “You do realize you live in Los Angeles, right?”

“Shut up. It gets cold here sometimes. And I go to New York at least once or twice a year.”

He shook his head, with a smile in his eyes.

“Mmm, yeah, that totally means you need twenty coats, absolutely.”

She tried not to grin back at him and failed.

He stepped around to the far side of her bed, then went into the hallway and threw open the hall closet. She supposed that Fisher could have hidden in there, if he’d been hiding his contortionist talents from her. He glanced at the shelves full of extra bedding, towels, and boxes of sparkling water, and closed the door without a word. He stepped into the bathroom, and she heard the shower curtain swish across the rod.

“All clear in the bathroom, too. Anywhere else?”

She walked down the hall to the kitchen, simultaneously so relieved she was ready to collapse and feeling so stupid she wanted to hide among all the coats in her closet.

“I mean, I suppose if someone was really trying, they could hide in the refrigerator, or under the couch, but I somehow doubt that. I think we’re all clear.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of wine. “I’m sorry for dragging you along on this wild goose chase. I don’t know what got into me. Wine?” She glanced over at him, standing in her living room, and saw him peer under the couch. She smiled and poured two glasses.

“Here.” She handed him a glass and sat down on the couch. “Thank you. I’m not usually . . .” She shook her head. “Anyway, thank you. I hope you’re not too much of a man’s man to drink rosé.”

He sat down next to her and picked up the wineglass.

“No such thing.” He took a sip of the wine and glanced over at her. “You should get your locks changed.”

Okay, that was enough telling her what to do.

“I know I should get my locks changed; I’m not an idiot,” she said.