Page 7 of Not in Love

“You should be.” He glanced at the man, who was still outside, glaring. “Do you live alone?”

Her eyebrows rose, and he noticed a faint scar bisecting the right. His index finger tapped once against the counter, itching to trace it. “Are you trying to find out if I’m single?”

“I’m trying to figure out what the chances are that the dipshit will be waiting for you where you live, who could help you if he is, or whether your pet could protect you.”

“Ah.” She didn’t look flustered to have misunderstood him. Fascinating. “I do live alone. And he shouldn’t know where.”

“Shouldn’t?”

“I’m not sure how he tracked me here. I can only imagine that he found out where I lived, wasn’t allowed inside by my doorman, and followed my Uber when it picked me up.” She’d been shaken until a minute earlier, but now she sounded disarmingly utilitarian. Just like in her texts, Eli thought. She’d messaged him with no emojis. No LOL or LMAO. Correctly placed punctuation and proper capitalization. He’d guessed it was a localized quirk, but her demeanor seemed like the embodiment of her writing.

Serious. A little impenetrable. Complicated.

And Eli had never been a fan of easy.

“How are you getting home?” he asked.

“Uber. Or Lyft. Whatever’s quicker.” She picked up her phone, but when she tapped on it, it refused to light up. Eli remembered the spilled water. “Well, this is a new development.” She sighed. “I’ll hail a cab.”

No fucking way, he almost said, but stopped with his mouth half-open. This woman was not his friend, sister, colleague. She was someone with whom he’d been planning to have a sexual relationship that would last part of the night, then never see again. He had no right to tell her what to do.

Though he could try to convince her.

“He’s still out there,” Eli said evenly, pointing at the man with his chin. He paced outside the revolving door, skin glistening with sweat. “Waiting for you to step out of the bar.”

“Right.” She scratched her long neck. Eli stared far longer than he should have. “Could you walk outside with me?”

“I will. But what if he does know where you live, and waits for you there? What if he follows you?” He watched her ponder the situation. “Do you have a neighbor you trust? A friend? A brother?”

She laughed once, silently, in a wistful way that Eli didn’t understand. “Not quite.”

“Okay.” He nodded, experiencing the opposite of annoyance at the thought of what would have to happen. “I’ll drive you home, then.”

Her look was long and even. Eli wondered why her wide, limpid eyes felt like a punch to the stomach. “You’re suggesting I get in the car of a man I do not know to avoid being harassed by a man I do know?”

He shrugged. “Pretty much.”

She bit her lower lip. Suddenly, Eli was more physically aware of another human being than he remembered being in a long, long while. “Thank you, but I’ll have to pass. The potential for situational irony is a bit too high, even for me.”

“I don’t think this qualifies as situational irony.”

“It would if you turned out to be a serial killer.”

Smiling wasn’t going to win him any points, but he couldn’t help himself. “You were going to go upstairs to a hotel room booked under my name and spend hours alone with me.”

“Hours?”

The way he was feeling at the moment, more than that. “Hours,” he repeated. She held his gaze for every letter. “Seems late in the game to worry about whether I’ll murder you.”

“A friend knew where I’d be and how to check on me,” she countered. “A second location is a whole different beast.”

“Is it?” He had no business being this pleased by her self-preservation.

“Vincent’s a dick. But for all I know, you’re the Unabomber.”

Vincent. She knew the dickhead’s name—and Eli still didn’t know hers. Fucking irritating. “Unabomber’s dead.”

“That’s what the Unabomber would say to throw me off,” she deadpanned, unknowable. He couldn’t tell whether she was flirting, making fun of him, or dead serious.

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