Page 13 of Say Yes to the Death

Rosie barked and licked his face, rolling around on his barrel of a chest.

“Rosie,” Claire scolded. “Sorry,” she said. “She loves meeting new people.” She opened her junk drawer, fondly known as her Drunk Drawer because it was the one place in her apartment that she allowed to be completely disorganized, and handed Sawyer a lint roller.

“The best part of this job is meeting all the dogs,” he said, rolling over and standing back up. He brushed halfheartedly at the dog hair spread over his chest, then shrugged and set the roller down.

She laughed. “That is an unexpected perk.” She walked back to the hallway and brought her purse and bottles of wine inside. Fortunately, none of the bottles had shattered during her dramatic game of hallway hot potato.

“Are you having a party?” Sawyer asked, gesturing to the four bottles of wine. “I can come back at a more convenient time.”

Claire sighed. “No, just me, my assistant, and our inability to cope with life.”

She hadn’t noticed the night before, but the apartment smelled stale. She sat her purse down on the table and swiped her finger across the wooden surface. Her finger left a trail through a thin layer of dust. This was her safe heaven, her second office. Or at least it had been before Barney Freakin’ Windsor had broken into it and stolen her wedding dress.

She crossed to the window by her kitchen table and slid it open, pulling at the screen out of habit. It didn’t budge. The sun had dropped low on the horizon. Families flocked down the sidewalks, ducking into the pub on the corner. A full moon had already risen, out of place against the blue sky. Her mom, the self-proclaimed psychic, would surely blame the moon for the chaos that was unfolding. Or maybe Mercury was in retrograde.

Claire opened her refrigerator and unloaded the wine. An old, wrinkled lemon sat by itself in her produce drawer. After pulling it out, she sliced it quickly on a wooden cutting board and dropped it in her sink. She ran the water and turned on the garbage disposal. Old lemon smell was better than stale apartment smell.

Rosie, who was completely incapable of handling any appliances that made noise, stopped sitting on Sawyer’s foot and scrambled into the kitchen. Her ears bent backward as she bared her teeth, barking at the disposal until it was turned off.

“Drama queen,” Claire muttered, shaking her head and scrubbing the sink with a sponge. Luke shouldn’t have scheduled work on her apartment without giving her a heads up to clean.

She turned the water off and surveyed the rest of her kitchen. Her grandmother’s simple white vase, which had been shattered when Barney broke into her apartment, had been clumsily glued back together by Mindy. It now served as a bookend for a binder of Claire’s favorite recipes, which she kept on the counter.

“You must have had a shitty day. There’s a lot of tension in your shoulders,” Sawyer observed.

Huh. She hadn’t even noticed, but he was right. She rolled her shoulders and neck. “You’re not wrong.”

“Want to talk about it? I’m happy to listen, free of charge,” he said as he opened a laptop.Golden eyes framed by thick, dark lashes peered over the top. The best eyelashes were always wasted on men.

“Not really,” Claire said. Certainly not with a stranger who had last seen her looking like an extra in a horror movie. She pawed through her cutlery drawer. Where the hell was her backup corkscrew? Her good one was at Luke’s, and all she had left was a novelty one shaped like a mustache.

Sawyer nodded and looked down at his screen. There was silence except for the tapping of large fingers on keys.

But then again, he was an impartial third party. He had been there that night, saw what no one else had witnessed. No need to hide her crazy from him.

“It’s just,” she began, stabbing the corkscrew into the first bottle. “I thought I was done with shitty things happening to me. I was stalked, kidnapped, and almost murdered. You would think that would be enough bad things for a decade at least, if not a lifetime. But no. My wacko nemesis is suing me because I punched her in the face after she showed up uninvited to Nicole and Kyle’s engagement dinner and insulted the bride.”

Claire yanked on the cork, but it wouldn’t budge. Her phone vibrated. Luke was calling. There was no way in hell she was about to answer. All the thoughts she had been keeping deep down were suddenly rushing to the surface, ready to explode all over this man she barely knew.

“And then,” she continued, letting her voice raise with her frustration, “she decided my ex-fiancé, whom she is currently sleeping with, was the perfect person to serve the summons to me in the middle of a meeting with a client. Then I got chased by the paparazzi, wound up at my sort-of boyfriend’s house where his extremely stern and terrifying mother showed up out of the blue and startled me so much that I almost drowned. Then some girl asked me to sign a pack of menthols for her four-year-old like I’m a Kardashian. Oh, and let’s not forget the minor fact that today was supposed to be my wedding day.”

Sawyer gently closed a hand over Claire’s. He tugged her fingers off the corkscrew and took the bottle from her. He tugged on it once and the cork slid out smoothly with a satisfying pop.

“And now I can’t even open my own damn wine.” She buried her hands in her hair. All that dumping and she hadn’t even mentioned the sleepwalking and possible dumpster taco. What a freakin’ day.

He poured a glass and set it in front of her. He then crossed to the corner of the dining area where she had abandoned her rolled-up yoga mat after a class. He handed it to her and she looked at it. Was he telling her she needed to clean up despite everything she had just said? If so, he was going to be leaving without his testicles.

“You do yoga? I think you need this.”

Ah. So he wasn’t telling her to clean up. Good. “I think you’re right,” she said, clutching the roll of foam. “Thank you.”

“I won’t be too loud,” he said, moving some complicated-looking electronics to the bar so they were closer to the front door. “Take your time.”

Claire wandered into the living room and took the strap off her mat. She shot a glance over her shoulder at Sawyer, who had pulled out a measuring tape and a stud finder. She unfurled the mat in one swift motion. A small cloud of dust soared into the air. Between proposal season and the abduction, it had been awhile since her last class.

“Gross,” Claire said, immediately sneezing.

Before she could center herself with yoga, there was still work to be done.

---