Page 44 of The Woman in the Warehouse

“This is actually from my great aunt. She never had kids, so she left me it in her will.”

“What did she do? Black market diamond trade?” I asked as I looked at her sprawling, updated kitchen, the warm wood floors, the floor-to-ceiling windows, and her sunken living room.

To that, Saylor laughed. “She owned a publishing company in the golden days of them. They published those crazy popular bodice rippers. Made a shit-ton of money. But she saw the writing on the wall about the industry. She sold to one of the Big Five publishing companies, invested, and lived a nice, easy life until she passed. She’s my inspiration,” she admitted, walking down the hallway, and slipping into one of the doors. It looked like the place was a three-bedroom.

“What would this go for if you sold it?” I asked as we moved into her bedroom that was, easily, the size of my entire apartment.

“In this market?” she asked, bobbing her head side-to-side as she thought about it. “Maybe seven.”

“Million?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “It’s my backup plan if I have to retire earlier than planned, but I really hope I don’t have to sell it. It would be a sweet place to live out the rest of my life.”

She grabbed a hard shell suitcase, blindly grabbing shit out of her massive walk-in closet, then went into her bathroom to grab some of her products.

All said and done, she was finished in ten minutes.

While I still stood in awe of her condo.

“Ready?” she asked, and I turned to find her watching me.

“Somehow, it feels wrong to ask you to crash in a shitty studio apartment when you got this to come home to.”

But we were already cutting it close, so we rushed into a cab, then made our way back to Washington Heights just in time for our meeting.

Saylor filled out the paperwork.

I handed over the cash.

Then we were handed the keys.

I don’t think it fully sank in until we rode the elevator up silently, put the lock in the door, and stepped into the studio.

We were going to be living together for the time being.

And there was no fucking way we were going to be able to fight what was growing between us when we were in such close quarters.

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” she said, her mind clearly moving in the same direction. “You’re bigger. You need the bed.”

Oh, we were both going to be in the bed.

Whether she wanted to admit that or not…

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Saylor

Yeah, I really didn’t give this whole situation enough thought.

I was going to live with Anthony?

I mean, really, why had I even said anything? I could have just rented the place myself. Stayed in the place by myself. And not be forced to smell his spicy cologne filling up the small space, watching him do mundane life things like making the bed that really had no right to be as sexy as it was.

In my defense, he’d stripped off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves before he started to get the place in order as I sat on the couch with his binoculars, pretending to be watching the house across the street.

When it came to men, my experience with them tended to involve going out to eat and having sex. I never really got the chance to watch a man move around an apartment, arranging food and supplies we’d ordered to be delivered.

I mean, the man actually took the shelves out of the fridge, put them into the sink, and scrubbed them before he put the food inside.

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