Page 9 of Eye Candy

“Caroline, dear, get your shit together,” Mrs. C said calmly. “Go inside. Splash some water on your face. Bathroom’s first on your left. Pour yourself a drink, there’s a drinks cart by the sofa. Have your boy in for a drink or two then lock the door when you’re done. Minnie is asleep upstairs. She may snore, but if there was anything I could do about that, I would have done it years ago.”

“But Mrs. C?—”

“I trust you, dear.” Mrs. C grabbed her purse from the little phone table and slung it over her arm. “No mess, and don’t stay too long or Minnie will rattle the sense out of your head with that busted septum she won’t admit is a problem. Now, I’ve got to go, Lin has finally left her limp leech of a husband and we must toast her. I want to hear all about this man tomorrow.”

With that, my guardian angel pulled her fur collar higher around her neck and disappeared down the stairs.

I couldn’t believe my luck.

Darting into the apartment, I skipped the bathroom Mrs. C had indicated; no time for splashing. The apartment was a split-level loft, and there were stacks of books everywhere. Some were on tall shelves, but many were stacked in towers around the room. This was the kind of space I had dreamed of back when I thought youcould buy apartments like this on an entertainer’s income. A month’s rent here would have easily bought us a year for Dad’s café, which I tried not to be bitter about. I’d met people far richer than Mrs. C throughout my career, or lack thereof, and none of them had ever been as kind to me as my upstairs neighbor.

In the main space there were huge paneled windows along one wall, a full kitchen, and another stairwell up above the lounge that led to a set of stained-glass doors. I assumed that was the main bedroom where Mrs. C’s wife, Minnie, was asleep. I’d never met Minnie. Hopefully she slept as soundly as Mrs. C said, because now wasn’t a great time for introductions.

Luckily, my pink hair was wrapped in a vintage headscarf because I was trying a new no-heat-curls method. I checked my reflection in the massive windows to be sure every pink strand was tucked out of sight.

A knock thudded at the door.

I swung it open. “Hello Chase.”

“Teddy,” he replied.

My brain, frazzled from all the running and the panicking, was slow to remember that was me. I wondered what it would be like to hear him say my real name in that deep, sometimes Canadian lilt.

Hello, Caroline,I imagined him saying.

I think you’re beautiful, Caroline.

Can I cup your breasts, Caroline?(Yes.)

“Come in.”

He followed me up the steps to the main living area, his cinnamon-stick scent curling in my nose again.

The unfortunate truth was Chase Sanford was no less magnificent under apartment lighting than he had been in the gallery. No one person should be this beautiful, it wasn’t fair to the rest of us. One encounter with angel face here, and a person would be walking around stunned for the rest of the day, unable to notice any of the perfectly presentable sevens and eights that passedthem by because their retinas had been seared to shit by the perfection of a ten.

“Are you here to sell me something, Chase? Or do you stalk all of your brother’s ex-girlfriends?”

“I want to talk.”

He wasn’t voicing outright suspicion, but his standoffishness was suspicious enough. Not to be a big-head, but men never looked at me this impassively. I was used to seeing admiration, lust, or even just friendly indulgence.

Chase’s expression was inscrutable.

I motioned to the drinks cart. “Do you want a drink?”

“Just coffee, thank you.”

Chase still wore a beige sweater. It looked fresh, so it was either a copy of the same thing he’d been wearing yesterday, or he was too perfect to sweat. He’d undone the collar of the button-up underneath and there was a light smattering of golden hair at the base of his throat that, in the light from Mrs. C’s lamps, looked ginger.

This could be as much as he ever dared to loosen up. He probably only had sex in the dark, preferring to keep as much of his clothing on as possible. Unexpectedly, the idea of this man unzipping for a quick and clandestine fumble had me feeling hot under the collar. He’d probably come in record time; the uptight ones usually did.

That wasn’t a sexy thought, but it still sped my heart.

Between the shoulders and glasses and manners, this Canadian was making scrambled eggs of my mind. Only one of us in this room was supposed to be a professional smokeshow, and it wasn’t him.

“Let’s make coffee then,” I said.

The universal rule of kitchens was that the top skinny drawer should hold cutlery, but when I pulled this one, I found only a bunch of quirky coasters that said things like ‘I like my coffee like I like my men: I don’t!’

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