Page 52 of Smith

It was like the woman was made for me.

Every. Damn. Thing. About her.

CHAPTER TWELVE

My arms ached. My back hurt. And my mood was total shit.

After we left Smith’s office, we grabbed a drive-thru lunch and went to the house. Cooper and Kira went to my house so Cooper could check my car for a tracker. For the last few days I’d done a great job not allowing myself to dwell on the situation as a whole. I’d done what I’d taught myself to do and broken everything down to small, consumable parts.

The letters were in one box.

The red Tesla following me in another box.

The break-in was in its own.

I’d pushed the letters to the back burner—those seemed the least of my worries. The Tesla following me freaked me out, especially after Smith pointed out that I was followed from my home, so I’d shoved that down deep so I didn’t think about it at all. The break-in affected my livelihood so that was the box I decided to worry about. The one part of the situation I could kind of control.

The rest, I didn’t want to think about. But, Cooper asking to check my car made it impossible for me not to think about and that was what I’d done the entire time I was chiseling out the ugly bathroom floor tile while I was filming. Later I’d do thevoiceover while I edited. I had a feeling very little of the footage would be used since I’d felt myself frowning to the point my facial muscles hurt along with the rest of my muscles.

Now, I knew Kira and Cooper were downstairs. I’d heard them come in as I was popping up the last row of tile, thus I was procrastinating going down and finding out if Cooper found anything on my car. Try as I might, the Tesla was now forefront in my mind and fear had crept in.

I’d spent the hours of mindless, lonely work—since Smith and Jonas couldn’t help because I was recording—thinking about who would follow me. I didn’t have any crazy exes. I didn’t have any old friends I’d fallen out with. I paid all my subcontractors and invoices on time. None of the people who had worked on any projects with me gave me a creepy, bad vibe. No one had shown me any romantic attention. None of them had even shown the slightest hint of interest. I literally had no enemies. Other than the occasional shitty know-it-all post in my comment section I couldn’t think of anyone who would fuck with me.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard movement behind me.

“Damn, Smith,” I snapped. “I need to get you a bell so you stop sneaking up on me.”

“I wasn’t exactly quiet—then or now.”

He meant yesterday when he came into the garage. Both times I’d been lost in thought and hadn’t heard him, not that I would admit that.

“Well, stomp around or something.”

I wasn’t sure I was fond of the way Smith stared at me. It wasn’t his normal hungry look, which I totally loved. This was more of a study, him trying to puzzle out where my head was at and that was a frightening prospect—him seeing how freakedout I was might lead him to feel like he needed to do something about it.

That would feel good—sweet even—and the last thing I needed was Smith being sweet or sweeter than he’d been. I needed him hot and hungry and ready to throw me down and devour me. Not caring, considerate, or attentive. Those things would dig me deeper into the pit of crazy I’d allowed my heart to fall into.

“Everything okay? Did Cooper find anything?”

“Yes and no, he didn’t.”

Well on one hand that was a relief. On the other, it was bad. That meant that the theory I’d been followed from my house had been proven true. Some creep had been lying in wait. It also sucked I hadn’t seen the Tesla follow me the first time. And by sucked, I meant freaked me the hell out I’d been so oblivious.

Smith’s gaze dropped to the floor, lingered for a moment—the bathroom wasn’t that big, so there wasn’t much to see—before it landed on the tub-shower combo I hadn’t ripped out but definitely would be.

Then he smiled.

“Resourceful,” he muttered.

I assumed he meant me using the tub for the chunks of broken tile.

“I needed somewhere to put the scraps and the room’s not big enough, or it is but I didn’t want a garbage can in my shots so I tossed the pieces in the tub.”

“Like I said, resourceful.”

I needed out of the bathroom. I needed Smith to stop looking at me with something that looked a whole lot like pride. I needed to shove the Tesla—or more to the point the driver of the Tesla and his intentions—back into the box where they belonged and get my shit together.

“Double work. Now I need to clean out the tub.” I checked my watch. Seeing it was much later than I thought I asked, “Did you check the mail?”

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