Page 27 of Play Book

I text Saylor after practice, and she admits there’s more of a mess than she’d noticed last night. She and the girls have been busy scrubbing the walls and floors, but she could use help hanging and rearranging paintings, because some of them are heavy.

Apparently, whoever did this hadn’t stolen anything, but they’d moved a bunch of her art to different parts of the gallery and even put some of it face down on the floor.

It makes no sense.

If that has some deeper meaning, I don’t know what it is, but I’m happy to help her fix it.

And see her again.

Maybe take her to dinner again.

I don’t have back-to-back nights off very often, so it’s the perfect opportunity to spend more time with her.

Gabe, Ivan, Marty, and our team rookie, Connor Brooks, join me.

We walk in en masse, and probably are a bit of a motley crew descending on the gallery, but Saylor looks up with a grateful smile.

“Hi! You guys didn’t all have to come.”

“Sure we did.” I look around. “Tell us what we can do. We’re here to do the heavy lifting.”

“There isn’t a lot but thank you for coming. Okay… let’s start back here.” She moves into the smaller room on the side, where she keeps a few of her more expensive pieces—including the one I want—and I immediately notice it’s gone.

“Where’s my painting?” I blurt without thinking.

She grins over at me. “I moved it into the back room for you. Since last night’s uninvited guest decided to do some redecorating, I figured I’d take that one out of the equation anyway.”

“Oh. Well, thank you.”

We exchange a look I can’t quite decipher, but then she turns away and is all business.

The guys and I spend the next hour lifting, holding, maneuvering and hanging her beautiful pieces of art. Even Connor comments how much he likes them.

“I love the one that looks like a haunted cathedral over there,” he says.

“It’s modeled after the cathedral in Strasbourg, Germany,” she replies. “But not exactly. I wanted the gothic vibe, but I didn’t want it to be a real place. So kind of a combination of the real one and one I dreamed up in my mind.”

“Can I buy it?”

We all turn to stare at him in surprise.

“Of course. I’ll even give you a discount for helping today.”

“Excellent.” He beams at her, apparently as infatuated with her as I am.

But I got here first.

And he’d just turned nineteen, so he’s way too young for her. Besides, he’s been dating a model named Effie. It’s on and off, I guess, because they both travel so much, but I’m fairly confident he isn’t actually going to make a move on Saylor.

Which is a good thing, because my protective side is threatening to emerge again, and I don’t even know that guy so I’m going to need him to settle the fuck down.

“Hey.” I find her in the back washing her hands at an industrial sized sink I never noticed before.

She’s deliciously disheveled. Her hair in a messy ponytail, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, and her jeans and T-shirt dusty as well.

“Hi.” She smiles. “I can’t begin to thank you for helping today.”

“It’s no problem,” I say, realizing I mean it. “And anyway, I wanted to see if you wanted to have dinner tonight. We leave on a road trip tomorrow, so I won’t be back for a week.”

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