Page 22 of Beg, Borrow, or Steal

Finally, she sighs and glances over my shoulder to where I left my front door cracked open. “At least let me see what you’ve done so far.”

Emily takes an advancing side step, but I match her, barricading her from going any farther. In no way can Emily Walker go into my house right now.

“You’re really not going to let me see?” Her eyes are wide, mouth slightly parted in disbelief.

“Nope.”

“That proud of your work?”

The state of the house has nothing to do with it. Okay, well, maybe it has a few things to do with it. But the main reason I can’t let her in there is that nothing escapes Emily’s notice. She pays ruthless attention to detail and has the memory of a steel trap. Wouldn’t be surprised if she told me she has a photographic memory actually. Which is why I have no doubt that Emily will walk into my house and immediately scent her way to my room, currently littered with sticky notes full of scene ideas for the book I’m due to begin writing soon. Not only that, but books one through three of my Echoes in the Dark series are lying on my bed from where I just scoured through each of them trying to find the one line I needed to reference for the scene I’m writing. She would put two and two together in no time. Less than no time, knowing Emily.

I guard the door, hoping my bare nipples are enough to scare her off. “It’s not safe for you in there. There are nails sticking up all over the place.”

Her suspicion grows. “I would think you’d like nothing more than for me to go inside and accidentally impale myself so you wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore.”

“Tempting. But if you died there’d be an investigation and all that. It would take too much time away from the renovation.”

“Fine.” She turns away. “If it’s really that dangerous I don’t want to go in.” Her bootsclip-clopback toward the porch stairs and I follow like a bouncer escorting her away from the club.

Of course, it’s a mistake on my part, because the moment I leave my post, she fakes me out and darts around my body, right through my front door.

“Dammit,” I mutter, hurrying in after her—half expecting her to have somehow teleported directly into my bedroom and skipped the living room altogether. But when I get inside, I nearly run straight into her back. She never made it past the living room.

She’s standing here, slack-jawed, blinking at the space. “Jack!” She breathes out my name in awe. Not in awe of how incredible this project is. In awe of how terrible it is.

“To be honest,” she starts, as if she’s not always brutally honest with me, “I was only joking when I thought you were ashamed of your work. You’re one of those people who are good at everything they do, so I didn’t expect…this.”

“I think there might actually be a compliment in there somewhere?”

She’s eyeing the kitchen area. “You don’t have a stove. Or a fridge.”

“Overrated appliances. Have you ever had peanut butter?”

I close the front door and take a few slow steps in her direction (aka closer to my bedroom door) so I can slip by her and close itbefore she notices. At least that’s what I mean to do. Except at the sight of her, I can’t move. I’m frozen here, watching Emily Walker assess my new-old house and I realize that possibly for the first time ever in the history of our acquaintance, we are completely alone. Not only that, but I’m not wearing a shirt and she’s in the flimsiest pajamas I’ve ever seen. The satin is so thin it’s practically sheer. And the bottoms are cut high. Or maybe it’s just that her legs are so long they seem skimpier than the average shorts.

God, if it weren’t for that jean jacket…

No. Never mind.

Because I don’t want to be attracted to Emily. I don’t want to find her absurdly beautiful. And I don’t want to know why during my months in Nebraska after Zoe and I split, I kept finding myself wondering what Emily was doing at random moments in the day. Even feeling uncomfortable with the prospect of never seeing her again. I hoped it was just because I was bored without my sparring partner, but now, having that memory paired with the attraction curling around my spine, I’m not so sure anymore. What if it’s because I missed seeing the glint in her poisonous-green eyes and the curve of her cherry-red mouth?

Those eyes slide to the wall where I’ve sledgehammered away the inner drywall down to the studs. “Well, this explains all the noise,” she says, then cocks her head to the side as she inspects the new studs I put in. “I think those are supposed to be standing at a ninety-degree angle.”

“They’ll be fine.”

She whirls around and she’s closer than I realized. She smells good—a fact that’s going to be difficult to forget after this night. “This is a house you’re going to live in, Jackson. It can’t just be fine. What if the roof collapses in on you because you haven’t properly installed the studs in the walls?”

“Then you’ll get your wish.”

Something flashes in her expression. Almost like hurt or regret or worry. It’s gone before I can decide. She blinks several times. “I don’t want…” She pauses and takes a breath. “If you can’t hire someone to do this, move out and sell it to someone who can.”

I smile, feeling that warning hum of incoming confrontation build under my skin. In the early days, I used to hate the way Emily made me feel in moments like this: a little unhinged and unpredictable. I am always levelheaded and able to pull anyone out of even the worst of moods. But Emily—she’s always been immune to my kindness. She draws something venomous out of me. And now, I’ve learned to lean into it. To welcome it. With her, I can always say exactly what I’m thinking. “What have I told you about barking orders at me?”

She steps closer, angling her defiant chin up to me. My heart beats firmly against my chest, ready for the fight. “You are not qualified for this renovation. It’s not going to work. And you can’t live on peanut butter sandwiches!”

“Well, now I just have to prove you wrong.” I look at her mouth, trying to see if her fangs have dropped down yet.

And because I’m too distracted by the shape of her bottom lip, I miss the moment her hunter’s nose catches the scent I’ve been trying to hide. As if she were some sort of mind-reading sorceress, her head snaps in the direction of my bedroom door. And there, perfectly visible twelve feet from where we are standing, are the sticky notes, stuck to a corkboard and leaning against my bed. She makes a move in that direction, and knowing I can’t make it around her in time, I do the only thing I can think of. I take her hand.

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