“No.”
“Then I’ll stay here if you don’t mind. I don’t bite. And, even if I did, you’d at least see me coming.”
Shooting a sideways glance at me, he gave me another tiny smile, as if not sure how to take me. We drove out of the downtown area quickly, as there was none of the usual traffic congesting the streets. Soon, we were in what was called the Country Club neighborhood of Denver, filled with huge homes that screamed money.
Where else would I have expected to find Mr. Steel? Well, I’d half expected him to be renting one of the gorgeous condos near downtown, perhaps a penthouse located sky high where he could view the majesty of the Front Range and all the lights of the city at night unimpeded.
Holy. Crap. On. A. Cracker.
Elise would kill me when she found out where I would be spending my day. I was tempted to whip out my phone and start texting her, but I knew that wouldn’t exactly be classy—and I could imagine this guy turning the car around if I did anything fishy.
But this neighborhood. I’d driven down Speer Boulevard hundreds of times before, getting a glimpse into these neighborhoods and, once in a while if I was in a hurry, I’d use Google Maps to get me around congestion—and that would send me deep into territory where I knew I didn’t belong.
Of course, that was where Mr. Steel lived.
The homes were massive. Beautiful. Elegant.
Almost daunting.
The driver slowed as we turned down a beautiful street with a median between the two lanes, dividing both sides of the street with luscious trees and plants, not quite awake from their winter sleep. Awestruck, I marveled at how the homes here were bigger than some of the apartment buildings downtown. I didn’t know that I’d call these homes mansions, but I suspected that they cost more than I’d ever make in an entire lifetime.
Should I be disgusted or awestruck?
Perhaps, I was a little of both.
It didn’t help that, when the driver turned the car into a long driveway after a wrought-iron gate opened, the warm brown brick house was by far the largest, most beautiful home on the block. And I was getting ready to work personally for the man inside. What, exactly, did this ostentatious, possibly pretentious home say about that man?
And why the hell was I so eager to find out?