Page 26 of Exposé

"Well, A-va," he said, emphasizing the V. "I don't speak to cops, and I don't talk to reporters."

I tried not to roll my eyes.

Great. One of those.

"Listen, I'm doing a—"

"No, you listen, lady." He stepped forward, pointing his finger at me. "I said no. Isn't that word important to all you feminists?"

My brows hiked up as I took a step back. "Quite the assumption."

"I'm not wrong though, am I?"

"You're not entirely right either." My heart tripped over a beat as a sinister smirk settled over his face.

"I'll give you ten seconds to get off my property and out of my face before I hose you down. How's that?"

"Fine. Fine." I walked away, my hand holding tight to my shoulder strap. "Jackass."

Hustling back to my car, I dropped my laptop bag in the passenger seat, keeping an eye out for the mysterious man who disappeared like it was his profession, then sank into my seat.

Espresso and adrenaline chugged through my veins, my knee bobbing to an ethereal rhythm as I drove home, my shoulders sagging.

It'd been four days since my anonymous email, and I was no closer to finding a story than I was on day one.

Whitney is going to have my head.

Parking in my space, I turned the car off, snagged my bag, and headed towards the front of the building.

A man in a gray shirt with dark blue cargo pants worked a screwdriver into the ground window one floor below mine.

Is that…

"Hey, stalker. What are you doing here?"

The mysterious man glanced over his shoulder, then paused. "Stalker?" He stood upright with a smile accentuating those sexy dimples. "I think I was here first. So doesn't that makeyoua stalker?"

"Touché."I narrowed my gaze at the screwdriver in his hand and then through the open window where Trina, a thirty-year-old bartender with legs a mile long, stood in the kitchen. "So you really are a handyman?"

He shrugged. "Some days." His eyes fell on my laptop bag. "And you must be a—"

"Here, Nate. I brought you some lemonade. It's fresh— Oh hey, Ava. Have you met our new handyman?" She raised her brows over and over, biting her bottom lip.

I let out a sarcastic huff and nodded. "I have, but I didn't know his name. He ran off before we got that far."

"I ran off?" Nate declined the glass of lemonade with a swipe and shake of his head, then placed the screwdriver back into a small black and yellow canvas bag.

"Oh, definitely ran away." I crossed my arm over my chest and grabbed my bag's strap on my shoulder. "One minute you're there, then the next…poof."I flicked my fingers through the air as if he were invisible specks of something not quite of this world.

Nate glanced down at his feet with a slight nod and a chuckle, then bent over and picked up a coffee cup off the ground. "I needed coffee." He took a sip, his dimples deeper than ever.

God, what I'd give to lick them.

Heat spiked my cheeks.

Trina bent over, looking out through the open window. "Do you want a lemonade, Ava?"

"I'm good, thank you. I need to get going anyway." I held Nate's gaze for a passing moment, then turned towards the stairs.

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