Page 103 of Only Between Us

And I panicked so damn hard.

But I owe the man an apology, and that’s exactly why my first order of business today is to pick up breakfast from the diner in Oakwood that’s been fueling my daily caffeine intake, and then return Brooks his car.

Hope that he’s not too furious to give me a ride back to Baycrest.

“Have a good day, Mrs. Robbins!” I call over my shoulder once I return Spike. I dash back down the steps, trying to remember where I parked Brooks’s car.

“Why, hello there.”

Please no.

I inhale a long breath before turning to find Marty strolling out of the building toward me. My landlord approaches with a toothy smile, raking his gaze over my body before blatantly fixating on my tits.

“Siena.” My skin crawls at the sound of my own name. I hate the way he says it. Like it’s some dirty secret he’s trying to rope me into. “What a coincidence, finding you out here.”

I live here, you creep.

“Hi, Marty.” I try my best not to sigh the words.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

I most certainly have—alwayshave, though I’m not sure what’s inspired him to call me out on it today. I usually leave early enough in the mornings to miss him completely. Then, I perform the extent of my daily physical exercise when I dash past his apartment on the way to mine in the evenings, because he cooks dinner with an open front door wearing nothing but a pair of briefs. He always makesa point of shouting invitations inside as I rush past with my head down.

“Do you still need the lock on your door fixed?”

He’s not looking me in the eye—why would he, when there are breasts in the vicinity?—but something in the way he asks makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

The question almost sounds rhetorical.

Like he knows the lock is back in perfect working order, even though I never mentioned it had been fixed. I’d been asking him to do something about it for months before Brooks handled it.

“Marty, I better get to work—”

“Did your boyfriend fix it for you?” he asks my tits.

My blood chills.

How do you know the lock is fixed, you fucking trespasser?

I’ve never once noticed anything out of place in my apartment, but I feel this down in my gut. This is why he’d dragged his feet on getting the lock fixed.

When had he been in there? HadIbeen in there while he’d been?

“Yes, my boyfriend did fix it.”

I fist my hands, willing myself calm. If there’s one thing I learned from growing up with strangers coming in and out of my birth parents’ house, it’s never to confront the creeps capable ofmistakenlyentering into your space while you’re in it. No matter how badly I’d love to throw up, then punch them in the throat.

They’re too unpredictable. You never really know what they’re capable of.

“I’m going to work.” I turn before he can get another word in, sprinting to the back of the parking lot.

“I’ll see you for dinner tonight?” he calls after me.

Fuck.How the hell do I fix this? I can’t keep living here now, not knowing this.

My footsteps stop abruptly when I catch sight of Brooks’s car. Specifically, what’s waiting for me beside it. “Oh, shit.”

In the spot right next to the black SUV sits an identical car in white. With an incredibly sexy man leaning against its driver’s side door, inked arms crossed tight over his chest. Brooks watches me come toward him with hard, hungry eyes.

---