Page 99 of We Met Like This
“Hi,” I said. “We have adjoining rooms. Just thought you should know.”
He laughed and I shut and locked my door.
“You’re a goof!” he called out through it.
“I know!” I called back.
I placed my palm on his closed door as if my energy could somehow convince him that he needed to drop the last of his reservations, the ones that kept him from jumping on the opportunity to share a room with me.No, it wouldn’t be weird, he could’ve said.Why would it be? I want to ravage you all night anyway.
I sighed and went to my suitcase on the bed, unzipping it and flopping it open. I dug around in my toiletries bag until I accepted the fact that I had forgotten my toothpaste. Audrey had a packing list she consulted before trips. I was sure she’d never forgotten her toothpaste.
I marched back over to the adjoining door, unlocked it, and swung it open, then let out a yelp when Oliver was standing in the frame, his door already opened.
“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just going to ask if you have the Wi-Fi password on your key sleeve.” He held his up. “It’s not on mine.”
“Maybe?” I walked to the dresser where I’d deposited my key. “It’s Paso7.”
“Thanks.” Then, as if remembering I had opened the door before he’d knocked, he said, “Did you need something?”
“I forgot toothpaste. Do you have some or should I ask the front desk?”
“I have some. Do you need it now?”
I nodded.
He disappeared into his room and came back with a full-sized tube of Colgate. “Didn’t you brag about being excellent at dental hygiene recently?”
“Shhh,” I teased, taking the toothpaste. “I’ll bring it right back.”
I left my side of the door open and he did the same with his as I carried the toothpaste to my bathroom. This was going to be a hard weekend if one of us still had his walls up and the other wanted to strip down naked and splay herself across his bed to see how well he could control his hands then. Oh how I hoped he couldn’t control them at all.
“Stop it, Margot,” I mumbled. “He’s doing you a favor. And it’s not the first one.”
“You talking to yourself?” he called.
How had he heard? “Yes,” I said.
He poked his head into my room. I peered out of the bathroom, a toothbrush hanging from my mouth.
“What are you telling yourself?” he asked.
“That I hope this place has good food,” I said.
“Me too,” he agreed.
I smiled, then picked up his toothpaste and handed it back to him. “Thanks,” I said around the toothbrush still in my mouth. “I’ll be ready in twenty.”
He shut the door between us. I went back into the bathroom, spit out the toothpaste, and rinsed out my mouth. If I didn’t wash my hair, twenty minutes was plenty of time for a cold shower.
CHAPTER 29
“Is that it?” Oliver asked. We’d been driving on back roads, winding through grass-covered hills, past vineyards, and farms. My phone didn’t have directions to the abandoned silos, but there were several social media posts I’d found that gave vague clues. On the journey so far, I’d taken lots of videos and pictures for Kari that she would love.
“I think so,” I said. “Pull over up there on that dirt turnout.”
He did just that and turned off the car. There were cows grazing in a field across the street, but other than that there were no signs of life. I approached the shoulder-high steel-mesh fence that was keeping us from the silos, which were a good hundred feet away. Every twenty feet or so along the fence was a thick round wooden post. I assessed the scalability of one and found it lacking. Running horizontally along the top of the fence was a long, thin wire.
“Do you think it’s electric?”
