Читать книгу Bleeding Heart - AM Hartnett - Страница 8

The first thing April did as she stepped into the lobby of Winsloe Court was pause at the mirror in the foyer opposite the mailboxes. After staring at her reflection for a moment, she huffed out a disappointed breath and ran her hands through her newly dyed hair.

She didn’t know what to expect. That going from blonde to this coffee brunette would instantly change her into something else? Maybe. It was still her, though. She turned her head this way and that. She supposed she could say that she looked more sophisticated as a brunette, and if she switched her contacts for some glasses she could rock the sexy librarian look.

That wasn’t all she had done. While her eyebrows were naturally dark, the rest of her wasn’t. She’d gotten her first Brazilian wax. She’d teared up so much that her eye makeup was smudged, and she found herself keenly aware of how bare she was and how soft her panties were. It had made her kind of horny, even standing in line at the coffee place.

This was the thought she was still contemplating as she went to the mailbox, and as her landlord came through the main door.

I wouldn’t mind showing off what’s going on downstairs to him, she thought, as she took her time putting the key in the mailbox. Those big arms were going to kill her if she looked too long, and when he slowed down she noticed he had the most gorgeous hazel eyes, with the sort of lashes women paid good money to have glued to their lids.

He glanced at her as he passed, but as he started up the stairs he stopped and raised his eyebrows.

For a ridiculous second, April thought perhaps he could tell that she had been stripped bare and was wet between her legs.

‘Wow, that’s a change,’ he said. She couldn’t tell whether that meant he liked it or he didn’t, until he leaned over the banister and showed his naughty grin. ‘New hair?’

‘Yeah, to go with everything else new. I don’t know if I like it yet.’

‘I do. It makes your blue eyes stand out more,’ he said.

April thrilled from head to toe. She couldn’t bring herself to say thank you. If she did, she’d start giggling like a moron.

‘I was thinking about a few tattoos as well,’ she went on, joining him on the stairs, and craned her neck. ‘Maybe a big skull with a snake coming out of its mouth?’

‘You seem more of a devil-riding-a-motorbike kind of girl. All across your back, of course.’

‘Really?’ She feigned concern as they slowly made their way up to the second floor. ‘Seems kind of tame. At the very least I’m thinking zombie Jim Morrison.’

‘Sure, if you want to look like some kind of moron.’

‘Or I could just be letting my true self shine through for the first time in my life.’ She laughed at his dubious look and paused with him at the top of the stairs, then crinkled her nose. ‘Who keeps frying fish?’

‘That would be Mrs Boyd,’ he said, lowering his voice. He leaned close enough that his cinnamon gum overpowered the stench of fried fish. ‘The fish thing is only on Friday. She fries potatoes for the rest of the week, and burns them to a crisp. She also likes to spy.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yeah, she’s over there in her nightgown right now, watching through her peephole. If you ever bring a date home, go up the fire escape, otherwise she’ll open her door and glare at you.’

April giggled. She loved his proximity and his playful tone. ‘What would she think about you and me standing here, head to head like this?’

‘Don’t you worry, I’ll hear about it. She’ll find something wrong so she can get me into her apartment and glare at me while I try to fix it, then make comments about “those girls”.’

‘Oooh, I kind of like the sound of that. “Those girls.” A bit naughty, isn’t it?’ Mostly she liked the way he said the phrase, with that perfect growl. She wondered if he had a girlfriend.

His grin turned crooked and once more his gaze swept over her new hair. ‘She probably won’t even know you’re the same girl as the blonde who moved in. She has to take her glasses off to see through the peephole. You’re one of “those girls” but I’m a – what’s her word for it? A cad.’

‘Good God, how old is she?’

‘Almost ninety.’

April shook her head. ‘If being a nosy busybody is what’s waiting, who would want to live that long?’

It took a herculean effort not to cringe all over. Aw shit. Dead wife and you say something like that.

Thankfully, Seth agreed with her. ‘I’d rather live to eighty and then just call it a day.’

The conversation came to a dead halt, but April wasn’t finished with him just yet. She loved the way his amused gaze kept on flitting over her changed look. Hell, she just liked having him look at her, and every so often she’d get that brief and unabashed expression that told her he was wondering what she looked like stripped down.

‘Were things too loud last night?’ she asked to keep him there. ‘I was trying to keep things down, but my friends kind of took over with the really bad music.’

‘It was no problem,’ he said, and finished off with a laugh that suggested to her that he had just made a full-of-shit statement.

She called him on it. ‘Make you want to poke holes in your eardrums?’

‘A little bit. Big night?’

‘Not really. Just getting out and exploring the neighbourhood. It really is a great place. I may be shooting myself in the bank account, but you could crank up the rent and make a fortune, what with everything that’s around here and the location.’

‘I could, but then I’d have to lose all my good tenants. It’s hard enough with the ones that migrate to the suburbs.’

‘Your friends? The ones who used to live in my apartment and the one above?’

Seth nodded, and April noted that he looked a little uncomfortable.

Another mental note checked. Her suspicions that he had been involved with the woman who lived in her apartment strengthened, and she remembered the man’s – Ryan’s? – equally uncomfortable pause when she had asked what sort of landlord Seth was. At the time she had chalked it up to him wanting to get his security deposit back without burning bridges.

Maybe her landlord was more trouble than she wanted to get into? Maybe, in spite of the sad back story, he lived up to the way he looked.

She gazed at those thick forearms and imagined gripping them as he pumped into her, and she was pretty sure he would be worth all the trouble he could dish out.

‘I don’t understand the appeal,’ he said, and it took a minute for her to claw her way out of her fantasy and realise they had actually been having a conversation about the building. ‘Even when I was married, it never entered into the equation to move to the outskirts of town. I mean, who wants to be that far from everything?’

‘I just came from the suburbs, and I wholeheartedly agree.’

He cocked his head and his grin widened. ‘That’s right, first apartment on your own.’

In spite of his gentle tone, April’s defences went up a little. She’d been hearing enough of how she was ‘just a pup’ from her co-workers at the Department of Public Works, like she was the first person in the world to sign a lease and move out of her mom’s house.

It was irritating at work, but it was outright embarrassing coming from a guy she had used to christen her fancy sex toy.

Something must have shown on her face, because his smile became a little apologetic. ‘I lived at home until I got married, and then we moved into – get this – a camper trailer with no wheels.’

‘That sounds…nice?’

‘It wasn’t. The thing was forty years old and we paid my brother-in-law fifty bucks a month to park it in his driveway. Damn thing had a hole underneath the kitchen sink, and we’d have to tie the cupboard up with twine to keep the raccoons from crawling in. Still, we were pretty pumped that we were home-owners at twenty-one, even if the home was shit – so you’re doing better than we did.’

‘We.’ Again and again. She wanted to know more about his late wife, but she didn’t dare ask. Just because he was all right with talking about it didn’t mean that she was allowed to probe.

‘I won’t miss the suburbs,’ she said to get back on track. ‘No lawnmowers first thing in the morning zooming past my window.’

‘Yeah, you’ve got a nice buffer where you are, and even if you hear me out there there’ll only be five minutes’ worth of mowing.’ He leaned in a little bit. ‘Though, if I get at it before noon, feel free to come out and tell me off.’

Hell, she wouldn’t mind coming out to watch him push a mower across the lawn, especially if he did it in a tight shirt or, better yet, shirtless.

Jesus, April – can you stop being a pervert for ten minutes?

‘Anyway,’ he said, signalling the end of their conversation whether she liked it or not, ‘I’ve got to get back to it, and I think we’ve given you-know-who enough to talk about for a while.’

‘Long enough to establish me as the official hussy of Winsloe Court?’

‘Hey, now, don’t make me defend your honour.’

‘Against myself?’

‘Well, maybe not – and I kind of like that word “hussy”. Maybe that’s what I’ll start calling you.’ His grin got really big, and a little naughty. ‘The hussy in apartment 3B.’

Even though it was a joke, the way he said that ridiculous word was criminally hot and only further inspired her filthy fantasies. She could hear him doing it while he lifted her skirt to get a peek of whatever frilly things she wore underneath.

The heat started to flood her face and she knew she was about to light up, so she started up the next set of stairs.

‘I’ll talk to you later, then,’ she said, and took another quick look back. ‘And thanks about my hair.’

‘Later,’ he called.

Once she was in her apartment, she dropped her purse and threw herself face-down on the sofa.

‘God, you’re turning into a sex maniac,’ she said into the new-smelling sofa cover.

The best thing she could do for herself was stay away from the hot landlord, she decided, but she knew she’d never have that amount of discipline.

Even checking her phone to find a message from Todd didn’t have half the punch of bumping into Seth. She was quickly moving from lust to crush territory, and that wasn’t good.

Seth sat in his favourite chair and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes so hard they hurt.

‘I’m officially the creepy old man in the building,’ he murmured.

The flirting and the eye-fucking were getting out of hand, and now he’d humiliated himself further by christening her ‘the hussy in 3B’.

Lame.

He wasn’t sure if she’d been flirting back. Well, he’d been sure at the time, but now that he replayed their exchange he doubted himself. Maybe she was just humouring him. That exit was pretty quick. Lightning-fast. She ran up those stairs.

With a sigh, he sprawled back in the chair and looked around the apartment. His gaze fell upon his project on the dining-room table, and he groaned.

And you couldn’t shut up about Rita.

Normally he liked talking about Rita. He could yak someone’s ear off about what a dream she was.

Talking to April about Rita felt…off. Like he shouldn’t be showcasing what a sad fuck he was. He’d never had any qualms about sounding off to Evie, but then again he had never gotten that tickle in his gut when he talked to Evie. They’d been friends – and, later, a little more – and talking about Rita had just been a part of it.

Now he felt like he had announced to April that he sat alone in his apartment on a Friday night sorting old pictures. Which was completely true, and completely sad.

He looked at the painting that hung over the sofa. He rarely talked back to the voice in his head, but when he did he refused to talk to dead air. If he was going to address her and the little tsk tsk she put into his head, he was damn well going to give shit to the one thing he knew she loved more than him and that fucking cat – her painting of…whatever the hell that was supposed to be.

‘Is this what you had in mind, woman? Shoving my foot in my mouth like an asshole?’

Shut up, Wolfman.