Читать книгу Dear Rita - Simona Taylor - Страница 13

R ita stared in shock as her door opened at the lightest touch of Dorian’s hand. A creepy sensation overcame her, like worms crawling along the back of her neck. How could that be?

Dorian gave her a wary look. “You have a roommate?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No!”

“Anyone have a key to your place?”

She frowned, her migraine making it difficult for her to think. “Cassie keeps my spares for me, but….”

“Stand back,” Dorian instructed, one arm moving her protectively to one side, with her back against the wall so that she was screened off from the entryway by both his broad body and the door. He bent forward, inspecting the keyhole and the lock. “Not even a little scratch,” he commented. “Nothing to suggest that the lock was picked.” He lifted his head to look at her. “You certain you locked up securely?”

Normally, she would have bristled at the suggestion. Did he really think she was enough of a knucklehead to have left her front door unlocked? But as memories of the evening tumbled upon each other, she tried to piece together their fragments. She’d left home in one heck of a hurry. Too much of a hurry to do her hair or put on some makeup, even. That thought made her run her fingers self-consciously through her messy corkscrews. Cassie had been downstairs in the car, waiting. Lord knew, Cassie had enough lip on her to make it very clear that she didn’t like to be kept waiting. So she’d hurried. But had she left in such haste that she had forgotten to lock up?

Dorian was still looking at her, waiting for an answer. “Rita?”

It was ridiculous. There they were, standing in the hallway, with her door agape, nothing inside but quiet darkness…and, perhaps, something, or some one else. She shivered again.

Dorian called her name again, more softly this time.

She looked at him, foolishly wasting precious seconds thinking how awesomely handsome he was, in spite of the concern that was wrinkling his brow. She found herself stuttering. “I…I…have no idea. I wasn’t feeling well, and I’d been a-a-asleep when Cassie came to get me. I rushed out to meet her.” She laughed self-deprecatingly. “I didn’t even have time to do my hair. I know I look a mess.”

His onyx eyes swept over her, once, and then again, more slowly, but if she was expecting a compliment, she was sorely disappointed. “Enough of a rush to forget to lock up?”

She was stumped on that point, but forgetting to lock the door was the better of the two options. “I don’t know.”

He straightened up and expelled air through his nose, shaking himself determinedly. “In any case, it’s pointless for us to stand here staring at the lock. I’m going in. Wait here.”

Was he serious? “I’m not waiting anywhere. I’m coming in with you.”

He gave her a long, sober look. “If someone broke in to your place, they could still be in there.”

A scary thought, but she insisted, “It’s my place. I’m going in with you.”

He sighed again. “Well, stay behind me. If I say to run, run all the way downstairs and outside, and don’t look back.”

She stifled a nervous giggle. “You planning to take a bullet for me?”

He threw her a dark look. “That was not funny.”

She had to concede that it wasn’t. “Sorry.”

She followed him inside, heart thumping. Her own apartment seemed alien to her, lit throughout only by the eerie glow of the bedside lamp she’d left on. Shapes loomed as their dense shadows made bogeymen out of everyday objects. To still her lurching stomach, she flicked on the lights as she followed Dorian from room to room, taking his advice and staying well behind him, even as she cursed herself for her cowardice. For once, she was willing to admit that if there was one thing that men were better at than women, it was hunting down skulking burglars.

They made their way to the last room, the study where she did most of her writing, and stopped. Dorian’s eyes were bright, his nostrils flared from the tension, and his deep chest rose and fell heavily. He stated the obvious. “Nobody here.”

“Maybe I did leave it open after all,” she mused. “You said yourself there were no marks on the lock or anything.”

“Not necessarily. They could have got in somewhere else, and used the door to leave.”

He was making no sense. “Got in where?”

“We’ll see.” Her study and her bedroom, which were side by side, faced the street. Along the far wall, which she had painted a deep teal, a color that helped her to relax and write, were three small windows. He checked them; they were all securely locked. Without saying anything, he returned to her bedroom, also painted teal. Three identical windows lined the wall, interspersed with small framed sepia drawings of men and women making love, their limbs so intertwined that it was almost impossible to tell where one body began and the other ended. Their huge, kohl-lined, almond-shaped eyes, full berry-colored lips and glossy black hair made them so exotic that he did a double take. His lifted brow asked a silent question.

“Those are, uh, recreations of ancient Buddahist drawings. It’s supposed to represent Tantric, uh, sex.” She felt fire in her cheeks. “My mother bought those on a trip to Calcutta. They’re not exactly my type of thing, but I, uh, didn’t want to offend her. So I put them up in here.”

He gave the drawings a slow once-over that left Rita squirming, before saying, “Your mother’s very progressive.”

“If only you knew,” she couldn’t stop herself from saying.

“What’s that mean?”

“Nothing.” She wished the damn drawings would spontaneously combust. It wasn’t every day a girl found herself standing in her bedroom with a stranger who didn’t like her, examining erotica on her walls. She wondered how to diplomatically remind him of his reason for being in her room in the first place. “Dorian…”

He took the hint. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat and focused on the windows, checking one lock, and then the next. The third was not only unlocked, but slightly ajar. He gave her a significant look. “You keep these locked?”

“Usually,” she said defensively. It was growing clearer and clearer to her that she’d screwed up and forgotten the door. She wasn’t happy about admitting that she went about leaving windows unlocked, too.

“Maybe they got in through here,” he suggested.

“From three floors below?”

As he shrugged, that suit she had so criticized pulled against his broad shoulders, drawing her attention once again to his heavy, beautifully shaped chest. He pointed downward at the old, elaborate columns decorating the facade of the building. They were old and worn, dating back to the same era as the carved angels that had been stripped off. “Somebody crazy enough to risk it could use that scrollwork as footholds.”

Maybe. She looked at the window again. It was divided into four-by-two metal bars in the shape of a cross. She pointed at the small spaces left by the bars. “A trained monkey might be able to get through there.” She pointed. “But not a person.”

He nodded speculatively, inspecting the lock and the window. “A trained monkey or an eight-year-old kid.”

“What?”

“Determination can make quick work of little obstacles like a narrow opening.”

“Even so,” she argued, “what would an eight-year-old kid be doing in my bedroom?”

“Whatever the grownup that’s controlling him forces him to do.” He said this with a grimace of bitterness.

“You’ve got to be joking!”

He gave her a glance that said she had no idea what she was talking about. “It’s a mean, nasty world out there, and people do lots of mean, nasty things to each other. Including children.”

“Why would anyone want to do that to me?”

“Simple burglary, most likely. Unless….” He stopped, thought for a while, and then went on, “Unless someone has it in for you. As we were discussing over dinner, your writing stands a good chance of making you enemies.”

Her mind was yanked backward several hours, past their disastrous dinner, to that chilly online encounter back in the coffee shop. Are you afraid of heights?

The look on her face must have told him something, because he stepped forward and placed both hands gently on her shoulders. He had to dip his head somewhat to look her in the eye.