He doesn’t even look at me. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Are Eddie and Monica in the house right now?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
I roll my eyes. “What are you at liberty to say?”
“Just that I need to make sure that you’re not going to be of harm to the Fairfaxes.”
I gesture to my house. It’s small and quaint, with a garden out front that my mother dutifully attends to. Most of the plants have to thrive in the shade or part shade, but she’s got a green thumb, and even the zinnias are doing well. “Look. That’s where I live. I wasn’t lying when I said this was my address, and I can definitely promise you I’m not going to harm them in any way. I’m a schoolteacher. I read romance novels. I like Tic Tacs. I have a rescue pup. My bones ache when a cold front comes in.”
He eyes me. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m just trying to prove that I’m human.”
“I never said you were a robot. I said I need to make sure you aren’t a threat. And for your information, Tic Tacs were Ted Bundy’s candy of choice.”
“So now you’re comparing me to one of America’s most famous serial killers?”
He opens the door and gets out of the car. This already seems like a classic Harrison response and I don’t even know the guy.
“By the way,” I tell him, getting out of the car and looking at him over the roof, “Tic Tacs aren’t candy. They are mints.”
“I find the fact that you stress-eat them troubling.”
“And also, if Ted Bundy really ate Tic Tacs, he wouldn’t have been able to sneak up on anyone. You would have heard him coming.”
“Doesn’t change a thing.”
I throw my arms out. “Fine. Do you want to call the school principal and get a reference of character or something? I guess the chief of police wasn’t good enough.”
He stares at me, and even in the shadow of the trees, he still hasn’t removed his sunglasses. I’m starting to think he goes to sleep in them.
It doesn’t matter. I’m done here. Any excitement I should be feeling over the fact that the royals might be moving next door has been absolutely dashed due to this sexy British dick on a power trip.
Whoops. Did I say sexy? Definitely didn’t mean that.
I grumble under my breath and start walking toward the house, noticing the light in the kitchen is on, which means my mother is probably up. I steady myself internally.
“I need to walk you to the door,” Harrison says, slamming the car door hard enough to make the Garbage Pail shake, and I look over my shoulder to see him striding purposefully over to me.
I blink at him, shaking my head before I turn around and start walking to the front door, hoping my mother doesn’t have to see any of this.
“You, sir, have control issues,” I point out.
“It’s my bloody job to have control issues,” he snaps.
I pause and look at him. Whoa. Defensive much? I think this is the first display of any sort of emotion I’ve seen from him.
He realizes how he’s come across too, because it’s like he wipes his face clean and there it is, that blank but broody slate again. He clears his throat, raises his strong chin in defiance. “Control is an important factor of my job.”
Yeah, that’s not what you said the first time, 007.
I head for the door up the winding woodland-style path with prehistoric-looking hostas lining the sides, and stop on the front steps, ivy crawling up the sides of the overhang. “Okay, well, here I am at the door. Satisfied? Or are you going to demand to come inside too, because I know for a fact that you’ll need to provide a search warrant and I can scream real loud.”
He studies me for a moment, and I so know that he wants to tell me some bullshit about inspecting my house to make sure I don’t have dead bodies in my freezer, but instead he just nods. “That will be all.”
He’s turning to leave just as the door opens.
I freeze in place.
He freezes in place.
My mother is there, her head poking through the narrow opening as she eyes us both suspiciously. Her hair is a mess, and I cringe inwardly in embarrassment until I remember that my hair is a mess too. Like mother, like daughter.
“What are you doing? Why are you late? Who is that?” At the last question she narrows her eyes into slits, venomous daggers directed at Harrison.
I know I have to lie. My mom has paranoid delusions and distrusts authority, and if she found out the truth about Harrison, she’d start freaking out, and that’s when Harrison would really consider us a threat.