Shake It Up (Man of the Month 8)

"Sometimes. It works."

She shook her head. "I'm okay. It's just hard figuring out where to start."

"Start with what brought you here. Then you can go backwards."

"I'm being stalked." There. She'd said it.

In front of her, Brent's face remained exactly the same, and she thought that he must have made a damn good cop if he could sit across from a witness or a suspect and not react at all. "You're sure?"

She nodded.

"Tell me what's happened."

She passed him the crumpled note that she'd shoved into the leather messenger bag she used as a purse. "Someone left that for me on the bar. Cam found it yesterday and gave it to me just a bit ago."

He took the note carefully, then moved around the desk to unfold it, using a tissue so that his fingers didn't directly touch it.

She grimaced. "I didn't think about messing up fingerprints. And I left

the envelope on the bar. It's probably buried under a mountain of old food and yucky napkins."

"I doubt there are prints anyway, but I prefer to be careful." He continued what he was doing, then frowned when he saw the words.

"You belong to me," he quoted, then looked up. "Do you know who sent it?"

"Maybe," she said, then explained about the other note with the quote from Sweeney Todd and how the note he was holding might be a reference to The Phantom of the Opera. "There's a guy in my department at school who's been asking me out. But I just don't think he's the type to take pictures of me or throw bricks." She shuddered, once again thinking about what could have happened to Jenna. She'd lost control of the car, but the damage to the car had been minor. Crunched metal, but nothing that affected how the car drove. And Taylor could live with a bumped and bruised Corolla.

"Tell me about the picture."

Obediently, she passed him her phone, open to the text message.

"You're wearing a Phantom T-shirt. You might be right about the student."

"Maybe." She hoped she was. A scary Reggie was a lot less scary than the alternative. "I don't know. He's so ... mild," she finished lamely.

"Still waters," Brent said. "And if he has psychopathic tendencies ... well, you just never know what he might be capable of."

She nodded, feeling both numb and oddly better. She was doing something, and action felt good. "So you think it might not be out of character for him to have thrown the brick?"

"I'm not sure he did throw it. Three other cars had bricks thrown through their windows that week. The police have been searching footage from nearby cameras, but so far, no leads on who did it."

"Really?" She sat back in her chair, relieved that it was looking less and less that her past was coming back to haunt her. Still, she wasn't too keen on being stalked in her present. "So what should I do?"

"Well, you're not staying at home tonight. Not until we get you some decent security at your apartment."

She nodded, thinking about how much that was going to cost.

"And I'm going to talk to Landon."

At the name, Taylor felt something warm and reassuring flow through her. She didn't know Landon well, but she trusted him. A gorgeous black man with kind eyes, a close-shaved scalp and beard, and a full lower lip, she'd first noticed Landon when she'd bumped into him--literally--at the entrance to The Fix.

That had been mortifying--she'd been such a klutz. And despite the fact that the feel of those hard muscles had definitely resonated, she'd put the memory aside. At least until the next time Landon had caught her eye. He'd been at The Fix with Derek Winston, the heir to a hotel chain and one of tonight's contestants for Mr. July.

Then again, caught her eye wasn't entirely accurate. More like captured her with his intense, heated gaze.

That night, Landon and Derek had been sitting at the bar, and she'd been sitting with Mina and Megan just a few feet away at one of the tables by the windows. He'd turned, their eyes had locked, and zing--Taylor had felt the shock of his gaze running all the way through her, heating every part of her body all the way down to her toes--and more interesting parts in between.

They hadn't said a word, but that was the moment that Landon had become her unreasonable crush and her favorite bedtime fantasy, with his perfect ass and broad shoulders taking second billing to all the wonderful things that gorgeous mouth could do to her.