I let out a snorting laugh, smiling big.
Well, it looked like I found my place.
“I definitely, definitely think boys stink.”FOURLeaThe rest of that evening was mostly painless. About an hour after I joined the “boys stink” club and answered a million little girl questions to why I liked Shane (to which I had to come up with an inventive lie) and how I learned to put my makeup on, the rest of the family came looking for us, inviting us in for dessert where I made sure to spark up conversation with Mark, Hunter, and Fee so I could avoid the towering presence of Shane beside me.
After that, we got silently back on his bike and drove to my car. He was surprisingly staid as he handed me my two-fifty and told me with twinkling eyes that held promise that he would see me around.
“Fat chance of that,” I said with a head shake.
Because I was going to avoid his ass like the plague.
The last thing I needed in my life was more uncertainty, more complications, more things to stress myself out over. I just traded one shitty situation in; I didn’t need to test drive another.
But I couldn’t complain.
I had two-fifty from Shane and the hundred from his brothers that would make it possible to not go hungry as I waited for my first paycheck from Fiona. And it was a whopper of a paycheck too. Apparently phone sex was booming. I blamed video games. A whole generation of men used to huddling together in their parents’ basements killing fictional characters and never learning how to interact with anyone, let alone the opposite sex. But thank God for those socially awkward freaks because they allowed my cabinets to fill up, my fridge to be overflowing, and my closets to get a few more clothes on the hangers.
The night shift took some getting used to and I was running pretty fully on caffeine and slips of sleep. So when I got home after a long shift, wanting to take a shower to wash off the slimy words of my last caller who really needed to have his ass thrown in jail he was so creepy, and reached for the knob in the shower and water started spurting everywhere?
Yeah, I kind of flipped shit.
The water, like always, was frigid and had already started to completely overflow my tub, my entire body soaked from my fumbling, when I finally found the number for the company that owned the building. The robot at MBRO Corporation informed me that it was after hours (in the middle of the day) and that I could leave a message and someone would get back to me as soon as possible.
“This is 2D. My bathroom tap is broken and there is water everywhere. I swear to fuck if you don’t get your lazy, cheapskate, slumlord ass over to my apartment right about fucking now, I am going to report you to every agency I can find until they fine you so fucking much that you’ll be living in a God damn cardboard box on the street.”
I ended the call, charging back into my bathroom, frantically looking around for the cut-off and finding it nowhere, knowing that in some apartments, for fuck knew what reason aside from maybe shitty construction, the switch wasn’t in every unit. I cursed the piece of shit building in new and inventive ways until I heard a sharp rapping at my door.
Sure it was the neighbor below who likely had water dripping through their ceiling, I was yelling as I threw a mass of soaked hair over my shoulder. “I already called the slumlord,” I called, reaching for the locks and sliding them. “It’s not my fault they run a…”
The rest of my sentence got cut off mainly by my own surprise.
Because there in my doorway in jeans and a gray tee, with a big, busted toolbox in his hand, looking way too freaking good right about then, was none other than Shane freaking Mallick.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
His lips tipped up, looking me up and down leisurely, surely seeing my nipples poking out of my shirt and bra thanks to the soaked, freezing material. When his eyes found mine again, they were a little wicked. “Lazy, cheapskate slumlord at your service,” he said, giving me an easy smile.
No.
No freaking way was Shane my God damn landlord.
Also, no way was he such a shitty landlord.
“You own this building?”
“Yep. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to stop that fucking leak before we get five different kinds of mold that will condemn this place.”
With that, he pushed in past me, brushing into my shoulder in the process and a shiver coursed through me that had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I was soaked to my skivvies. I stood there numbly for a long moment, taking deep breaths.