“What’s wrong?”
My gaze snaps to Alyssa standing at my counter, her long blonde hair a little frizzy and a lot wavy since she took it out of the braid. She’s not naked, though. She grabbed one of my T-shirts and put it on, and now she stands here in my kitchen looking over at me while she absently whisks something in a bowl on the counter.
I open my mouth and close it again, then I look at the door.
“What…? Why’s the door open?”
“Oh.” She looks back at it. “I let Scout out to go potty. I was going to wait and let you do it, but he was whining at the door, so I didn’t see any point in making him wait.”
Still frowning, I walk over next to her and peer into the bowl. “What are you doing over here?”
“Making breakfast,” she tells me. “This is the last of your eggs, by the way. You need to get some more.”
I stand there, confused as hell, and watch her finish scrambling the eggs and move over to the stove. Without needing conversation, I guess, she whips up the eggs, takes a grapefruit I had on the counter, slices it in half, and then puts it on a plate with the eggs and hands it to me.
“I had to improvise,” she tells me. “You desperately need to go grocery shopping.”
Damn sure didn’t expect her to make me breakfast, but okay.
I shake my head, walking over to the fridge and grabbing some orange juice. “Want some?” I ask her as I open the cabinet overhead where I keep my drink glasses.
“Yes, please.”
Most of the time I eat standing at the counter, but since Alyssa went to the trouble of making breakfast, this morning we sit down and eat at the kitchen table.
I’m still confused as hell that she got out of bed when she knew I was in the shower and didn’t try to leave, but I don’t want to ask her about it, because maybe she’s just not that bright and it didn’t cross her mind to leave. If that’s the case, I’d hate to be the one to give her the idea.
“So, Theo mentioned you brought flyers around advertising your babysitting services. Did you have other clients?”
Glancing up at me, she says, “Yeah, I have a few regulars.”
“Sleep with any of the other fathers?”
She slides me a look of clear disapproval. “That’s not very nice.”
I shrug, taking a bite of grapefruit. “It’s an honest question.”
She rolls her eyes but answers me anyway. “No, I did not sleep with any of the other fathers.”
“That’s good. Seems like it’d be bad for business.”
“Unless it was a single dad,” she shoots back. “Then it could be very good for business. I bet he’d be a repeat customer.”
I crack a smile, shaking my head at her. “I guess you gotta make money somehow, huh?”
“I’m just kidding,” she tells me, her tone more amiable. “None of the other fathers came on to me, only Theo. And aside from you last night, he’s the only man I’ve been with, in case you were wondering.”
“Man seems a generous term for Theo,” I mutter. “So, are any of these other clients gonna notice you missing?”
Before we left her house last night, since her sister hadn’t come home yet, I decided to have her leave a note instead of sending that text message. Texting her sister that she was going to sleep would have bought me time last night, but it wouldn’t have explained her disappearance the next morning. When my plan was to kill her and dump her body, that would’ve been okay. Someone would have noticed her missing before long, anyway.
Now that she’s alive and well at my house, though, that complicates things. She’s still a missing person, but I don’t want her to look like one, because then people might start searching for her. Then it becomes a whole thing.
To buy myself a few days to figure out what I want to do with her, I had her leave a note saying she got a last-minute call from one of her babysitting customers and had to go babysit for the weekend. I knew she was willing to do overnights since she did one for Bri and Theo for their anniversary, so it shouldn’t seem too out of the ordinary.
Less ordinarily, she had to say they picked her up and brought her to their house, since her car is still parked in the driveway at hers.
The clock is definitely ticking.
“Depends on how long you keep me here,” Alyssa answers. “I’m supposed to do a job Thursday night, and since you didn’t let me bring my phone, I can’t message them and cancel. I’ve never not shown up for work, never called off, so if I don’t show up Thursday night at their place, they’ll probably think something is wrong.”