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Tonight was an emergency cookie kind of night.
Thankfully, there was a little sticky note taped to the front of the bag telling me at what temperature and how long to bake the cookies. I preheated my oven and shuffled to the bathroom to wash my face. I’d come home after work and changed for Hooker’s Paradise, and now I inspected my clothing in the mirror. I needed to get the balance just right for this next confrontation.
I wore jeans that were a little loose and casual-looking, a plain white tank top that hugged my shape, and my favorite knit cardigan, a gorgeous, chunky, emerald-green creation my mother had gifted me before I left for college. A delicate gold necklace with a crescent moon pendant completed the look, and I felt suitably dressed to go confront my neighbor about his being a creature from the depths of hell who’d crawled out of a crack in the earth’s crust to terrorize my town.
But I was getting ahead of myself. With the oven preheated, I put the cookies in and set a timer. It’d give me just enough time to go through some of the emails I’d neglected earlier. When my timer went off, I pulled the cookies out and set them to cool, then crept into my bedroom to stand over the hole.
The towel had survived the day, but it was looking a little crusty. The side table I’d dragged on top of it was still in place, pinning the towel to the ground. I’d need a better barrier.
My ears strained. Were those footsteps I heard? What if he wasn’t home? What if he had company? There was a soft clacking sound, like the keys of a laptop, but I couldn’t be sure. I took another step closer and bent over, closing my eyes as if it would somehow help me listen better.
Silence echoed back. Even the house stopped creaking, as if the walls were trying to hear all of my downstairs neighbor’s secrets right alongside me.
“Are you trying to eavesdrop on me, Reeves?” a rumbling voice asked from the depths below.
I jumped, and the back of my head smacked into the side table. The impact echoed through the room, and the side table teetered into the tub and then slid over to crash onto the ground. The towel sagged over the hole as I stumbled and fell onto my butt, which, incidentally, was still sore from the mistreatment it’d suffered the night before.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, sounding smug. The dog.
“I was not.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Glaring at the hole, I got up and rubbed the ache from my rear, forcing my jaw to remain shut. Now would not be the time to snark the man. I was trying to win him over with cookies.
Speaking of which—I stalked to the kitchen and slid the gorgeous, chocolatey, golden, delicious-smelling cookies onto a plate. He didn’t deserve them.
But these cookies were to honey as Sebastian Anderson was to a fly. A dirty, disease-carrying fly that deserved nothing more than to be trapped in a golden mess where he could suffocate in his own greed.
Smiling, I lifted my chin and picked up the plate. The stairs creaked as I made my way down, the cookies warming my palm through the bottom of the dish. I hesitated for only a moment before rapping my knuckles against Anderson’s door. Seconds stretched as I stood there, long enough that I wondered if I was making a mistake.
Then footsteps padded toward me, the door swung open, and there he was. Damn, Minnie was right. He was as handsome as he was irritating, and he probably relied on his looks to bowl people over with his maniacal plans to take over the world. “What’s this?”
“A peace offering. I made cookies,” I said, lifting the treats and giving him my best, most pleasant smile.
His brows drew together at the sight of it, suspicion entering his gaze. “You,” he drawled, “made cookies?”
I lowered the plate a couple of inches as my smile slipped. “Is that so surprising?”
“You don’t seem like a come-home-and-bake-cookies-for-my-neighbor type of gal.”
“Do you want the cookies or not?”
“No need to get snippy with me, Reeves.”
“I’m trying to be nice here. We’re going to have to work together, and we started off on the wrong foot.”
His lips kicked. “Oh? I didn’t mind how we started off. It’s everything that happened afterward that’s the problem.”
Through sheer strength of will, I kept the steam from escaping out of my ears. “So. Cookies?”
He leaned a shoulder against the doorframe and crossed his arms. “You made them?”
“You don’t have to sound quite so skeptical, Anderson. I’m not trying to poison you.” Only lure you into my trap so you’re lulled into a false sense of security while I campaign my butt off and win this stupid vote and run you out of town. I tried my smile again, which drew his gaze to my lips.
“It’s just a bit of a reversal. I’m not sure how to take it. I’m used to feeling more…” He waved his hands between us. “Animosity. I’m thrown.” His eyes sparkled, and I realized he was enjoying tormenting me. He liked standing there, the lord of the manor, with me scurrying over to him to grovel. I hated him. I hated him with every ounce of my body, and I wished I had had the forethought to poison the damn cookies. I’d have to call Evelyn for her recipe.
“You know what? Forget it. I tried being nice, and it didn’t work. Good night to you, sir.”
