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“When will you be back?” I reached down to grab my backpack and the books he gave me. And to hide my flaming face.
“I can’t say for sure, but maybe by tomorrow. I hope you’re a fast reader.”
I opened the car door. I needed to get out, needed to put space between us. “Please. Faster than a speeding bullet. Even with the whole”—I twirled one finger in a circle beside my head, giving him the international sign for crazy—“thing, I was ranked in the top five of my junior class.” I shut the car door for emphasis. “Actually, top three.”
“Funny, gorgeous, and a genius. What a package.” He backed out of the parking space, smiling as he drove away.
I loved that he left crazy off the list.
I loved it even more that he would never think to add it.
Chapter 18
The binder Michael gave me overflowed with detailed information, making me cross-eyed. I gave it all I had for half an hour, decided I needed sugar and caffeine, and went to grind some beans I’d snagged from Murphy’s Law for a fresh pot of coffee.
Instead of watching it drip, I did my good deed for the day and cleared the countertops of all the piled-up papers. I pinned tiny white cards with dates and times for obstetrician’s appointments scribbled on them to the corkboard on the wall, threw away old newspapers, and saved unopened bills. I’d just finished spraying down the counters when a long beep sounded to tell me my coffee was brewed. I leaned down to put the spray cleaner under the sink and spotted something barely sticking out from underneath the cabinets.
Dru’s key ring.
Maybe the excitement of the pregnancy was making Dru forgetful, because it was totally unlike Dru to lose anything. Yet her keys, including the master, lay on the floor right in front of me.
By accident.
Or by fate.
I wanted to know more about Michael. I didn’t expect anyone from my family to be home for at least another hour, and since Michael was out of town, what kept me from slipping next door, sliding the key into the lock, and taking a quick look around? Maybe Michael left a candle burning. Maybe he forgot to turn off his iron, or the oven. Maybe he left his dishwasher running and it was flooding the place, or a thirsty plant desperately needed water.
Maybe I was way out of line.
I held the key ring by the master key, swinging it back and forth in front of my eyes. Yes or no, yes or no. I was saved from any further contemplation of breaking and entering when the phone rang. Dru sounded more harried than I’d ever heard her.
“Em, thank goodness you’re there. I didn’t have Michael’s cell, and the guys are coming from the storage place to pick up the master for the building so they can deliver his sofa. But I don’t have my keys because I couldn’t find them this morning and he’s not answering at his loft and I think I left them—”
“Calm down,” I said, laughing. “I have your keys.”
“Oh, thank goodness.” She took a deep breath. Good choice. “Can you let the movers in?”
My smile spread wide enough to rival the Grinch’s. “Absolutely.”
The delivery guys did their job quickly. To justify the excuse to linger, I set off to look for any plants affected by drought.
Even though he’d lived in it for only a few days, the apartment smelled like Michael. Clean, like laundry fresh from a clothesline with a hint of something else, maybe pheromones. I caught a whiff of his citrusy cologne and almost forgot what I was doing. I gave myself a mental smack.
Focus. Here to spy.
Dru furnished Michael’s place with items from her stock storage, and the design was simple. It suited his personality. The only concession was a complicated-looking computer. I bumped the corner of the table it sat on with my hip, jostling the mouse. When the computer blinked to life, the screen showed that it was password protected.
Every loft had built-in bookshelves. Most of Michael’s were filled with modern decorative accessories, courtesy of Dru. Two held personal items. On the first was a book of poetry by Byron, along with novels by Kurt Vonnegut, Orson Scott Card, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I realized I’d never asked him about his major. Probably wasn’t time travel. I didn’t think our local college was quite that progressive.
The second shelf held photographs. One obviously of his family when he was younger—his dad wasn’t in the picture. Another showed an adolescent Michael laughing with an older man at a lake, fishing paraphernalia scattered around. I peered closer. No resemblance.
A stack of photos lay facedown on the shelf. I flipped through them. Graduation shots, a group on a ski trip, someone’s eighteenth birthday party, and then, last in the pile, a girl wearing a princess costume with dark auburn hair and a wide smile. At first I thought it was Michael’s sister, but something about the girl in the picture was different, maybe the perfect shape of her oval face or her porcelain skin. Jealousy rolled in my stomach. She looked mysterious and exotic and … tall.
In the kitchen, I opened a couple of cabinets and the fridge. Nothing much, unless you counted energy drinks and frozen dinners. A box of Fruity Pebbles sat on his counter. Men.
A moment of hesitation stopped me at his bedroom door. People were less likely to be careful with what they left lying around in their bedrooms. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I was afraid of what I would find. I took a deep breath and clasped my hands behind my back.
If the scent of Michael when I opened the front door hadn’t already prepared me, when I walked into his bedroom I might have just shoved my face in his pillow and stayed. His bed was made and, as I thought, situated directly on the other side of the wall from mine. No wonder I couldn’t sleep.
