Chapter 4
FOUR
Lucy taped a shipping label to the last box of a big order and let out a satisfied sigh. Her online business was growing, which had kept her afloat these last months. But things were tough online, with lots of intense competition. If she could only tap into the thriving local economy, she could expand her business in a meaningful new direction.
Moving the box to the corner of her living room where outgoing orders lived, Lucy crossed to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Unfortunately, it hadn’t magically replenished itself in the two hours since she’d last looked. She closed the fridge and opened the pantry. Things were equally bleak in there, so she shut the door and went back to the fridge.
They say when you stare into the empty fridge, the empty fridge stares back. Nietzsche was on to something with that one.
Lucy shut the door and opened the drawer where her takeout menus were stored.
She’d just hung up with the local Thai joint, assured that her usual order would be at her door in twenty minutes, when the apartment buzzer went off. Strange. Maybe it was Scarlett stopping by after she closed up the flower shop? She did that some evenings, since the shop was just around the corner from Lucy’s place.
But it was later than usual, and Scarlett would have locked up over three hours ago.
“Hello?” she said into the intercom.
“Lucy, it’s Cormac.”
Frowning, she studied the outdated intercom system. It had no screen, only a yellowing box with two buttons on it which had probably been white at one point in the far-distant past. Lucy stared at it, wondering if she’d heard correctly. “Sorry?”
“Let me in.”
She blinked, and the call cut off. The intercom buzzed again. She answered. “Hello?”
“Lucy, unlock the door.”
His growly voice wasn’t scary, and it definitely didn’t send a tremor through Lucy’s thighs. Nuh-uh. Her jaw unhinged and words came out. “You could say please.”
There was a pause, then, “Lucy, unlock the door, please .”
“What are you doing here?”
“ Lucy .”
Another quake trembled through her middle, and Lucy had to lean against the wall for support. “Fine, fine.” She pressed the button to unlock the building’s entrance, and a short minute or so later, a knock sounded on her apartment door.
The peephole told her that Cormac had indeed decided to visit her home this evening. She opened. He loomed in the doorway, fascinated by the jamb. What an odd, gigantic, beautiful man. He traced the frame with his fingers, frowning when he got to the latch mechanism on the door. He crouched down to inspect it, and Lucy inspected him. He hadn’t said a word to her.
Reason returned to her mind, and Lucy frowned. “Uh—hello? What are you doing? And what are you doing here ?”
“Someone could break through this door in two seconds flat,” he said, sounding unimpressed.
“Well, that’s comforting.”
He muscled his way inside and flicked her lock back and forth a couple of times, clicking his tongue in disgust. “This lock is a piece of crap. Why don’t you have a deadbolt?”
“This is a rental,” she explained. “I have no control over the deadbolt situation.”
Cormac closed the door and threw the lock before turning to face her. “You have an alarm system?” He scanned the room, presumably searching for this mythical security system somewhere between her secondhand couch and the end table her dad had made from reclaimed wood.
Her hands planted themselves on her hips. He had a lot of nerve barging in here like this. “What do you think? This building is a fifty-year-old walkup that smells of stale cigarettes and cat pee. Sometimes when there’s a really windy day, the fire alarms go off.”
His eyes were very blue as he stared at her. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “So that’s a no?”
“Of course it’s a no! What are you even doing here?” She folded her arms, trying a new pose to see if it succeeded in intimidating him (it didn’t). “How did you get my address?”
“It was on your contract forms.”
“That’s a total breach of privacy,” she said to his back as he crossed the room to inspect the window at the far end of the galley kitchen.
“This window doesn’t have a lock.” He shoved it open for emphasis, which was actually pretty impressive because the window had been painted shut and Lucy hadn’t been able to open it in the three years she’d lived here. The man was a freak of nature. It’s not like he was bulging with muscle, he was just lean and cut and strong . He glanced outside for a second, scanning up, down, and to either side of the window, then turned to meet her gaze over his shoulder.
That’s when it sank in that Cormac McKenna was in her apartment . And she was wearing sweatpants, a fuzzy cardigan, and no bra. She crossed the cardigan over her chest and glared. “Listen, if you’re trying to drum up some more work for your business, I have to say, this is not the way to do it.”
He closed the window and turned to face her, leaning against the sill. When he crossed his arms, they bulged. Lucy amended her previous opinion about the size of his muscles. They were big, it’s just that they were proportional to the rest of him, which was also big.
The apartment suddenly felt very small.
Cormac held her gaze. “If this Phillips guy is serious about coming after you, you’ve got to take your personal security more seriously.”
“Okay. I’ll…take that under advisement. But, really, it’s not that bad. You’d need to get through the front door to get in in the first place, and that’s not easy. It’s always locked, and you need a fob to get in.”
Cormac opened his mouth to retort, but someone knocked on the door before he had a chance. Lucy opened to see the usual delivery guy from the Thai place. He nodded toward the stairs. “The front door was open,” he explained, extending the bag of food toward her. “I don’t think the latch is working properly.”
Lucy cringed. “Right. Thanks.”
She paid, got her food, and studiously avoided Cormac’s gaze, even though she could feel it like an itch between her shoulders. It made her want to squirm.
“Last week we covered the Wedding Expo plans and your rivalry with Phillips,” he finally said in the tense silence. “How about you tell me about the business in general? Then we can move on to the packages that got stolen out of your car and the reviews spamming your online listing, and we can finish up with him letting the air out of your tires.”
Lucy placed the bag containing her dinner on the counter. “You heard about that, huh?”
“It would have been good to know ahead of time.”
She shot him a sideways glance. “It didn’t seem relevant.”
“He’s escalating, Lucy.”
The sound of her name on his lips went straight to her clit, which was ridiculous. Yes, he had a beautifully deep voice and he was looming gorgeously at the end of her kitchen. So what? It’s not like he wanted to bend her over the counter and screw her senseless.
She gripped the edge of the cabinet. Unless…
Lucy glanced over. He was rubbing his jaw and scowling at the yellowed linoleum flooring. “I can’t figure out why this guy would be so upset about wedding invitations.”
Nope.
Feeling stupid, she turned back to the bag of takeout. Clearly, the furthest thing from Cormac’s mind was Lucy’s sex appeal, such as it was. She hiked up her sweatpants and noticed a stain on the left thigh. Really, how could he resist her?
“Tell me more about your business,” he repeated.
Containers of green curry, jasmine rice, and tom yum soup got unloaded and spread out on Lucy’s countertop while she pondered his question. “Okay,” she said, glancing over, “but first you have to tell me why you showed up here at eight o’clock at night.”
His jaw was cut granite. It looked like it took great effort to crank it open before he said, “I wanted to know how much of a liability your home would be in the event that shit hits the fan with Phillips.”
Lucy turned back to her food, peeling the lids off the containers. “And is this something you do with all clients?”
“Yes,” he answered, and Lucy couldn’t tell if he was being truthful or not. She shot him a skeptical look and he amended, “I don’t like that he’s escalating his threats. It…worries me.”
Well, wasn’t that just great? She’d hired Elite Security mostly to settle fears. She was ninety-nine percent convinced that those fears were entirely ridiculous. Cormac’s company was backup that would never in a million years be needed, hired because of a tiny niggle at the back of her mind. Hiring them for the Wedding Expo was overkill. It had to be.
Yet Cormac was here, after hours, because he was worried about the Stirling Stationery Man, which meant her fears weren’t ridiculous at all.
“Elton’s working on a full background check on the guy,” he continued. “But I want to know why he’s obsessed with you. That’s why I’m here.”
“Obsessed, wow,” Lucy said, mind spinning. She didn’t want to think about anyone being obsessed, so she covered her jolt of terror by slapping a grin on her face. “So what you’re saying is, you’re here because I’m special.”
“Our contract covers the full day of the event, including getting you home. I have a duty of care to make sure we leave you somewhere safe.”
Her grin melted off. She spooned some rice into a bowl and covered it with green curry. “Right. So what you’re saying is, I’m not special at all.”
“You’re special, all right,” Cormac replied, and it didn’t sound like a compliment. Lucy glared.
When Cormac’s eyes flashed with amusement, it made Lucy’s heart thump. The man had that big, growly protector thing going on, but when his eyes lit up, it softened his harsh edges. It made him human. Almost…cuddly. The way grizzly bears were cuddly when they were pacing around a flimsy tent in a campground, sniffing at tasty, terrified humans ensconced in their sleeping bags within.
She turned back to her food. “You hungry?”
“No, thank you,” he replied, then meandered into her living room. “I already ate.”
She spooned delicious Thai green curry into her gob while Cormac loomed over her desk, paging through samples of invitations and menus she’d printed in preparation for the Wedding Expo.
“What’s this?” he asked, holding up a band of patterned paper.
“That’s a band of paper,” she said before taking another bite. She didn’t know why she wanted to antagonize him. Maybe she wanted to see that light in his eyes again.
“That explains everything,” he replied, turning the band over to unfold it.
Lucy sighed, setting her food down. “Here, let me show you.” She took an invitation, an RSVP card, and a note on gifts and wrapped them in the band before sliding them into a thick envelope. Every item was thick and luxurious, the invitation embossed and the notes printed with quality inks. It looked fantastic. “See? Pretty.”
Cormac watched, brows furrowed. “People pay for this stuff?”
Glaring, Lucy tossed the envelope back on her desk and returned to her food. Cormac let her eat in peace while he inspected the envelope she’d just tossed aside, only lifting his gaze to her when she’d finished washing her bowl and spoon.
“It’s nice,” he said unconvincingly, lifting the envelope, which was the most pathetic olive branch ever.
“You don’t have to pretend to get it, Cormac. But this business means a lot to me, and people pay me good money to make those silly bands of paper.”
He watched for a moment, then dipped his head. “Understood.” The way he said that single word made Lucy straighten. It sounded like he did understand—like he could relate. Then he frowned, eyes returning to the stack of samples she’d bring to the Expo. “I still don’t get why Phillips is so antagonistic.”
Lucy joined him at the desk and straightened a stack of invitations. “Neither do I. Most of my business is online. I’m just trying to carve out a small revenue stream locally because there are so many weddings in Stirling every year. He owns an actual brick-and-mortar store in town, and it’s been there for decades. I’m not trying to compete with that. There’s more than enough room for the both of us.”
“Maybe he’s threatened.”
“Maybe,” she agreed.
“Money, sex, and power,” he said. “We’re hitting all three.”
“Excuse me,” Lucy reared back. “I have not had sex with the Stirling Stationery Man.”
“No, but you’re an attractive woman. A man looks at you, some part of his brain is thinking about sex.”
Lucy didn’t quite know how to respond to that. She shut down the part of her own brain that was trying to point out that Cormac was including himself in his observation. He was, after all, a man, who presumably was looking at her and thinking about sex.
She shifted to cover the stain on her sweatpants with her palm, evidently oozing sex appeal like an open wound.
“Money is obvious. You’re edging in on his turf.” He waved a hand toward her desk, still frowning. “We covered sex. But power? How much power can the stationery business have in this town?”
“Two out of three ain’t bad.”
Cormac hummed and surveyed her living room, gaze snagging on the lampshade she’d reupholstered herself with blue-and-white floral fabric and the pictures of her parents clustered on the far wall. “You should get a dog,” he mused.
“My lease says no animals. Which reminds me—you need to leave before I get in trouble.”
Cormac slowly spun around to stare at her, incredulity lighting his features.
Lucy blinked at him, smiling sweetly. A perverse sense of satisfaction warmed her with every new expression that flickered across Cormac’s stoic features. He was a mountain of a man who presented himself as an immovable force, a protector, a guardian. But beneath that shell, she could tell there was more to Cormac’s personality than he liked to reveal. She wanted to needle him until he cracked.
“I see now,” he said in a low, silky voice, “exactly why Phillips decided to target you.”
She couldn’t have stopped the smile that bloomed across her face if she tried. The man had a sense of humor. That pleased her more than it should.
He stalked toward the door, his big body moving with the liquid grace of someone who wouldn’t be easy to stop in a fight. Opening the door to stand on the threshold, he met her gaze. “Lock the door behind me.”
She saluted. “Yes, sir.”
His eyes flashed, but he didn’t respond before closing the door. She followed his instructions, crossing the room to throw the lock. It wasn’t until the bolt slid home that she heard quiet footsteps descending the stairs on the other side.