Chapter 7 Seth
SETH
The next morning, I knock on Kayla’s door, feeling like a giant ass. She pulls the door open, and her eyes widen in surprise when she sees me.
“You’re the seagull guy,” she exclaims.
“Kayla, isn’t it?” As if I didn’t know. “I work for Sunset Security.”
I pretend to be as surprised as she is by the coincidence, all the while hoping my guilt doesn’t show through.
“No way!” she says, her eyes sparkling.
I pull out my ID card, aware of how she might feel about a strange man coming into her home.
She squints at my photo, then opens the door wide and ushers me through.
“Come on in.”
The hallway is narrow with a closed door on either side, which I’m guessing are the bedrooms. The living room is at the end of the hall. It contains a single couch and television with a blanket draped over it, which sends a rush of guilt through me.
The fabric on the couch is worn, and there’re cracks in the paint of the walls. The place is rundown, a world away from the pictures I’ve seen of the house Kayla grew up in. But she doesn’t seem to mind.
“You want a coffee?”
I nod, and Kayla goes through to the kitchen. As she gets the coffee, she tells me again what happened last night. I nod at all the right places, the guilt in the pit of my stomach making it churn.
I make a show of looking over the TV, and she winces when I turn it on and ducks back into the kitchen.
There’s a single window in the living room that looks out over the bay, and a small table is pushed against it with two rickety wooden chairs. I set my laptop up here as Kayla puts the coffee on the table.
I take her through a password reset and get a system reboot going. I could have done this remotely. I don’t need to be here at all, but I wasn’t going to turn down a chance to get to know Kayla.
“Do you live around here?” she asks.
Kayla’s sitting at the kitchen table, a mug of coffee clasped in her hand. Her long hair falls over her shoulders and catches the morning light streaming in the window. She looks like an angel sitting there like that.
I pull out the chair next to her. My fingers itch to run through her hair, and I tap them on the wooden tabletop before I do something stupid.
“I live further up the coast,” I say vaguely. I don’t know if she’s being polite or if she’s genuinely interested. “But I like Temptation Bay. I come here sometimes.”
It’s not entirely false. I’ve been here exactly twice. Once to accidently run into Kayla feeding the seagulls and then today.
“Have you lived here long?”
I hate making small talk, but I don’t want to scare her by asking the big questions, like, will you go out with me? What do your lips taste like? And can I touch your hair? Yeah, even in my head I sound creepy as fuck.
I run a hand through my hair, frustrated at my awkwardness. If I was someone like Bronn, I’d sweep in here, tell her she’s mine, and drag her away to my cave.
But I’m not a caveman. I’m a computer geek with a bad leg, and even though I know Kayla’s mine, even though I’ve never felt this attraction to a woman before, I don’t know how the fuck to proceed.
“I moved here a few weeks ago.” She tilts her head sideways, and a strand of hair falls over her eyes. My fingers tap harder.
“How did you know I wasn’t a local?” she asks.
My gaze sweeps over her silky hair and soft skin, the designer t-shirt. Even her pink satin slippers with delicate bows are designer.
“You don’t look like a local.”
She looks down at herself, at the big designer logo splashed across her t-shirt, and laughs.
“Yeah. I guess I should try to blend in more.”
I chuckle, and it feels good, laughing with this woman.
She leans an elbow on the table and looks out the window, and it’s all I can do not to lean forward and kiss her.
Instead, I check the system reboot on the TV and set a software update going.
“You need to be anywhere? Because this could take a few hours?”
She shrugs. “I work in the cafe downstairs, but Mira is covering for me today.”
The fact she’s telling me where she works means she’s starting to trust me, which makes me feel like an even bigger asshole.
I swear to myself that even though I know the new password, I’m not hacking her TV again. When I get back to my place, I’m getting out of all of Kayla’s devices.
I thought I was attracted to Kayla when I saw her photo, but in the flesh, it’s more than that. She’s smart and funny and beautiful. She’s the kind of woman I could fall in love with.
“Do you want to get lunch with me?”
I blurt it out before I have a chance to change my mind. I hate putting myself out there, but for Kayla, I’ll bury my awkwardness.
She looks surprised and then a fearful look crosses her face.
I hold my hands up in a friendly gesture. “There’s a fish-and-chip shop in town. We could get takeout and eat it on the pier, save some for our seagull friends.”
I’m hoping that sounds nonthreatening and public enough to not scare her away.
“Sure,” she says, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “That would be nice.”
I tap at my keyboard, pretending to do some diagnostics on the TV, but the truth is, I can’t look at her right now in case she sees straight through me.
The perfect woman just agreed to go out with me. Now I just need to not fuck it up.