Page 15 of Beneath the Beauty (Beauty 2)
He’d said fuck it to playing it cool and come to see her instead, except she wasn’t here. He’d caught her roommate—he hadn’t known she had a roommate—on her way out the door. At least he hadn’t freaked the girl out too much. Courtney, she said her name was. She’d taken one look at his face and said, “Hi, Blake. Nice to meet you.”
He raised his eyebrow. “My reputation precedes me.”
“It does indeed.” She winked. “But Erin’s not here.”
He ran a hand over his face, disappointed but ready to turn around when she stopped him.
“Wait here,” she said, an almost playful expression on her face, hiding a smile.
He saw smiles rarely enough, and never from a stranger these days. “What?”
“Wait here for her to get back.” She glanced at the apartment. “I’m not sure I should leave you in here though.”
“No, you’re right to not let me in. We’ve never met before. I can wait outside.”
She grinned. “Okay, stranger danger. But trust me. Erin wants to see you. And she should be back any minute, considering. I need to get to work anyway, so the apartment will be all yours.” She had emphasized the last two words, as if she fully expected them to get busy in the small run-down apartment.
Well, he was on board with that plan, except it had been twenty minutes since she’d disappeared into the back parking lot where residents needed a card to park. He’d remained in the doorway with an eye on his truck, determined to at least see Erin tonight. If she asked him to leave, well, then he’d go. But he had to make sure she was okay. He felt her unhappiness like a physical weight around his neck. He didn’t believe in that psychic aura stuff, but he’d had a sense of her feeling lost, alone, and he needed to try and fix that. Though maybe there wasn’t any woo-woo explanation for it. Her expression when he’d seen her last was emblazoned in his mind: shock, hurt, betrayal. Things he remembered feeling when Melinda had left him.
He’d made Erin feel that way. Fuck.
“Blake?”
He jerked to the side, relieved to see Erin. He’d had a few words planned, but he was rendered speechless by the sexy black dress she was wearing. Electric lust shot through his body. He wanted to fall on her, to push her up against the wall and…
But no. He could restrain himself. He already looked like a monster. He didn’t have to act like one.
“Hey,” he forced out.
“Uh…what are you doing here?”
Her eyes were guarded, and shit, had she been on a date with someone else?
“I came to talk about what happened today.”
If possible, she seemed to shrink in on herself even further. “Can’t we talk about it tomorrow?”
His eyebrow raised. “On campus?”
That tugged a small smile from her. “Okay, I guess we know where that would end up.”
He doubted he’d be able to keep his hands off her any easier inside her apartment, but he stayed silent as she unlocked the door and led him inside. The apartment was small and rather threadbare. A standard college apartment, modest but comfortable, with thick plaid couches and plywood furnishings and a small potted plant blocking the television.
She caught his gaze. “We call him the Grumpy Geranium.”
He tilted his head in question.
Wandering over, she touched a finger to the pink petals. “I’m not sure how it got started. I think we were drinking. I’m not huge on the party scene, but I’ll go for wine coolers and a movie on Saturday night.”
He hid a smile, imagining her tipsy. She was one of the most serious young women he’d ever met. He would like to see her more relaxed, more open. Of course, there was another way she became more lax, when they were in bed together…. But he wasn’t supposed to be thinking of that.
“Anyway, we named this plant The Grumpy Geranium because he looks kind of mad, don’t you think?”
He looked doubtfully at the flowers. They looked…pretty?
She waved away the silent disagreement. “You had to be drunk. But basically he judges us until we’ve done all our homework and done the dishes and taken out the trash and then we can watch TV. He’s like a guard.” She rubbed a petal between her fingers before looking up, something strange and unsettling in her eyes. “You can sit down, you know. Sorry I didn’t say so sooner.”
Nodding, he found a seat on one end of the couch. She perched on the edge of an ottoman. A far cry from the close embrace they’d shared at his house.
