I knew I’d made a mistake when the guy called me “sweetie”
twice in a row.
Because I was pretty sure the man I was on a date with couldn’t remember my name.
If I was going to be honest with myself, the pool of pity and hurt and anger that I had been swimming in for the last few days didn’t help anything either. As much as I told myself to suck it up and handle what I had learned about my sisters—as much as I told myself to forgive them
—I hadn’t. Not yet. I hadn’t even been able to tell Lenny about any of it, much less Lily. I was so… just… on edge. I hadn’t said a word to anyone over it.
So that entire situation didn’t help anything at all.
It didn’t change a single thing either, which was why I hadn’t cancelled the date I had been set up on.
Like a whole lot of things in my life, it was turning out to be a giant mistake. A giant freaking mistake.
That knowledge only settled even more in my head when my date kept glancing around the round table we were sitting at, and asked, “You sure you’re not married?”
I only barely held back a frown. “Yes.” I paused. “Why?”
He was taller than me, with dark black hair and a smirk I had thought was okay when I saw it on my phone—Lydia had sent me a sneaky picture of him. Apparently, he was a physical therapist at the same clinic that she worked at. You would have figured that by making his living dealing with people, he would have been warm, but he was just kind of… aggressive and not charming at all.
He’d tried to kiss my cheek the instant he’d come over, and I wasn’t about that life. I liked making people feel comfortable and welcomed,
but I didn’t want some stranger putting his saliva on me. If we had been friends, that would have been a different story.
But this guy and I were not.
“Some guy has been staring over here like he wants to kill somebody for the last thirty minutes,” my date answered, still flicking his gaze around Mickey’s.
“I’m not married,” I confirmed, not bothering to tell him that I hadn’t had a boyfriend in years either, so the chances of me having a jealous ex stalking me were slim to none.
The man’s eyes locked on something over my shoulder. “You sure?” he asked for confirmation again, shifting around in his seat. Squirming, he was squirming.
“Yeah.” I almost turned completely around to see who he was talking about but decided not to.
We were only thirty minutes into this date, and I was about ready to get home.
If I was going to be honest with myself, I’d been ready to get home before I’d even left it.
“Huh,” the guy hummed before tearing his gaze back to my direction. “What were we talking about before?”
That confirmed it. He had no clue what my name was. That was for sure. “You were telling me about your job,” I responded, hearing the enthusiasm in my voice. Not.
He shrugged. “Oh. Nothin’ much to tell. That was it. Lydia said you… paint?”
“Yeah.” “Like art?”
I knew for a fact I had told him specifically what kind of painting I did fifteen minutes ago when he’d first asked me this exact same question. I decided to spell it out for him. “No. Cars. Trucks. Automobiles.”
He blinked. “No shit?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed, watching his face as he got really thoughtful.
He was attractive, but there was something about him that was just…. “Like you paint cars a different color?” he asked.
There was more to it than that but… “Yeah.” He was still squirming. “Isn’t that—”
I knew exactly where this crap was going. “—you know, more of a man’s job?”
“No,” I told him patiently. “I do it too, and I’m not a man.”
I should have stayed home. Being alone was better than being here with a man who didn’t know what my name was.
“Why?” he asked all of a sudden.
I finally couldn’t suppress my frown. “Why what?” “Isn’t there something else you can do?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I like it. I’m good at it. Why would I do something else?”
This jerk had the nerve to laugh.
I bit the inside of my cheek and grabbed the Sprite between us, taking a long sip and wondering how the hell I had gotten myself into this position. Why? Why were my dates just such major fails? Was everything in my life destined to—
Stop.
I was fine. I was loved. I had a good job. I had everything and more.
Patience. Patience. I was going to choose patience.
“You the only girl where you work?” he asked, back to looking around, and I guess not letting this topic go.
I raised my eyebrow at him as I said, “Uh-huh.”
The face he made was like see? Like he thought he was making a point.
But he didn’t know the only point he was making was that he was a big douchebag who might be a bit sexist.
“I don’t think I could let my girl work with a bunch of horny guys,” he said, still giving me that patronizing expression.
I snickered. “Why would they be horny?” “Because.”
What an imbecile. “Yeah, I don’t work with any guys that have constant boners. I don’t know what kind of guys you work with, but mine… never. And if they do, they don’t go around whipping them out for me to look at.”
The dead-eyed glare he gave me had me expecting the worst, and his next comment didn’t surprise me. “Lydia said you were really nice… something wrong with you?”
I shook my head and couldn’t help but raise my hands up to my face and laugh. “Yeah, I think maybe this is over. Can we agree on that?”
I should have been thankful he responded with “I think you’re right” almost immediately.
But instead, I was relieved and still numb.
I hadn’t exactly been looking forward to tonight, but I had expected… something better than this. I would have rather gotten stood
up than this. I needed to just get home, call Lily, and let her cheer me up.
Neither one of us said much as I hailed the waitress and she brought us our check, splitting it Dutch when he didn’t offer to pay for my one and only drink, because that’s what kind of date it had been.
The topping on the sundae was the man getting up and leaving with a “Yeah, see ya.”
And by the time I stood up and turned around, I forgot to look around at whoever he’d been talking about that was staring over.
I didn’t care.
There was never a big guy or a small guy or any kind of guy there for me either, and it made my heart hurt just a little. I was just feeling pretty darn sorry for myself, and that didn’t help anything.
I wasn’t about to give up on dating even though this wasn’t exactly going so well, but what did I expect? To find a soul mate in two dates? In weeks? Months?
Lily liked to watch this show on TV about people who were set up in arranged marriages, and I had never really thought it was that weird, contrary to her beliefs that she could never marry a total stranger. But now… I could definitely see the appeal in it. What was wrong with someone who wanted to be in a relationship? Someone who cared about you and wanted the best for you, wanted to have a family with you. What was a relationship if there wasn’t respect in it?
I wanted someone who wanted to be with me, and not just as a booty call.
In the meantime, I had a nice comfy bed at home I could go to bed early in.
My spidey senses went off the second I parked my car in my
driveway.
For one, I knew I’d left the porch lights on. I was paranoid about someone hiding in the dark and attacking me from the bushes. I wouldn’t play around with my safety.
Two, my front door being wide open, like a gaping maw in the dark, would confirm that something wasn’t normal. Under no circumstance would I have left the door open. I was known for getting back out of my car and checking the front door if I couldn’t clearly remember tugging on the handle after locking it.
And third… if the lights I knew hadn’t been left off and the door being wide open hadn’t been enough, bits and pieces of broken wooden frame being all over the porch would have confirmed that someone had broken into my place. Through the front door.
Someone had broken into my place. Someone had broken into my place. Shit.
SHIT.
Pressing my fingertips over my brow bone, something ugly and warm and… just horrible… instantly filled my chest. And my throat. And my mouth. And the urge to throw up blew up in my throat and—
Think, Luna.
Trying to calm that beast in my body, I pulled my phone out of my purse, searched for the number to the police department, and hit the call icon.
Then I ignored how bad my hand was shaking and how bad I wanted to throw up and how worried I was at the fact that someone had broken into my house. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood. It was quiet. If the house had been fully remodeled when I’d moved in, it would have easily been four times the price I had gotten it. Even the realtor had told me I had scored it as a foreclosure.
It had been old, but steady.
While I would have been perfectly happy with any style of house, the instant Lenny had driven me by the dilapidated bungalow in desperate need of a paint job and a remodel to bring it up to this century, I had fallen in love.
And now, someone had gone into the one and only place that had only ever been mine. They might have stolen things I’d worked my ass off for. They might have gone through my drawers and personal things.
Don’t cry. Your insurance should cover everything. It was just stuff. You’re happy. Healthy. You’re safe. You’re alive. You still have a job. It’s just stuff. It’s just stuff. It doesn’t matter.
But one glance at the kicked-in door made all the hairs on my back stand up.
A door can be fixed. An alarm can be set. A deadbolt put on.
“Thank you for calling the Houston—”
It took about twenty minutes to talk to the police department and let them know what had happened.
Stay there, they had said.
But all I had to do was look up at that door….
I shivered. Then I shivered some more as I stood there, staring into the darkened house….
Another wracking shiver down my spine had me reaching for my phone. Had me dialing the number in my phone. There was one ring before the voice mail picked up. “This is Allen Cooper of Cooper’s—”
I had forgotten he turned off his phone while he slept. Okay. All right.
Focus, Luna.
I took a breath and dialed another number. It rang. It kept ringing and ringing and ringing, until, “The voice mail box you have reached is full
—”
Lenny was asleep too. Okay. That was fine. I could do this. I could— Someone had broken into my house. Someone might have taken my things. Gone through my laundry. Been in the room I slept in. Someone had kicked in my door. Someone could do it again… this mean, evil voice
in my head whispered, making me swallow as I stared at the front door.
I’d locked it without a shadow of a doubt. The same lock I had always put on every night. The lock that was supposed to keep people out, supposed to keep me safe.
Tears swelled up in my eyes all of a sudden, stinging, uncomfortable, shitty tears that made me glad I was all alone. I was a sucker. I was a sucker with terrible luck. I should have been used to it. You’d figure I would be.
But I’d be fine. I would. I’d be all right. Things could be worse. Taking a breath through my nose, I glanced back toward the wide-
open door leading into the place I had felt so safe at for so long. I didn’t let myself cry.
But if a couple of tears slipped out of my eyes, I sucked in a breath and pretended they hadn’t.
I stood there and just stared at the door, telling myself to go in. What were the chances there was someone inside?
Someone inside. How could there have been someone in my house?
What if I’d been in there too?
Crouching down, I just stayed there, staring at the dark hole. The police would get here when they got here. I wasn’t going to go inside. Not alone.
My hands went up to my cheeks without thinking, wiping at my face slowly. I set my hand on my chest and for some reason thought about the necklace I had put on Rip. He still hadn’t given it back. Just as quickly as
that thought came into my head, it slipped right back out as I focused on the front of my house again.
Everything would be fine. It would.
