“Yes,” she said. “I figured it was probably better to take a mental health day, especially since my mother doesn’t expect me to be in the office until Friday morning.”
“Perfect. Would you be up for a little outing?”
She felt her eyebrows lifting. “I was just going to hang out and relax — ”
“This would be relaxing,” he cut in. “Someplace to go and decompress for the afternoon.”
Come to think of it, a change of scenery might be a good idea. Yes, she’d been in Laughlin for a few days, but it wasn’t as if she’d done any decompressing while she was there.
Pretty much the opposite, really.
“All right,” she said. “As long as it’s not rock climbing or whitewater rafting or something like that. I don’t think I have it in me right now.
He made an amused sound. “No, I don’t expect anything like that from you. But wear something comfortable, maybe some hiking shoes if you’ve got them.”
She did…mostly because Bill Meyers, her ex-fiancé, had loved hiking. And although she’d appreciated the opportunity to get out of the city and breathe some fresh air — and often go someplace that sat at a higher elevation, where it was much cooler than it was in Las Vegas — on the weekends, she sometimes wanted to just hang out at home and relax.
Well, when she didn’t have an open house to run.
“Where exactly are you taking me, Caleb?” she asked.
“It’s a surprise. But we’re not going too far, I promise. And it’s nothing strenuous.”
Okay, that sounded a little better.
And obviously, she’d much rather spend the day with him than sit around the house watching TV.
“All right,” she said. “What time?”
“Eleven-thirty? I want to make sure you have plenty of time to get all the sleep you need.”
Even though it was past eleven now, Delia knew she’d be up and about long before then. She could have a nice, leisurely morning, and then Caleb could come pick her up and take her…somewhere.
“That works. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven-thirty.”
“You sleep well, Delia.”
“You too.”
They ended the call there, and she returned the phone to her purse. A moment to pour herself the promised glass of water, and then she slung the purse over her shoulder and headed back to the main suite.
She was going to sleep like the dead tonight.
The idea had come to Caleb as he was driving home the night before. He didn’t think he’d been imagining things when he’d intercepted some of the glances Delia had sent his way while they were doing their post-mortem in the suite at Harrah’s. She might have just been through one hell of an ordeal, but at the same time, there had been something almost like hunger in her eyes.
Those were the sorts of looks a woman didn’t send in your direction unless she was ready to be a little more than merely friends.
Unless he’d misinterpreted the whole thing and was just flattering himself.
Still, he needed to know where they stood. Maybe this was crazy and all he’d accomplish was blowing up the friendship they’d cultivated over the past four or so months, but still, he didn’t want the situation to continue in this uncomfortable liminal state indefinitely. He wasn’t used to feeling this way, had always been the one women pursued, rather than the other way around. All right, it had been a little different with Rosemary McGuire when he was in Southern California chasing down the Project Demon Hunters footage, but even then, her interest had been clear from almost the moment they’d met. Everything had been fine…until her angelic blood recognized the demon in him and she’d recoiled.
So now he was pulling into the driveway of Delia’s house and hoping he wasn’t making a huge mistake.
He got out of the Range Rover and went to the front door. Almost as soon as he rang the bell, she was there, smiling out at him.
“Just let me get my purse,” she said.
She’d taken his advice about her attire to heart, since she was wearing a pair of army green cargo pants, an off-white scoop-neck T-shirt, and some pretty serious-looking brown hiking boots. Her long red hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and a baseball cap with a hummingbird embroidered on it completed the ensemble.
