"You're a big boy. You can handle it."
He sighed. "You're as mean as my sister. No wonder she likes you. Now, eat your pizza and stop worrying about this. Right now, you need to be here. I want you to be here so you'll stay safe. When you don't need to be here anymore, we'll talk. Until then, I'm hoping you'll take turns with me on cooking dinner. It'll be nice to have a break from worrying about how to feed myself."
"I guess that's fair," Dylan said.
Before she could pick up her pizza and take a bite, Clay wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her in for a quick kiss.
"I mean it. Stop worrying. Just make yourself at home." He kissed her again. "And it won't offend me at all if you want to wander around in your underwear or topless, pant-less, even naked. I want you to be comfortable."
Dylan laughed. "I hate to disappoint you, but I usually wear clothes when I'm home. Ugly, frumpy clothes like flannel pajama pants and hole-y t-shirts. Sometimes I even wear baggy onesie pajamas."
He sighed. "You've ruined my fantasies of what single women wear when they're at home."
"Sorry, not sorry."
"Well, I like to walk around in my shorts and no shirt, so I hope you can deal with that."
"I'll manage," she said.
"See? We've already worked out our first problem. This'll be easy."
Dylan hoped that he was right.
ChapterEighteen
To Clay's surprise, he was right when he said that living with Dylan was going to be easy. Mostly because she was very relaxed. She worked forty, sometimes fifty, hours a week, came home and ate dinner with him, and spent a lot of her spare time either reading or taking care of her plants.
On her nights off, they'd watch television together or, if he wanted to watch a ball game, she would read or piddle around the house. A couple of nights they played board games and she surprised him with the ferocity of her competitive nature. She was so laidback about everything else that the intensity of her desire to win seemed incongruous with her personality.
He loved it though because she was hilarious whether she won or lost.
He also decided against building her patio furniture because within the first three days of her moving in, he realized he was going to do everything in his power to convince her to stay, even after they caught the guy that had broken into her house.
Every time he thought about her walking into her house alone, with no idea that there was a strange man waiting in her bedroom, he had to fight the urge to destroy something. Usually, he imagined breaking the asshole's face for frightening her that way.
He also took the initiative to set up exterior cameras to go along with his camera doorbell. And exterior lights that contained motion sensors. He didn't want to take any chances with her safety.
Especially since the police were no closer to figuring out who had been texting her and if it was the same man who'd broken into her place.
The detective had interviewed her later in the day after the break-in but she hadn't heard anything else. Considering nothing was missing and the fact that she wasn't hurt, it didn't seem like it was a priority to the cops.
Clay knew that there were much more serious crimes that they needed to solve but it still pissed him off that no one seemed to be worried about Dylan's safety but him.
It was on the fifth day after she moved in that they had their first real argument.
She was making dinner for them when Clay came in from working in the wood shop. Dylan's hands were wrist-deep in dough and flour and her phone buzzed.
"Will you see who that is?" she said without looking up from her kneading.
Clay glanced at the phone and adrenaline surged through his body when he saw the message.
Where are you? Are you with that man? How could you do this to me, you bitch!
Clay picked up the phone and carried it over to Dylan. She plopped the dough into a large bowl and smeared it with oil. "Who was it?" she asked, looking up at him with a smile.
She also rose up on her tiptoes and gave him a quick kiss, which distracted him for a split second. As she took a couple of steps over to the sink to wash her hands, Clay followed her.
"How often has he been texting?" Clay asked.
