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 senseswent 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.
