He gave the dog one last rub, careful not to get any dog hair on his navy-blue dress shirt or black slacks. Normally if he was going to work on something in one of his tenant’s apartments, he’d don his work clothes, but this was only a small spider in Zoe’s freakishly neat home, so he wasn’t too worried about getting dirty. He started to head towards the bathroom only to come to an abrupt halt when something caught his eye.
For the first time since he’d walked into the room, he noticed the large pile of department store shopping bags near the wall. The amount of bags kind of surprised him since he’d never thought of Zoe as much of a spender. She actually came across as pretty frugal, never spending much money on herself and getting by with the basics. He often wondered about that, thinking that maybe she grew up in an extremely thrifty family.
He was just about to get the spider hunt over with when a familiar pink logo on a group of bags buried towards the back of the pile caught his eye. After a minute of trying to ignore temptation, Trevor shrugged and walked over to the bags. If Zoe came back and caught him, he’d just tell her that he that he was checking for spiders, he decided with a mental pat on the back, knowing damn well that she’d thank him too.
With one last look over his shoulder, Trevor opened the bag closest to him and felt his eyebrows arch clear to his hairline. The bag was filled with lace and silk of every color. Rubbing his suddenly sweaty hands on his slacks, he reached into the bag and picked up the lacey baby pink item on top and nearly groaned when he realized they were panties, a little larger than he was used to seeing and in no way a thong, but still sexy as hell.
He exhaled slowly as he ran a shaky hand through his hair as he imagined that beautiful bottom of Zoe’s covered in this material. Christ, he really didn’t need to know what she was wearing to cover her curves and he should walk away, but curiosity was a bitch and had him quickly going through the rest of the pink bags.
Five minutes later, he was sitting on the edge of Zoe’s bed with his elbows propped up on his knees and his head in his hands, trying to wrap his mind around the amount of panties, bras, and teddies Zoe had purchased. He still couldn’t believe how sexy some of those items were and that unnerved him a bit because when he thought about Zoe, he never thought sexy. Yeah, she turned him on for some weird reason, but never intentionally.
But damn, if he wasn’t turned on now, Trevor thought with a grimace as he sat up and tried to adjust himself in his now too-tight pants. When that didn’t work, he stood up and began pacing the spacious room.
Who the hell was she seeing? Trevor wondered. It had to be someone serious for her to go nuts shopping like that. In his experience, women only did that if they were in the start of a relationship, but Zoe never said anything about seeing someone. There was so damn much that she wasn’t telling him and that pissed him off.
Every morning, and for a few minutes every night, they talked about work, the book they were reading, television and all the stupid shit in between and not once had she mentioned a boyfriend. He knew that he viewed her as a tenant and employee, but he hadn’t known that she only saw him as her boss and landlord, one apparently that she only made small talk with to be polite. That knowledge pissed him off in the worst possible way and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why.
Somewhere along the line he’d actually started to think of Zoe as a friend.
Whatever.
Fuck her.
If she wanted to keep this relationship strictly professional, then that was more than fine with him, Trevor thought, opening the bathroom cabinet with a little more force than necessary. He didn’t give a rat’s ass if they weren’t friends. Why the hell would he? It’s not like he went out of his way at work to talk to her, which proved that he didn’t care.
Or proved that he was an asshole, Trevor thought, shaking his head ruefully. Then again, she didn’t exactly go out of her way to talk to him at work either, which only proved his point. Then again, maybe he was turning into a fucking woman overanalyzing every fucking thing, Trevor thought, sighing as he shoved all the shit under the sink around as he looked for this “huge” spider.
There was no need for all this drama. So, Zoe hadn’t told him about her date? So what? It didn’t mean anything and besides, tonight was not the night to stress over this shit. Tonight was about getting laid and clearing his head of Zoe, Trevor reminded himself as his hand landed on the box of condoms. As he picked it up to toss it aside, a condom fell out, making him frown.
He could have sworn it hadn’t been open earlier. After a minute of feeling like an ass for caring at all, he dumped the rest of the condoms out of the box and counted. Six left out of a twelve pack. Looks like he wasn’t the only one planning on getting laid tonight, Trevor thought darkly as he tossed the box back in the cabinet.
This was fucking unbelievable.
He was fucking jealous.
The knowledge both sickened and shocked him. He never got jealous. Not once. Well, when he was a kid, he’d been jealous of Jason, but that was completely different. He’d never been jealous over a woman, but here he was crouching down on his frumpy tenant’s bathroom floor, wondering who the hell she needed six condoms for and wanting to kick his own ass for caring so damn much.
It was past time he worked her out of his system, Trevor decided, moving to stand up when Toby started growling. He followed the dog’s glare and couldn’t help but roll his eyes when he spotted the tiny black spider racing across one of the rolls of toilet paper.
“I knew she overre-holy shit!” Trevor shouted, falling back on his ass and quickly moving away from the largest spider he’d ever seen. When it decided to come after him, he was left with no choice but to grab one of Zoe’s magazines off the neat pile near the toilet and beat the shit out of it as Toby barked encouragingly. Even after he was pretty sure that it was dead, Trevor kept up the attack, afraid that it was just a trick and the spider was biding its time before it attacked him and dragged his body beneath the sink.
Panting hard, Trevor tossed the magazine back on the pile and slowly stood up, never taking his eyes away from the gooey mess on Zoe’s floor and leaned back against the wall, making a mental note to call an exterminator first thing tomorrow morning. He looked at the mess for a moment, making sure it wasn’t going to come after him again before he decided to clean it up and get the hell out of there before its friends came looking for him.
Trevor walked downstairs, trying to calm his damn nerves, barely aware that the dog followed him downstairs and headed for Zoe’s kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water and chugged it down, wishing Zoe had something more substantial in her fridge to calm his nerves like steak or leftover lasagna instead of diet yogurt and a huge pile of green vegetables.
Toby’s whimpering caught his attention. “Of course, she went back and bought it,” he said when he spotted the large plastic jar filled with mini dog treats.
With a sigh, Trevor opened the jar and grabbed a handful of mini treats and held them up. “You’re going to keep your mouth shut about the spider, right?”
Wagging his tail happily, Toby barked.
“That’s what I thought,” Trevor said, tossing the dog a biscuit.
“Excuse me?” Zoe said, signaling the bartender as she did her best to ignore the feeling that she was on display in her new clothes. It was the first time in a long time that she’d worn something so revealing. Granted, compared to the scantily dressed women walking around the bar she looked more like a nun.
For probably the hundredth time that hour, she somehow resisted the urge to yank up the blouse she’d let the saleswoman talk her into. Not that she regretted buying it. Okay, maybe a little since it put her breasts on display a little more than she was comfortable with, but it helped give the illusion that she had a nice figure, so she was going to have to learn to deal with it. Besides, the blouse went really nice with the silk baby blue floral skirt that she loved, so it wasn’t too bad.
“What can I get for you, sweetheart?” the bartender asked as he walked over to her.
