I couldn’t go home and change now, as much as I wanted touse that as an excuse to get my behind out of there.
I had to do this.
I again let my eyes sweep Darius’s cool house.
There was a light shining out of the long bank of thewindows just off the front door.
So he was probably home.
I should check, though, before I knocked on the door.
Right?
The issue with checking was that it looked like athree-story house, except the first floor was kind of built into the earth, thesecond was a little elevated, and the third was super high.
This was smart, if you didn’t want people walking by andlooking in the windows.
My heels were high too, but it wasn’t like the windows thelight was shining out of were normal height and I could just walk up to themand peek in, even in my heels.
But…the house had surprised me.
What if the inside was immaculate?Say, designed by anexpensive interior designer?
This visit was important.I had to stay on target.I didn’tneed to be blindsided by Darius’s fabulous décor.
“Right, yes, just go peek in, make sure he’s there and getthe lay of the land.You aren’t chickenshit and delaying,” I told myself.“Thisis reconnaissance.”
On my pep talk, I got out of my car, again lamented mychoice of dress when the blast of cold hit me, and as casual as I could, Istrolled up his lawn, in the dark, in a cute, bright, flirty, sexy dress andhigh heels and ducked to the side in hopes there were windows there (therewere).
And then I realized I was right.The windows were high offthe ground.I had to reach up with my hands, curl my fingers on the ledge andtry to pull myself up to see inside.
This, I did.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I squawked, dropped, turned my ankle and would have gonedown if Darius hadn’t shot forward and caught me.
I got my feet under me, pushed away from him, brushed myskirt in a nervous gesture since there was nothing to brush off, looked up athim and said, as nonchalant as I could, “Hey.”
“There’s a reason cat burglars wear black, woman,” Dariusdrawled.
God, how embarrassing was this?
“And they don’t sit in their car psyching themselves up fortwenty minutes right in front of the joint they’re gonna knock over before theygo do a job,” he went on.
Okay, we needed to move away from this.It was mortifying.
“Um…are you busy?Can we talk?”I asked.
He took a step back and did a top to toe.
As I mentioned, it was dark.
But that light was shining out of his window, and I couldsee all of him (and all of it looked good, just a red thermal (skintight) andjeans (that fit too well and had a fade mark that made me salivate a little),but it worked on me), so he could probably see all of me.
“You wanna try the front door?”he asked.“Or you want me togo in, open a window, come back out and heft you through it?”
All right, that was it.
