Foster goes about putting the items on the conveyor belt while I’m still reeling. I need to prepare myself for the fact that this attraction might be one-sided.
What was I thinking?
That I’d be Foster Davis’s game-changer? What on earth would ever make me think that? Definitely not my past pick of partners.
Get your head out of the clouds, Callie.
“Oh yeah, forgot to tell you. I got you your first guest,” he says absentmindedly as he loads items onto the conveyor belt.
“You did?” There I go floating up to the sky again. “You work fast.”
“Keep that to yourself, okay?” He winks.
I laugh, and as we check out, head back to the apartment, and put the groceries away, it almost feels as though we’re a couple.
Earth to Callie.
Houston, we have a problem.
Chapter
Twenty-One
Callie
* * *
“So he just moved you in here?” Lex looks around the condo like a detective on a missing person’s case.
“After we found Jerry dressed in my underwear, yeah.”
She freezes and glances at where I’m getting ready for our guest today at the breakfast bar. “How many times did I tell you about Slummy?”
We’re setting up the equipment for the guest Foster scored me, which I’m still in complete disbelief over. I haven’t even told Lex about it yet because I want to see her expression in person.
“I know, but how was I to know that he liked my lingerie?” I shudder from the visual again.
“And now you get to live with the Reaper.” She shoots me a wide smile and peeks into his bedroom. “Are you cleaning this place? Is it, like, a swap or something? He lets you live here, and you make his bed?”
“What? No!”
“So there must be a cleaning lady then.” She slides up on the breakfast stool and takes the microphone from me to get it situated, since there’s a reason she’s the tech person and not me.
“Not that he’s said or that I’ve seen. I think he’s just a tidy person.”
“Don’t let that get out. You’ll ruin his reputation.” She laughs, unpacking her bag with the various microphones and cameras and cords she usually carries around with her.
“He can’t be neat?”
She looks at me with interest as if she’s trying to figure out why I sound defensive. I feel caught in a corner, unsure how to find my way out of this without her figuring out that Foster is different than what people expect.
She raises her hand. “Okay, I’m not going to address the fact you sound like a defensive girlfriend right now. I’m just saying an anal, tidy, and organized bad boy is an oxymoron. Am I wrong?”
I feel my lips tip up into a grin. I thought the same thing when I moved in. He picks up his mail every day he’s home, and it rarely ever sits on the counter. He sorts through it as soon as he walks in, throws away the junk mail, and puts the rest somewhere in his room. He never goes to bed with dirty dishes in the sink. Even a cup gets put in the dishwasher when he’s finished with it.
“I guess not everyone is who you think they are.” I shrug. “I’m grabbing my jacket, and then we’ll leave.”
I hurry to my room, hoping she can’t see it written on my face. Foster Davis is softening the part of my heart I prefer to keep frozen.
