All the Feels (Spoiler Alert #2)(21)

“—or, more likely, go online and order something a lot less pretty but also a lot less expensive. Then get it hemmed. Which we, fourth, do not have time to do, since the event is tomorrow night. So, fifth, we need to drive to my duplex and decide which of the few dresses I already own might suffice.”

Oooh. He was going to see his stern minder’s inner sanctum? Her Fortress of Stultifying Solitude? He couldn’t wait.

“You’re bringing me home?” He widened his eyes. “But you haven’t even taken me out on a real date yet. I don’t want you to think I’m cheap.”

“For the love of …” Now she was rubbing her forehead as well as her temples, and he would feel worse if a tiny little smile weren’t also curving the corners of that wide mouth. “I’d planned to visit my apartment soon anyway, since the clothing I packed for a Spanish vacation isn’t the same clothing I want to wear here. So we might as well take care of everything today. I’ll drive.”

He sprang to his feet. “Let’s do this, Thelma.”

“Sit down, Louise.” She pointed a commanding finger at his chair. “You’ve barely had anything but coffee. Last week, you repeatedly complained about stomach pain because of your medicine, and you told me the best way to prevent that pain was eating more breakfast. So let’s make sure you do that.”

He hadn’t realized she’d been listening to him. If he had, he might not have mentioned—

Oh, who was he trying to fool? Of course he’d have mentioned the issue. Not saying things was unnatural, which he’d also explained to Lauren multiple times.

She was still talking, so apparently she’d listened to him then too.

“—the label on your pill bottle, you should be taking your medication with plenty of water,” she told him. “We’ll bring a bottle in my car, and you can drink it along the way.”

What he ate or drank wasn’t in her realm of professional authority over him. Then again, the concern in her voice didn’t sound professional either.

It was personal. It was present.

He couldn’t see her glorious green eyes, but he knew they’d be warm. Worried.

So he sat his ass back down and ate his remaining Danish without argument before they headed back to the house. Which made her lips quirk that tiny bit again.

He liked it.

He wanted more of it.

LAUREN’S FUCKING DUPLEX. It had a steeply pitched roof and cream stucco siding, and for the entrance—

It had a goddamn turret. A small one, but definitely, positively, a turret.

If Alex lived in a mini-castle, she lived in a mini-mini-castle.

No wonder she’d lost her shit at the sight of his house yesterday. Hell, he was losing his shit now, because what were the odds?

“Keep breathing.” She parked inside the detached two-car garage and thumped him on the back. “I told you not to take a sip of water before we turned onto my street.”

Once he stopped cough-laughing and finally caught his breath again, he needed more details. “What’s that architectural style called?”

“Dilapidated.” Dry as the Santa Ana winds. “Also, according to the real estate agent, storybook. Or Hansel and Gretel.”

“Did you know—” He had to stop for another fit of laughter. “Did you know that Ian has a castle too? And it’s the tackiest fucking place you’ve ever seen? He got it a month after I moved into my house, so I think he bought it as some sort of weird dick-measuring thing.”

She choked a little too, seemingly on thin air. “Like, my turrets are taller and more upright than yours?”

“There are made-up coats of arms and long axes on the walls inside.” Ah, happy memories. “The one time I visited there for a cast thing, I told him straight-faced that my castle had a long axe too, and it was longer than any of his. The next time we were filming together, he showed me a photo of his brand-new custom axe. The shaft was twelve goddamn feet long, Lauren, no lie.”

And there he had it. She was actively laughing again, her eyes bright, her smile wide.

“Now, then,” he said with satisfaction, “let’s go inside and survey the lackluster contents of your wardrobe. We don’t have all day for your chitchat, Nanny Clegg. Chop-chop.”

She stopped laughing and glared at him, then sighed and got out of her hybrid.

The turret was fun, but the interior of her duplex—which she apparently shared with her best friend, Sionna, who was at work and thus not available for his interrogation—wasn’t especially prepossessing. The apartment had decent enough wooden floors and casement windows, but also a tiny, tiny bedroom and an equally tiny kitchen that had, at some point in its lamented past, undergone disastrous updating.

He recognized the IKEA furniture from his lean years in Hollywood, pre-Gates.

“Hey, Billy!” he greeted the bookshelves as he moved past them. “Long time no see!”

She just rolled her eyes and waved him into her bedroom, which was disappointingly neat and free from clutter. Any personality she had here, she kept locked away, apparently. He really needed to get a closer look at those bookshelves, or possibly her nightstand.

Women kept all sorts of fun stuff in their nightstands. He knew that for a fucking fact.

Like her kitchen, her wardrobe was outdated and disastrous. At least, assuming she wanted to wear anything other than tees, jeans, leggings, black pants, or neutral button-downs for the rest of her benighted, boring-ass life. Which she apparently didn’t, since the clothes she kept packing in a suitcase were from those groups.