Landlord Wars(34)

The next morning, I woke with an exhaustion headache and my heart racing from anxiety. I’d stayed up late last night, with Elise snoring softly beside me in bed, thinking of all my encounters with Landlord Devil: the pink panties, his annoyance at my admitting Jack was handsome to his mother, his stealing my chocolate repeatedly to annoy me.

I covered my face with my pillow. Sometimes sexual attraction and hate looked an awful lot alike. Especially if you weren’t prepared for it.

What was I doing? Max was sophisticated, and I…wasn’t. He was rich and I was poor. He had classy friends and family, and I had Elise, my drunken sister/best friend. I wasn’t ashamed of any of it, but it didn’t change the fact that Max and I didn’t go together.

I rolled onto my stomach and pressed my face into the mattress. Why did the kiss have to be so good? Couldn’t he have had a lizard tongue? He could have committed any number of acts men did that turned women off, but every little touch from him had, unfortunately, had the opposite effect.

I threw my pillow across the room and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Blurry-eyed, I stumbled into the bathroom and showered. I couldn’t waste the day away thinking about Max. I had things to take care of for work, and my boss wanted to meet up, even though it was a Saturday.

I reached for a blush-hued blouse from the closet and did the best I could, pairing it with light wool slacks that were a size too big. Elise was right. I needed to suck it up and buy clothes that actually fit…

Elise?

I spun around and stared at the mattress. When did she leave? She’d definitely been in bed when I returned from talking to Max last night, because I’d made her drink a giant glass of water, and she nearly choked on it while bitching me out for mothering her. We’d bickered for a few minutes—the usual—and then she’d starfished out on the mattress and was snoring within seconds.

But she hadn’t been in bed when I woke, I realized. Had I slept longer than I thought and missed her leaving?

After throwing on my clothes, I grabbed my workbag and left my bedroom for food and to find Elise. And froze just outside my bedroom door.

I observed several things all at once: Elise sneaking out of Jack’s room, a glimpse of Jack’s naked back as he sat on the edge of the bed facing away, and my sister’s eyes flashing wide as though she’d been caught.

I pointed at the door she was slowly closing. “Why were you in his room?”

She slapped a hand over my mouth and shoved me into my bedroom, nearly mowing me down in the process. “Be quiet!” She shut the door and tiptoed to the window, where she glanced out, worrying her lip with her teeth.

“You’re the one whisper-shouting,” I pointed out.

Elise paced back and forth, her hand on her forehead. She was wearing a man’s T-shirt, and most definitely not the sleepshirt I’d supplied her with the night before.

I blinked several times. “Elise Marie, what did you do last night?”

She stomped her foot and glared. “If you try to mother me in this moment, I will cut you.”

I glanced down her body. “With what? Jack’s T-shirt?”

Wrong thing to say, because Elise really did look ready to kill me.

I feigned zipping my lips. “Are you going to explain why I saw you leaving my roommate’s bedroom? And think before you answer, because I know you weren’t in my bed when I woke this morning.”

She sat on the edge of the mattress, in shock. “I slept with him,” she said, her voice high and panicked.

Okay, okay, no need to jump to conclusions. She couldn’t mean it the way it sounded. “Did you get up in the middle of the night and go to the wrong bed?”

She dropped her head into her hands. “I think that’s what happened. Originally.”

“Originally?”

Elise rose and started pacing again in her bare feet. “I don’t remember walking in there, but I must have, after getting up to use your bathroom.” She spun on me. “You strong-armed me into drinking way too much water last night. This is all your fault!”

“That you passed out in Jack’s bed?”

“That I slept with him!” she whisper-yelled.

I grabbed her hand and made her sit. She was making me dizzy. “Jack knew you were drunk. It’s awkward, but he won’t hold it against you that you crashed in his bed.”

She hunched over. “I wouldn’t call it drunk.” Her gaze slid to me nervously. “More like I was slightly intoxicated and enjoying making Jack do things for me.”

My jaw dropped. Some of her behavior last night had been an act?

“Either way,” she said, “when I woke up to use the bathroom a few hours later, I was sober but groggy, and I must have walked out of your bedroom and into his. I’m not used to the bathroom being connected to the bedroom.”

Elise was a master sleepwalker, so this made sense. “Just tell him you sleepwalk and that you made a mistake.”

She straightened and wrung her hands. “It’s not just the sleepwalking. I talked in my sleep after I was in his room.”

Ah, got it. I’d had entire conversations with Elise while she was asleep when we were kids. No wonder she was embarrassed. “Jack is an adult. He won’t hold whatever you said against you.”

Was her face paler than normal? “You don’t think he’ll hold it against me that I moaned his name and sexually attacked him?”