Even though I’d been anticipating the impending confrontation, when the door suddenly whipped open, I jumped.
“What the hell?” the guy grumbled.
My mouth opened to start to ream into the jerk, but my jaw seemed to get stuck catching flies. The dark hoodie he’d been wearing was gone, replaced by a wall of rippling muscle. I blinked a few times, gawking at a carved eight-pack covered in beautifully smooth, tanned skin. When my eyes rose to find the owner of such an incredible body, I was met by a set of bright blue eyes and one hell of a chiseled jaw line. Jesus Christ. Seriously? I’d heard the term jaw-dropping handsome before, but I’d never actually experienced it. Continuing to just stare, it became awkward.
The man’s brows furrowed. “Are you okay?”
God, his voice was even sexy, too. Deep and raspy and...familiar. I knew I’d heard it before…but when? As far as I could remember, I’d only ever interacted with the landlord over email. My brain began to sift through its mental Rolodex of sounds, trying to figure out the puzzle. I felt confused; like there was a piece that I was missing. I needed to hear him speak again.
“What?” I said.
He did a quick sweep over my body, seeming to assess my physical health more than checking me out, and then he looked over my head and scanned the street.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
That voice.
I definitely knew it from somewhere…
But where…
My eyes widened when my brain finally made the connection.
Mr. Good Time.
The landlord’s voice sounded exactly like the guy whose number I’d found on the bathroom wall. I’d spoken to him on the phone twice now, last night at length.
Oh my God.
Could Mr. Good Time and our curmudgeonly clothes-stealing landlord be one in the same?
It couldn’t be…
“Are…” I stopped when it suddenly dawned on me that if I’d identified his voice in only a few words, he’d probably be able to do the same with me. In a panic, I made a very spur of the moment, rash decision and became...
A Brit…
“Sorry, yes fine,” I said. “Just a bit wonky from the heat. Would you happen to have some WAH-ta?”
Mr. Good Time squinted at me. “Are you…Australian?”
I let out an over-exaggerated laugh. “No, no. Of course not. I’m from England.”
He looked like he was on the fence about buying it. “From England?”
I nodded. “Yes, that’s right…across the big pond, as they say.”
He tilted his head. “And you pounded on my door because you want…water?”
“Sure. Yes.” I thumbed behind me toward my bike. “I slipped on my trainers and went for a ride on the old bicycle. Got a little knackered and could really use some WAH-ta.”
He scratched his chin. “Yeah. Okay. Let me grab you something.”
Mr. Good Time disappeared and came back a minute later. Handing me a bottle of Poland Spring, he said, “What town?”
“Pardon?”
“What town in England are you from?”
Shit. I drew a complete blank, even though I’d been to England before. Unfortunately, the first thing that popped into my daft brain came tumbling out.
“Schwinn,” I said.
The man’s eyebrows jumped. “Schwinn? Like the bicycle?”
“Uh-huh. That’s right.”
“Never heard of it. Whereabouts is it?”
“Oh…you know… the Northwesterly part of England.”
His eyes scanned my face. “Right.”
The feeling of impending doom that had been present since he opened the door grew abundantly stronger. I needed to get the hell out of here…now. “Okay. Well, thanks for the wah-ta, mate.”
Mate? Shit…was that Australian or British? I had no damn idea. But I wasn’t about to get schooled by this guy. So I hightailed it the hell out of there. Turning, I walk-ran to my bike and hopped on. “Thanks again!” I yelled without looking back. “Cheers!”
“Yeah…cheers.”
Summer was standing at the coffee pot when I walked in.
“You’re up and out early,” she said.
“Apparently I went to England and back.”
She laughed. “Must’ve been some morning swim.”
I sat down at the kitchen table and rubbed my temples. “I think I might’ve just gotten us evicted.”
“What? Why? What happened?”
“The landlord stole our clothes.”
“What are you talking about?”
I covered my face with my hands and shook my head. “And I tried to get him to have phone sex with me.”
Summer sat down across from me. “Have you been day drinking already?”
“I wish. This is a mess…”
“What’s a mess? I think you need to backup and start at the beginning.”
For the next ten minutes, I told Summer the entire crazy story, beginning with the tipsy phone call I’d made from a bathroom stall at Salty’s and ending with my chasing down the clothes-stealing landlord and banging on his front door.
She shook her head. “That’s so insane. And you’re absolutely positive it’s the same guy?”
“Well, I think so…it’s hard to be a hundred percent sure. But I’m like ninety-seven, ninety-eight percent certain it was him. He has a really distinct low voice. It’s raspy and kind of rumbles.”
“But yet he didn’t recognize your voice?”
Oh. So I lied. I hadn’t exactly told Summer the entire story. I started to crack up thinking of the part I’d left out. The entire last half hour had been absolutely insane, but my bad British accent was the proverbial icing on the cake. “I disguised my voice by pretending I was British.” I snort laughed. “From the town of Schwinn.”
Poor Summer looked utterly confused. “British? Schwinn? Is that even a real place?”
“I have no freaking idea.”
Summer leaned across the table and felt my head. “Yup. Just what I thought,” she said.
“What?”
“You don’t have a fever, so that means you’ve lost your bloody mind.”
That night, I debated calling Silas. While this morning I’d been ninety-seven or ninety-eight percent sure that our panty thief landlord was also Mr. Good Time, as the hours went on, I started to doubt myself. Now I felt like the chances were more like fifty-fifty. But if I called him…heard
