Page 6 of Rival for Rent
“Some guard dog you are,” I told her.
I walked to the front door to join her and deliberately didnotgrab a knife from the kitchen on my way, though I wanted to. It would have been the most action any of my knives had seen since I bought them.
I peered through the peephole.
A tall guy stood on my front step. Tall. White. Long-ish, blond-ish hair under a baseball cap. Black T-shirt and black jeans. Like someone in a motorcycle club.
I laughed nervously. What did I know about motorcycle clubs? Maybe they all wore pastels now. Maybe they held quarterly bake sales. Maybe I was about to get murdered by the world's most wholesome biker gang.
The guy was looking down at his phone, which meant I couldn’t see his face. And I still had to decide whether to open the door.
He didn’t look like a crazy stalker. But then again, what did crazy stalkers look like? I knew as much about them as I did about motorcycle clubs.
And I could stand here all night and miss the show—or I could put on my big boy pants and open the damn door.
I looked down at Bella. “If I say ‘kill,’ you jump on him and rend his flesh, okay? Rend. Not lick. Rend.”
I held my hand up like a claw. She just grinned her big doggy grin. Rolling my eyes, I pulled open the door and stopped dead.
The man standing in front of me was Mason Clark.
3
MASON
The door opened, and Kai Jacinto stood in front of me.
I gaped. I hadn’t seen Kai since high school. Since literal graduation—he was our class valedictorian, and I still remembered watching him up on stage, giving his speech, his eyes bright and shining behind thick-rimmed black glasses, barely tall enough to see over the podium.
The Kai Jacinto standing in front of me now had grown a bit, but I still wasn’t sure he’d cracked five-seven. He’d filled out some too, but the biggest change was less physical, more intangible. He looked older. More self-possessed. Suave, even.
He wore an impeccable black tuxedo, his hair crisply parted, his glasses now thinner-framed and more stylish. And there was something about his eyes that made me think that if he weren’t staring at me like I was a ghost, they’d crinkle up with smile lines.
Jesus. I hadn’t seen him in twelve years, but he looked good.
Better than I did, that was for sure. I immediately felt shabby in my black jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket. No wonder Dana had told me to wear a suit. My face flushed. She’d mentioned this was a theater engagement or something. What kind of asshole wears a leather jacket to the theater?
Themekind, evidently.
Was Kai horrified by how I looked? Was that why he was staring like I was something the dog had dragged in? Speaking of dogs, there was a big brown one trying to wedge her massive head between Kai’s legs and the doorframe, her tongue lolling out.
Funny. I never would’ve pegged Kai as a dog person. Then again, I’d never really known him that well.
He kept staring, saying nothing, the only sounds the gentle hum of a car at the end of the block and the dog’s frantic panting as she tried to shove her way through the door. I was starting to feel awkward.
I gave a half-wave and said, “Um, hi. I’m Mason. I don’t know if you—”
That seemed to knock something loose. Kai blinked, shook his head, and said, “Nope.”
Then he shut the door in my face. Or tried to. The dog’s head got in the way—her bowling-ball skull lodged between the door and the frame. She whined and looked up at him with wide, pleading eyes like she didn’t understand what was happening, which, honestly, same.
“Bella, honey, move your head,” Kai said, pulling the door open a crack. But instead of retreating, Bella took that as an invitationto force more of her body through, wedging her thick shoulders into the space and once again blocking the door.
She panted hard at me, and not knowing what else to do, I bent down and stroked the top of her head. Her eyes went soft and relaxed, her jaw slackened even more, and I heard the thwap-thwap-thwap of her tail hitting the wall inside the house.
When I looked up, Kai was staring at both of us like we’d betrayed him. This definitely wasn’t the welcome I’d expected—well, obviously, I hadn’t expected to see him at all—but I couldn’t help wondering if I’d misinterpreted his response. He hadn’t seriously tried to slam the door on me, right?
“Small world,” I said, forcing a laugh that came out more like a wheeze. “I didn’t know you still lived in the area. You, uh—youarethe one who called for a bodyguard, right? I thought it was some guy named Oscar.”
