"OW! Did you just BITE me? What are we, five?"
The window slides open with a bang. We both freeze, looking up to see Lily Andrews standing there, backlit by her apartment lights, wielding what appears to be a cast-iron frying pan like Thor's hammer.
"Hi," I say with a stupid grin.
The other guy uses my distraction to shove me away. "This psycho jumped me from a tree!" he pointed at me.
"That's not… I mean, technically yes, but I’m not a psycho," I stammer.
Lily's eyes narrow, her grip tightening on the frying pan. "You were pretending to be an owl, weren’t you?"
"I prefer 'wildlife enthusiast,'" I try to joke.
The other guy inches toward the stairs. "I'm just gonna go..."
"Oh no, you don't!" I lunge for him again.
"ENOUGH!" Lily shouts.
The last thing I see is the frying pan arcing through the air with impressive speed before it connects with my head. There's a boing sound that I'm pretty sure only happens in cartoons and then stars dance in my vision.
As I crumple to the metal grating, I catch a glimpse of the other guy taking advantage of the chaos to disappear down the fire escape steps.
"Coward," I mumble as darkness closes in.
My last coherent thought before passing out: Royal is never going to let me live this down.
∞∞∞
I feel my phone buzz in my pocket, and I pull it out. I squint at it and finally see that it’s a text from Royal.She called me from your phone. You fucked up.
No shit. I think as I groan and try to push myself up, and realize I’m no longer on the fire escape, but on a couch with something cold pressed against my forehead. The room spins for a moment while my eyes focus on the fuzzy pink unicorn blanket that is pulled up to my chin. That’s when I reach for my pistol, only to find no holster because I’m not wearing my clothes. Instead, my lower half is encased in a pair of grey sweatpants. Tight ones, I might add. I sit up, and my head feels like it’s being tightened in a vice. I put a hand to the back of my skull, only to feel it bandaged.
“Looking for this?” A soft voice came from the doorway. Lily is standing there holding up my Glock, dangling it from two fingers like it were a dead mouse. “I unloaded it. The bullets are in my cookie jar. The dinosaur-shaped one.”
Who the hell puts ammo in a cookie jar? I wonder as she keeps on talking.
"You know," she says conversationally, "If you wanted a date, all you had to do was ask me out for coffee instead of impersonating wildlife and diving off trees or you know, stalking me."
I try to sit up and immediately regret it. "In my defense, that guy was definitely up to something."
"The delivery guy? Dropping off my late-night Chinese food order?" She gestures to a bag on the counter. "Which is now cold, thanks to your heroics."
"Delivery guy?" I echo weakly. "At two in the morning? In all black? On the fire escape?"
She lifts a shoulder of indifference as she tosses the gun onto a chair and picks up the frying pan. "He works the night shift. The front buzzer is broken. And he wears black because his boss is too cheap to buy uniforms." She sighs. "He comes once a week."
I close my eyes, wishing she had hit me harder.
"So," Lily continues, tapping the pan against her palm rhythmically, "want to tell me why you've been playing tree ninja outside my apartment?"
Chapter 4
Lily
Istood in my kitchen, arms folded, cast-iron pan clutched like a shield. My pink robe over faded pajamas felt almost ridiculous—until I looked at him. He stayed half hidden on the couch, that weird mixture of guilt and relief in his eyes. Surveillance, private eyes, some cock-and-bull story about an ex owing him money—I knew he could have tried a dozen lies. None would stick. The real explanation hovered between us. But damn, he was sexy and well endowed. I couldn’t help but notice when I swapped out his pants for mine.
When he cleared his throat, I tightened my grip on the pan. He said, “I was hired to watch you. Not by you or anyone you know. And not for anything criminal.” He winced, as if he’d just admitted the worst possible crime. Then he tried to soften it: “Adult babysitting, but without the actual babies.” He glanced down at his legs. “Also…why am I in these grey sweatpants?” He ran a hand through his hair. “They weren’t mine this morning.”
