For a split second I think about leaving her out there, and then curiosity gets the better of me, and I swing the door open. She startles the moment she sees me, glances behind her, then back at me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know where to go, and I need your help.”
“How the fuck did you find me here?”
She looks inside, peering around me. “The same way you found me in Morocco.”
“That’s different. It was in your name.”
“Okay. True. But you were following me today, and that gave me the opportunity to follow you.”
“You knew?”
“Yes.” I don’t know what to say to that. Pisses me off more than I already was, though. “Can I come in out of the rain?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is mine.”
She smiles and takes her coat off, as if she’s about to walk in anyway. “Right. Well, true as that is, I would like your help, so if you don’t mind,” she says, staring at me. “I did actually offer you a drink in Morocco. Perhaps you could return the favour.”
“You fucking poisoned me.”
She looks around the kitchen, avoiding me. “Not actual poison. I just needed a way of slowing you down.” Fucking worked. And the admission would normally be enough for me to pick up the shotgun behind this door and use it. “You were never in any real danger, Noah. Iron tablets and sleeping pills. Mixed up with some good old fashioned Moroccan tap water.”
Nice. “Not hearing an apology.”
“Okay, I'm sorry. Satisfied?”
“No.”
“Well, that's all you’re getting. Please, Noah, just hear me out and then I’ll go.”
Still too fucking curious for sense, I push the door wider and watch as she ducks under my arm. She puts her coat on the back of an old chair and then folds her arms around herself, waiting. I don’t know what she’s waiting for. This isn't happy hour at the bar.
“It’s cold in here,” she says.
I don’t reply. I put my hands in my pockets instead.
She looks around me towards the lounge, probably noting the glow of the fire. “Do you mind?” she asks, taking a step towards it. “I’ve been outside for quite a long time.”
“Don’t care. What do you want, Neve?”
“Well, a safe place to stay. I need time to get my head together and figure this all out.”
“And you chose me?” Fucking ridiculous. “I’m supposed to be taking you to your brother.”
“And yet you let me run today. I thought you might have had a change of heart, knowing what I shared.”
With nothing to answer that with, I keep staring at her, trying not to notice all the reasons why I’d be relatively happy to have her here for a while. She wouldn’t be bad to waste a few days with, certainly not when I let all those thoughts of her lips around my cock come back into my thoughts. The fact that I just licked my own lips probably gave that thought away. And then there’s the other thing - that she’s even here. Who the fuck finds me? No one. Not one fucking person has ever come here other than a postman with letters not addressed to me.
I eventually nod at the lounge, frowning. “Beer or tea? I don’t have coffee.”
“Tea would be great,” she replies, walking away.
I grab myself another bottle out of the fridge and get about making her a drink. It takes me a minute to process the look of her in my space. She’s knelt down by the fire, warming her hands. Light flickers over her features, highlighting expensive cheekbones and smooth skin. “Here,” I say, offering the mug to her.
She takes it and sips, small hands grasping as she stares into the flames like I was earlier. Time passes by like that for a while. No conversation. No questions either. It’s just her and me in this old place, mismatched furniture and rugs probably showing her how low down the rungs she’s just fallen.
