“Can I help you?”
The soft feminine voice at his back jerked him to attention. Surprised twice in one evening? Parker and Jack would give him hell for losing his focus. Dean turned, thrusting forward the flowers he’d brought along, because after three years of running DreamMakers, he couldn’t justify arriving to any date with empty hands—
“Fuck.” The word escaped before he could stop himself, his jaw threatening to smash into the floor.
Holy. Shit.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
The woman on the other side of the threshold stared back, her perfectly pouted lips breaking apart as her own jaw dropped. Long black hair lay smoothly over her shoulder, so deep in tone that blue highlights sparkled in the light from the wall sconces.
The sight of her hit his nervous system like a Taser. He ran hot, then cold, then hot all over again as Emma Lee raised a brow.
And slammed the door in his face.
Goddamn it.
“Emma?” He put his fist to the door. “Emma, is that you?”
“Go away.”
Her muffled response grew fainter, as if she were walking away.
He banged again. “Emma, open the door.”
No answer.
He dropped to the floor and tried to peer under it, but there wasn’t much of a gap to see anything more than a faint ray of light from where he’d seen the open balcony door behind her in that brief instant she’d stood gaping at him.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on?” He rolled to a seated position and hauled out his phone, the flowers strewn over the floor like in some cheesy romantic melodrama. He hit a couple of buttons, drumming his fingers on his knee as he waited.
“Your dime, spend it as you—”
“Give me Emma’s phone number, Jonesy, stat.”
What he wanted was for her to rattle off a set of numbers. What he got was grief.
“Why do you need her number?” Suz’s laissez-faire attitude vanished and her tone sharpened. “Why don’t you ask her for it yourself? What did you do, Colter?”
“Pony up, already. And don’t think I won’t turn you over my fucking knee for this the next time I see you.”
“Just a minute,” she cooed. “I have another call coming in on the other line.”
“Suz—” He swore as she clicked him over to hold, helpless to do anything at this point but wait for her to give him a break. He dropped to his belly again, but there was still no movement in the room that he could spot. That was when he realized exactly what a dumbass he must look like, and scrambled to his feet, pacing the hall impatiently between bouts of knocking that got as little response as before.
When Suz finally reconnected them she spoke before he could, her disapproving tone cutting him hard. “What a coincidence. Guess who was on the other line?”
“Connect us,” he demanded. “Put us on a group call or something—I need to talk to her.”
“Screw that. She doesn’t want to talk to you. She barely wants to talk to me.” Her feminine snarl was protective and pissed off, neither of which boded well for his dire need to get to the other side of the door and finally talk to Emma. “I’m mad at you, Colter. I tried to do something nice for you, and it turns out you’ve been keeping secrets from me.”
“We all have secrets, so don’t try to guilt me there, Jonesy. You going to help or what?”
“Or what.” She hung up.
Fucking hung up.
Doors in the face, dead air—he was batting a thousand tonight. But after years of trying to get in contact with Emma online so he could explain and apologize, and getting nowhere at all, one locked door was not going to stop him. He knew where she was, and he was not calling it quits until they’d cleared the air once and for all.
Dean scooped up the flowers from the floor, organizing them as best he could as he made his way down the hallway to the nearest fire exit. He took the stairs two at a time to the next floor, pausing to straighten himself up before knocking firmly on the door of the suite directly above Emma’s.
The swirl of music and voices grew louder as the door eased open and a young woman in a neat black uniform eyed him with approval. “Flowers?”
Dean flashed his best smile, stepping forward into the suite as if he did this all the time. “I need to take them to the kitchen first,” he whispered. “Little accident in the elevator—don’t want to get in trouble with my boss for leaving behind anything that looks shoddy.”
The girl giggled conspiratorially and led him into a discreetly positioned galley that was nearly the size of his apartment. He moved to the sink and pretended to work as the girl grabbed a tray off the island.