“And I have to be up at six. Besides, I’m super exhausted,” she lied.
“Miranda…” She heard the note of warning in his voice.
“You two keep chatting,” she said in an overly cheerful voice. She edged toward the doorway. “And thanks again for letting us stay here tonight. I really appreciate it.” Two more steps and she reached the door. “So, um, yeah, g’nite, guys.”
She darted out of the living room before either man could respond. A moment later, she walked into the dark guest room and released a breath of relief. Disaster averted. She’d gotten out of there, and now there was no chance she’d be having sex with Seth tonight.
Her gazed moved to the double bed, the only piece of furniture in the room other than the tall chest of drawers against the adjacent wall. Seth and Dylan took the word minimalist to new extremes, though she suspected that it had a lot to do with their military status. She didn’t imagine there to be much clutter or waste in the navy.
Sophie and Jason were sleeping soundly beneath the patterned comforter, lying on their sides on opposite ends of the bed. She smiled in the darkness, then undid the drawstring of the pants Seth had lent her and let the material pool at her feet. Seth’s shirt hung all the way down to her knees so technically she didn’t need to worry about modesty, but she still went to the dresser to rummage through the neatly folded pile of clothes Dylan had left there. She found her black bikini panties and slipped them on, then climbed onto the bed, doing her best not to wake the twins.
Sophie stirred in her sleep and made a soft sniffling sound, prompting Miranda to lay still. She needed both her kids to get a good night’s sleep.
Because at this point, who knew what chaos tomorrow would bring.
Chapter Six
Oh, this was bad. It was so very bad Miranda actually felt like throwing up. Choking back the rising nausea, she met the sympathetic eyes of her landlord and said, “How long will the cleanup take?”
“To pump it all out and remove the floors, two days,” he replied in perfect, albeit heavily accented, English. “The crew will discard any contaminated items. Everything will be documented for the purposes of insurance.”
“What about all our personal belongings? When can I come in and catalogue everything?”
Marco didn’t answer for a moment, signaling to a passing member of the cleanup crew and calling out something in Italian. The men moving to and from the vans parked at the curb wore an array of protective gear—green hip waders, rubber boots, gloves, masks. You’d think there was a hazardous waste spill in there instead of a few feet of rainwater.
Then again, even one foot of water would have been an utter disaster. Miranda’s heart had dropped to the pit of her stomach when she’d followed Marco into the apartment to survey the damage. Most of the water had been drained, so she’d been able to walk around in her yellow rain boots with no trouble.
No, the real trouble was the fact that anything with the misfortune of touching the floor was soaking wet and most likely unsalvageable. Luckily, most of her clothing was dry—everything in the top dresser drawers had escaped the flood, as did the hanging items in the closet. Even better—her important documents had come out unscathed, since she stored them all in a portable file folder at the top of her closet. And the twins’ room had barely been affected, which was the biggest miracle of all because now she wouldn’t have to replace any of their gazillion toys.
“I’ll have the men working around the clock so we can get you and your family back here as soon as possible,” Marco said kindly. He was only in his midthirties, but when he squeezed her arm in reassurance, his touch was oddly paternal. “Tomorrow morning you can come back to go through your things. The crew we hired is full-service, so they will assist with the cleaning and drying.”
“That’s a relief,” she said gratefully.
Marco lightly touched her arm. “I promise you, Ms. Breslin, everything will be taken care of. I apologize again for the inconvenience. I was not informed that the gutters were built improperly.”
She believed him. Marco had been genuinely horrified yesterday when he’d discovered the state of the ground-floor apartments. He’d already insisted she didn’t have to pay next month’s rent and had refused to budge when she’d protested.