His heart stopped. Literally stopped. Like, he’d give himself CPR if he could move. His throat wasn’t working either.
“That’s probably a couple of days away,” she said. “I’m still in the sleep-and-take-hot-showers stage. Is it going to be a problem if I bring someone home?”
Hell, yes, it was going to be a problem. Voyeurism didn’t even make the bottom of his kinks list, and the thought of watching some hipster roam around in his boxers after a night with Cady made him see red. The thought of listening to it in this quiet, secluded house shut his brain right off.
He inhaled deep, and forced himself to pull his hand free from hers. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Fine,” she said. Her chin was still lifted, but she was cucumber cool about the whole thing. Except for her pink cheeks, no longer the steam-tomato or embarrassment-brick. No, the color in her face was the deep rose of desire.
He cleared his throat, stepped to the side. “Complete tour of the house. Please.”
There wasn’t much to see he hadn’t already seen. The upstairs consisted of a huge living space. A big area rug and long table sectioned off the dining area, while the island with stools sectioned off the kitchen. A leather sofa and chairs clustered around a fireplace with a stone chimney stretching up to the top of the vaulted ceilings. A screen hid the television above the mantel. Shelves stretched from the floor by the hearth to the ceiling and held an astonishing array of items: a taxidermied armadillo, a turtle’s shell, a deflated football, a complete, articulated skeleton of some animal he couldn’t identify without the fur to help him along. Books held together by two rearing-horse bookends. Pictures in mismatched frames, some of people he recognized, some of people he didn’t, and lots of landscapes and city streets.
“I take a lot of pictures,” Cady said, following his gaze. “Some of them are even good.”
He recognized the clutter of someone who lived her life from her deepest soul to the most unimportant possession. None of this was junk. It all held a story Cady could tell about somewhere she’d been, someone she’d met, something she’d done. It was the kind of decorating that put a magazine’s spread to shame, and the kind of thing he’d never been able to pull off on his own. Not because he lacked some decorating gene, but because he’d never been able to get past the idea that at any moment he might have to pack up his stuff and move.
“Interesting,” he said. “Let’s move on.”
Two bedrooms with a big landing/sitting area in between finished the main level. Downstairs there was an empty basement with a wet bar running along one wall, finished and ready to be turned into a movie or game room. A treadmill, elliptical, rower, and TRX setup were behind one door opposite the bar. A small recording studio was behind the other. He peered into the utility room, but no one was lurking behind the water heater and furnace.
He nodded at the boxes stacked neatly along the far wall. “What’s in the boxes?”
“Stuff from my childhood, mostly. The Christmas decorations we’ll put up in a couple of weeks. The usual crap you’d find in someone’s basement.”
“Who knows your address?” he asked, moving on.
She shrugged as she led him up the stairs to the main floor. “Theoretically, only my family, a few really close friends, my lawyers, and my management team. I bought the house with an LLC—limited liability company—that’s tucked under a couple of layers.”
“Where do your fans think you live when you’re not touring?”
“Everyone knows I come home to Lancaster. I guess they think I’m still living with my mom.” She perched on the arm of the big leather sofa facing the fireplace.
“I thought you told your fans everything.”
“I give them the impression I’ve told them everything, but this is totally under the radar. Not sure how long I can keep it that way. Chris was kind of pissed when I bought the house, because I wouldn’t let People do an “artist at home” feature on me in my new house. I need somewhere to go to ground. Somewhere I can just be.”
Her feet swayed gently, and she tugged the cuffs of her hoodie over her hands as she spoke. In the warm spotlights the shadows under her eyes became even more vivid. She looked exhausted, like she was sliding down the slope to a very long night of sleep.
“I need to go home,” he said. “When I went to the precinct today I wasn’t packed for an extended vacation. I can’t leave you here alone.”
“Okay,” she replied gamely. She slid off the sofa’s arm, grabbed her jacket from the hook in the mudroom, and preceded him out the door, into the garage, where she paused to look very, very longingly at her car.
“I’m really harshing your buzz,” he observed.