“I really can’t.”
“I won’t accept no as an answer, at least not until we’ve got you properly cleaned up. And then, naturally, I’ll need to contact the authorities and report you,” he said, all stodgy and British. Rachel gaped at him. He flashed her one of his gut-sinking grins. “Not really. I rather imagine they’d think you were completely off your trolley and trot you off to some sort of institution straightaway.”
“Or they might issue a citation against the Feizels, did you ever think of that? I’m of half a mind to call the humane society,” she insisted.
“Yes, why don’t you? And then you can explain to them that while you feared for the poor puss’s safety, you set it free in the wilds of Providence and haven’t the slightest idea where they might pick it up.”
“Good point,” she said reluctantly.
“Frankly, I don’t quite understand,” he said, turning a comer, “why you didn’t simply put a spell on the poor thing—you know, bewitch it a bit?” he said, and put a finger to his nose and wiggled it, Samantha Stevens style.
“I suppose that’s your attempt at being funny?”
“Can’t really say for certain what that was,” he said cheerfully, and turned into the parking lot of Corporate Suites, Inc.
“Now where are we going?”
“This is home, for the time being.” He turned off the car, grabbed her bag and the door handle at the same time.
“I thought you said you were staying with friends,” she said suspiciously.
“I did,” he said with a wink and popped out, walked briskly around the front of the car to her side, and opened her door. “Come on, then.” He offered her his hand.
Rachel reluctantly took it—yep, big and warm, just like she remembered. His fingers closed around her hand, and by some miracle of science, he managed to pop her out of his car.
“Have you got a coat?” he asked once she was standing at the side of the car, looking up and down her body.
“Not with me,” she said, pulling her lavender shawl around her. Flynn clucked his opinion of her lack of preparedness, shut the door, opened the backseat door, reached in, and withdrew the trench coat she had seen him wear. Without a word, he draped it around her shoulders, then pulled it together under her chin. “There you are.”
Yes, there she was, in an awfully nice coat, made of some sort of silky but sturdy trench-coaty fabric and lined with cashmere.
But the best news of all was that it engulfed her.
Still smiling, Flynn put his arm around Rachel’s waist, took her bag, and slung it over his shoulder. “What in the hell have you got in here?” he asked as he pulled her into his side to lead her to the entrance of the corporate suites. “Rather feels like a lorry-load of bricks.”
It was nice being at his side like that, wearing his coat, and even nicer being pressed against a hot guy. She didn’t think she’d ever been pressed up against such a firm and masculine body, and enjoyed it so much that she was reaching the happy point where she didn’t care if her skirt exploded off her or not.
They entered the foyer; some kid behind the counter looked up and smiled, his eyes going wide when he saw Rachel. “Hel—loh, Mr. Oliver!” he said cheerfully.
“Cheers,” Flynn said, and proceeded to lead Rachel across the standard-issue hotel foyer to the elevator. Inside, he punched five and looked up at the floor display. And the whole time he was holding Rachel against him, as if it were the most natural thing to do. It even felt natural.
When at last they came to the door of his apartment, she asked him who it belonged to.
“My company,” he said, and pushed the door open, gave Rachel a nudge across the threshold.
The place looked like a sort of sterile bachelor pad— small and really plastic. A tiny kitchen, completely equipped in miniature appliances, was off to the right, with a nice little bar separating the kitchen from the even smaller dining area.
The living area had a couch and two chairs, a run-of-the-mill coffee table, which was covered with newspapers and work papers and a John Grisham novel. There was also an end table with a huge mauve lamp that matched the mauve frames of the really blah seaside pictures on one wall.
On one chair was an assortment of laundry—either there to go out or having just come in, she couldn’t really tell. But she could tell with just a casual glance that he was a boxer as opposed to a brief man
“Doesn’t exactly have a homey feel to it, does it?” he quipped as he tossed his keys onto the dining table, where a stack of mail, several files, and a laptop resided. He put her bag next to his laptop. “Make yourself at home, will you, while I fetch the instruments of my torture,” he said and disappeared into a darkened door that she assumed was the bedroom.
Rachel walked further into the room, reluctantly draped his trench coat across the back of a chair at the table where he’d left her bag, and stood there, afraid to sit.