As good a word as any. And accurate. “What’d he say?”
“First he was all charm, even asked me out. I still refused to tell him. Then he said he had a job for you, something only you could do. But ... the way he looked from my head down to my shoes ... and everything in between, well, I thought—”
Sunny wasn’t usually at a loss for the right words. Max prompted. “Thought what?”
Her voice dipped as if someone had entered the room. “He meant something ... sexual.” Sunny didn’t use that word either. “Or he wanted me to think he did.”
Goosebumps prickled Max’s skin, not the good kind, but the walk-over-your-grave kind.
“Then he got mean. Only it wasn’t his words, it was in his eyes.” Max gauged the subtle nuances in Sunny’s voice. “I think he was threatening me, but now I don’t know exactly what he said to make me think that.” Sunny paused, and when she spoke again, there wasn’t an ounce of sunshine in her voice. “It was the oddest thing, but I felt nauseous when he left.”
Max knew the feeling. It burrowed into her bones.
“I didn’t tell him anything, I promise.” Sunny was a can-do-will-do kind of gal, but a promise? She’d been spooked. “Why did he want to know where you were so badly?”
Max’s question exactly. She didn’t doubt the identity of Sunny’s mysterious—and threatening—visitor, not for even a moment. But what the hell did Bud Traynor want?
Chapter Nine
How had Bud Traynor known she was out of town? How had he known that she worked for Sunny? What he did want? Part of her longed to open the door and tell Witt about the call. Another part knew it would only fuel his belief that she was obsessed with Bud Traynor. The questions tumbled around in Max’s head deep into the night, as had some obvious answers. The man might be following her, staking out her apartment. He could have asked questions about her when they first met two and a half months ago after his daughter Wendy’s murder, a murder Max still believed he had a hand in no matter what anyone else said. He could have found out about Sunny Wright’s agency then. After all, he’d known she’d taken over Wendy’s job through a temp agency. But none of that reasoning answered the big question—why?
It was dark in her room and cold outside. And the night was so terribly quiet. Max climbed from her bed and crawled on her hands and knees to the connecting door separating her from Witt. She’d thought after what they’d shared during the day, he would have asked her into his bed tonight. Or maybe it was the specter of Bud Traynor that gave her the craving for human warmth, arms around her to chase away the chill even the man’s name instilled in her bones. But Witt was behind his own door, and even Cameron hadn’t whispered to her in the dark, soothing her, comforting her, and sending her to sleep with the sweet sound of his voice.
She almost laughed. Since when had she started needing so badly? Before Witt came into her life, she’d been fairly self-sufficient, despite what Cameron said to the contrary.
Hunkering down by the door with her back to the dresser, Max pulled her knees to her chest and strained to hear a sound in Witt’s room. Any sound. Even a snore. Something so that she would know she wasn’t alone.
“I can hear you breathing, Max.”
She almost shrieked when Witt’s voice slipped through the crack along the bottom of the door.
“You’re supposed to be asleep.” Talking through the door felt oddly erotic, as if they were having phone sex.
“Time zone’s whacked me out.” He chuckled, as if thinking about the thing he’d done with her this afternoon. “Can’t sleep.”
Her obvious answer was that they should not-sleep together. She needed to feel arms around her, Witt’s arms, his warmth to burn away the chill in her bones that Bud Traynor left her with.
“Open the door.”
Max looked up. The connecting door wasn’t tightly closed. To come to her, all he had to do was give it a tap. “It’s already open.”
“Not enough.”
What more did he want? She’d left the door unlocked and unlatched. Yeah, it was sort of passive-aggressive. She didn’t have to commit herself to action. She always forced him to make the move, always put the ball squarely in his corner.
“Open up,” he whispered again when she didn’t answer.
He was asking a lot from her. She put her hand on the knob. She’d said she’d trust. She’d said she’d try.
She reminded herself of that old commercial with the pitiful woman outside a department store window saying, “Open, open, open.” That was her, wanting inside, but not knowing how.
No more! Pulling her legs aside, she eased the door open, a crack, a hand’s breadth, all they way, until she could see Witt’s seated bulk. Legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles, he leaned against the doorjamb on his side.
“What’d you want, sweetheart?” In the gloom of his dark room, his teeth gleamed in a Cheshire Cat smile.