The Owner of His Heart

CHAPTER NINE





“LAYLA!”

Someone was calling her name. Layla tried to answer, but she could not tear her eyes away from her apartment door, which seemed to be screaming the word written on it: “LEAVE!”

“Layla!” the voice said again. But Layla still couldn’t look away.

The voice got closer. “Layla. Layla, speak to me.” A pair of hands grabbed her around the shoulders and turned her around. “Hey, look at me.”


Her shoulders turned, but her neck strained to keep her eyes on the door.

“Look at me, Layla. Come on.” The owner of the voice palmed her face and made her look at him.

She blinked when she saw it was Nathan. “How did you get in here?” she asked.

“One of your neighbors heard me pounding on the door.”

She looked over his shoulder to see several doors stood open in the hallway and quite a few of her neighbors had come out of their apartments. A wave of embarrassment, tiredness, and confusion washed over her. It felt like her insides were crumbling into her stomach.

“Did you do this?” she asked him.

His eyes widened. “What?”

She shoved against his chest. “Did you do this? Were you the one behind my locker, too? You want me gone that bad?”

“No, Layla, I didn’t do this.” He bit the words out, like she had insulted him with her suggestion, even though he’d been trying to contractually obligate her to do exactly what the door demanded just that a few minutes ago. “I’m not married and I would never do something like this to you. Now could you stop accusing me of crimes I didn’t commit and come here?”

He held out his arms to her. And Layla, too tired to question what was happening, all but fell into them, hot tears spilling down her cheeks.

He held her tight. “I didn’t do this,” he said into her ear. “But I’m going to damn well find out who did.”

***



Less than an hour later, Nathan discovered this was actually the second time someone had left her an angry, spray-painted message. He sat next to Layla on the tiny couch in her ridiculously spare apartment while she answered questions from the two officers who had been sent to take down a report of the crime. The two officers were at least twenty years apart in age, and complete opposites. The older one was short and balding with sagging jowls, while the younger one was tall and Latino with sharp cheekbones and dark brown eyes that kept wandering back to Layla whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.

Nathan didn’t particularly care for either policeman, but he really didn’t like the younger one.

“So you don’t have any idea who might have done this?” the older cop asked. “You don’t have any enemies? Any disgruntled patients?”

“No, I get along with all of my patients. And I don’t have any enemies” Layla looked over at him. “None that I know of at least.”

“Why are you looking at him?” the Latino officer asked.

Nathan rolled his eyes. “Because she thinks I might know something about this incident that she doesn’t. But I don’t.”

The older cop looked between the two of them. “She might be on to something, there, Mr. Sinclair. Are there any ex-girlfriends lurking around who might have it out for your new one?”

“We’re not—” Layla started.

But Nathan cut her off with a simple, “No. I don’t do ex-girlfriends.”

“What does than mean?” the younger cop asked.

“I don’t stay with anyone long enough for it to be considered a relationship.” Before the younger cop could ask a follow-up question, Nathan lobbed one of his own. “Why wasn’t a detective sent to take her report? She’s been threatened twice now. Shouldn’t we have someone with actual investigative skills on the case?”

The younger cop’s back went up when he said this, but the older cop just answered, “I’m sorry we don’t meet your standards, Mr. Sinclair.”

Layla laid a hand on his arm. “Nathan, don’t be rude,” she said. “I’m sorry, officers. He’s just a little upset. We both are, but I’m really grateful you came out. And I wish I had more for you to go on.”

She smiled at them, and the younger one relaxed his stance. As always with Layla, Nathan wondered if she knew the effect she had on men, or if she just wielded that wide smile of hers with unthinking abandon.

“We know this is hard for you. Here’s my card,” the younger cop said. He gave her a smile, one which probably came off to Layla, who liked to believe the best of everybody, as gentle, but which Nathan could clearly see for the flirtation it was. And as if to confirm his suspicions, the cop said, “Maybe we can swing by here tomorrow just to make sure everything is okay.”

Nathan stood up and took the card before Layla could. He drew himself up to his full six feet, three inches, which put him at a couple inches taller than the younger cop. “That won’t be necessary. Layla’s coming home with me. I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to stay in this apartment alone.”

“There wasn’t any breaking and entering,” the young cop said. “She’ll probably be fine.”

Hot anger burned inside his chest at the thought of this man using this crime as an excuse to romance Layla.

“Probably isn’t good enough for me,” Nathan said. And much to his surprise, he realized it wasn’t. Sure he wanted her gone from Pittsburgh, but he wanted her to leave in one piece. “I’ll see you two out now.”

***



Layla’s first thought had been to reject Nathan’s offer to spend the night at his place. But she really didn’t want to stay in her apartment, at least not until the door had been repainted. And the landlord had already come by and said it would take at least a couple of days for that. Actually, at first he had said a couple of weeks, but before Layla could stop him, Nathan bullied him into getting it repainted within forty-eight hours.

Nathan Sinclair, she thought to herself, seemed to have a gift for pressuring others to get his way. And Layla again wondered what could have possibly gone down between them back in the day. Was he the Pittsburgh boyfriend her father had mentioned, and if so, what had she done to make him want her out of his life so badly?

She watched him at the door, instructing the two police officers to interview her neighbors and found it hard to believe he had a twin brother, that there were two guys as gorgeous as him running around the city of Pittsburgh—

Wait, the brother! It suddenly occurred to her that if she wanted information about what happened during the year she’d lost, there might be one more path open to her. According to Nathan, she’d once said he and his brother only had looks in common. Maybe that meant his brother was nicer than him. Maybe he’d be open to answering her questions. She had to find him. In fact, the longer she thought about it, the more it seemed finding Andrew Sinclair was the only answer to her current set of problems.

“Do you want to pack an overnight bag?”

Layla looked up. Nathan stood in the open doorway, having apparently sent the police officers on their way and was now waiting for her answer.

***



To Layla’s pleasant surprise, Nathan didn’t live in a large house or a high rise, but in a converted warehouse loft in the South Side, near historic East Carson Street. However, that pleasant surprise didn’t last long. While the red brick warehouse seemed quaint and vintage on the outside, when he slid open the heavy steel fire door, he revealed a five thousand square foot space that looked like the home version of his office. It was filled with heavy black furniture. In the open-plan kitchen, nearly every appliance, large and small, was made out of grey stainless steel, including the square knobs on the wood cabinets, which had been painted over with black lacquer. There wasn’t anything in the entire place that couldn’t be described as either sleek or modern down to the slate grey cork flooring.


“Wow,” she said, looking around. “This is certainly…you.”

But he wasn’t listening, because he was too busy typing on his smartphone in the office area on the other side of the kitchen.

“The guest bathroom is over there if you need to freshen up,” he said. His voice echoed slightly in the large space.

“Thanks,” she called back. Layla wouldn’t mind a long bath after the night she’d had. “But, um, where’s the guest bed?”

He still hadn’t looked up from his phone. “I don’t have one.”

Layla’s eyes went from side to side. “You have two bathrooms, but you only have one bed?”

He shrugged. “I’m not big on entertaining guests or sharing my space.”

Layla held up a hand. “So let me get this straight. You bought an obnoxiously large loft, filled it with black furniture, and only got one bed, so you wouldn’t ever have to put up with anyone who wasn’t here to have sex with you?”

He chuckled. “Why do you think they call it a bachelor pad?”

She started to say something smart, but then thought twice. She was here to snoop around for Andrew Sinclair’s contact information, she reminded herself, not to insult him. Instead she went over to the large black wrap-around couch and said, “Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, and I don’t mind sleeping on the couch at all.”

Now he looked up, his cold grey eyes almost glittering in the loft’s dim light. “You’re not sleeping on the couch.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly let you take the couch. Really, I’m fine sleeping here. It looks like a really great couch. Soft…”

The words died in her throat, as he laid his phone down on the office desk and started walking across the large space toward her. He paused for a few seconds, but only to strip off his suit jacket and toss it onto the couch that, according to him, she wouldn’t be sleeping on. There was absolutely no mistaking his intentions, and Layla once again had to tamp down opposite urges to run and stay rooted to the spot.

Rooted to the spot won out, and she ended up feeling like caught prey when he grabbed her around the waist and hauled her to him for a kiss that pushed all thoughts of sleeping on the couch out of her head.