I blinked, knowing I didn’t hear him right. “What?”
Crowding me in, he grabbed the door and closed it behind us. There we stood near the kitchen, my mouth hanging open in what was probably the most unattractive manner. “I’m staying here.”
My hearing must be experiencing technical difficulties. “Why?”
“There are a couple of reasons.” He paused, squinting as he glanced around my apartment. I’d left the lamp on by the sofa, and since the room wasn’t large, it was fairly lit up.
I stood my ground. “How about you start explaining those reasons?”
Busy checking out my apartment, which I thought was a totally cute space, but nowhere near as nice as the house he owned, he stepped around me. Dumbfounded, I turned toward him. “Can I help you?” I demanded, dropping my purse on the small table by the door.
He faced me, one side of his lips kicked up, and the look on his face was nothing like the way he’d looked at me earlier. It was teasing and mischievous. My belly flip-flopped. “That is a loaded question, Sasha.” He tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter. “There are a lot of things you could help me with.”
Our gazes met, and a tremble coursed down my arms. Was he . . . flirting with me? I sucked in a sharp breath, needing to focus on the fact that somehow Cole had ended up in my apartment. “Why do you think you need to stay with me?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious.” He turned and walked toward the couch, and I stood there, sort of shell-shocked as he sat down . . . in the center. “Someone is messing with you.”
The words sent a very different kind of shiver over my skin as I walked over to the couch. “That might be the case, but that doesn’t explain why you think you need to be here.”
He tipped his chin up, staring at me as he scooted forward. “I don’t like you being here alone when someone is messing with you.”
I opened my mouth, but there were no words, because okay, that was sweet of him. That was actually very sweet, but he couldn’t stay here. “You being here is unnecessary.”
“How is it unnecessary?” he challenged as he reached down, lifting the hem of his shirt. What was he doing? Undressing? I didn’t know if I should tell him to stop or just let him continue. My heart rate kicked up until I realized he had a gun holstered at his right hip. Had it been there the whole time? I needed to be more observant.
“Because I’m not alone,” I whispered-yelled. “Obviously. I live above an inn, and my mother is literally a room or two away.”
He smiled, and my heart did another jump. Perhaps a cartwheel, because damn it, he was so incredibly hot just sitting there and breathing, but when he smiled, he was beautiful. “Let me ask you a few questions.”
I crossed my arms and waited.
“Are all your guests in the hotel?”
My brows knitted. “I don’t know. I haven’t been here.”
“Correct. So it’s entirely possible that anyone could’ve come into this inn while you were gone, hidden away until everyone is asleep, and then have free rein of the hotel.”
I locked up as my stomach dropped. “Oh my God, do you think—?”
“I don’t think that’s happened, but it’s a possibility.”
I gaped at him.
“My next question for you is do you have an alarm system?”
“We have one—”
“I know you have one for the inn, but what about for your apartment?” he corrected, unhooking his holster.
I shook my head. “No, but—”
“But you need to get an alarm in here stat, and I have a friend who installs them and owes me a favor. I’ll call him tomorrow.”
There was a good chance my face was frozen with my mouth hanging open. Getting an alarm for the upstairs made sense. The way the main one was wired, it would be cheaper setting up a separate one than adding to it. We’d need a brand-new system for the upstairs, a wireless one. “I don’t even know what to say to you.”
“Thank you?”
A surprised laugh burst out of me. “Those are not two words I am thinking of right now.”
“I can imagine what those two words are,” he said dryly, placing the gun on the coffee table.
Was this really happening?
Part of me wanted to grab him by the arms and drag him out to the door, but I knew there was no way that was going to be a successful endeavor. The other half just couldn’t believe this was happening, but there was a small part of me, a stupid and completely irrational part of me, that was secretly thrilled that Cole was here, sitting on my couch.
There was also a part of me that was terrified, because his insistence made me feel like I wasn’t safe, and neither was my mother. If I was being honest, I already knew that, but since I couldn’t figure out why, it all seemed too surreal.
I shifted my weight from one foot. “Should I . . . I be worried about all of this?”
Cole’s eyes met mine, and then suddenly, moving unbelievably fast, he was up and right in front of me. Then he was touching me, his hands carefully cradling my cheeks, and my heart was definitely doing cartwheels now. “Whether or not you should be worried about it isn’t the deal here. You are worried about it.”
Lies formed on the tip of my tongue as I stared into crystalline eyes, but I spoke the truth in a whisper. “I am freaked out about it.”
“Anyone would be,” he said, his voice just as low. “Even if they didn’t have . . . well, if they didn’t have your history.”
I flinched, and then closed my eyes as he swept his thumb along my right cheek, chasing away the reaction. I don’t know why I admitted what I did next. “Sometimes I wonder if I missed things before. You know? Like there had been signs that the Groom was coming after me and I missed them?”
“Even if there were signs, you wouldn’t have known that was going to happen.” His voice was as gentle as his hold. “And I’m not saying that these things are signs now, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I opened my eyes. “If I hadn’t . . . if my past wasn’t what it was, would you insist on doing this now?”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “Sasha—”
I pulled away, slipping out of his grasp and putting space between us. Disappointment filled me, like it had while I’d been at his house. I didn’t want my past driving his actions, and it was absolutely silly of me to think that would ever be a possibility.
The knot in my throat expanded. “You don’t have to do this because you feel sorry for me, Cole.”
His head tilted to the side as his brows drew tight. “I don’t feel sorry for you.”
I almost laughed. “And you don’t need to do this because you feel some sort of obligation to me, because of what happened.”
Understanding flashed across his face. “You know, there are things we still need to talk about. One of them being all that crap that went down in my kitchen before you ran out of my house.”