“Pizza?” She hadn’t ordered one. In fact, she hadn’t thought about food at all once Lance had let her go.
Who the hell would imagine that she’d want food when her entire life was in turmoil? Not Thorpe. He knew better. Had someone pulled a practical joke on her? The first person she’d suspect, Lance, wore an expression of disapproval, not mirth.
“Yes, and the delivery guy is at the back door, insisting that he give it to you personally.”
This could be a trick. What if it was some police ploy? But why a pizza delivery man when they could come in with badges flashing and guns blazing, then just arrest her? Yeah, that was a more likely scenario. Which meant the pizza had probably been sent by someone who couldn’t readily talk to her.
Sean?
“Sure. Let me get my wallet.”
Lance sighed. “It’s paid for. I tried, but he said you’d given him a credit card over the phone.”
Probably Sean.
“Right,” she agreed readily. “I’m so hungry that I totally forgot. Food. Let me get that.”
Shaking his head, Lance walked away.
Callie ran to the back door. Sure enough, a gangly, pimple-faced teenager stood there with a pizza box in hand. The smells of basil and oregano wafted from the cardboard as he shot her a smile.
“Callie Ward?” He looked her up and down with a leer.
“Yes,” she said cautiously, self-consciously drawing the edges of her robe closer together, making damn sure everything was covered.
“For you. From a ‘friend.’” He winked.
Definitely Sean.
With a stupid grin, she took the box from the boy, noting that one side was a bit heavier than the other. He turned away without another word, so she shut the back door, then headed to her room.
Locking herself inside her private domain, she lifted the lid. Inside, half a warm pizza lay, brimming with cheese, pepperoni, pineapple, and mushrooms. Her favorite. Sean had remembered. Despite the dim day, that made her smile.
The other half of the box was another story. Partitioned away from the pizza by a piece of cardboard lay a white rectangle shrink-wrapped in plastic. She stared at it, blinking a few times. A yellow sticky note on top had almost blended in with its background, but as soon as she flipped on a light, she saw that the left half said Eat Me with an arrow pointing to the pizza. The other half said Open Me.
What was this, Alice in Wonderland?
Callie lifted a piece of the pie to her mouth and took a bite, surprised to find that she was hungrier than she’d imagined. She moaned as the flavor burst on her tongue. So good . . .
But curiosity was killing her.
She plucked the plastic-wrapped bundle out of the other half of the pizza box. Immediately, the size and weight told her it was a computer. Why would he send her one? She owned a laptop. It was old, but it worked.
She pulled the device from the industrial plastic protecting it. A brand-new shiny silver unit with a familiar piece of half-eaten fruit on the front. Over that was another note that read Turn Me On.
Was this his roundabout way of sending her a message, despite Thorpe throwing him out of the club?
With a careful nudge of the unit’s top lid, she opened it, taking just a moment to revel in how gorgeous it was. This had to have cost him a small fortune.
Peering intently at the machine, she hit the button to power it on. Someone had already gone through the setup and registration process for her. It came up with a desktop picture of a flower. The profile name matched her own.
Another sticky note across the keyboard read Three Guesses . . .
She’d never seen Sean’s playful side and she liked it.
With a smile, she bit her lip and pondered. What would Sean have used as a password. She tried his name. The operating system didn’t recognize that. Then another idea came to mind, and she typed it in.
L-O-V-E-L-Y.