Wait, had she asked him anything? He must be talking about the invite into her place.
Jo got out as well and met him on the other side of her car. As they walked up the cement path together, she wondered how her digs compared to where he was living. Probably not well, given that he was bunking with his boss—or whatever a bodyguard called his employer. Meanwhile, the modest little apartment she’d moved into was housed in a building that was just four stories high and split in two, with units stacked on either side. The outside was cheap brick veneer, the inside common areas utilitarian, but clean. Her neighbors were grad students, medical residents, and a couple who were pregnant and moving out soon.
“I’m over here,” she said as they went through the second set of entry doors.
Her one-bedroom was right there on the left, and when he walked into it, he stopped dead as if he’d run out of gas on the highway. She turned on some lights.
“I don’t have much furniture.” She thought of her parents’ fancy mansion. “I don’t have much period, but everything in here is mine.”
She closed the door. And took her coat off because she had to do something.
“Can I offer you a drink?” she asked. “I have . . . well, four bottles of Sam Adams, and a bottle of cheap red wine that my coworker made me take home with me after I . . .”
“I don’t drink,” he mumbled.
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Well, she certainly was going to after the last couple of days. “But if you don’t mind, I’ll just help myself to a beer.”
Syn turned to her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m glad you are. No offense, but you don’t look well.”
Glancing down at himself, he lifted his arms as if he expected something unsavory to be dripping off of them. “I really do want to take a shower.”
Jo’s heartbeat quickened as she pointed to an open doorway. “It’s right in there. Fresh towels are hanging on the rods because I did laundry when I couldn’t sleep early this morning.”
“You should have called me if you couldn’t sleep.”
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You didn’t write down my number, did you.”
Leaving that one alone, Jo motioned at the bathroom. “Hot water is through there. Then we can talk.”
There was a pause. And then Syn nodded and went where she told him to go. As he passed by, his sheer size was unbelievable. Out in more wide open spaces—like the back alleys of Caldwell’s downtown or the parking lot at the CCJ—his height and weight didn’t seem as big a deal. But in here? In her little seven-hundred-square-foot crash pad? It was like someone had driven an eighteen-wheeler indoors.
As he closed the bathroom door behind himself, she wondered if he showered with his weapons on—and then promptly got a mental picture of a whole naked accessorized by Smith & Wesson.
And jeez, that really shouldn’t be as hot as she imagined it to be.
When the water started to run, she rubbed her aching head and thought about the empty pit of her stomach to avoid any more hypotheticals involving Syn’s birthday suit: She was still hungry. Then again, she’d eaten less than half of her meal at the bar, and she knew she had to do something to make up those ten pounds—fourteen, actually—she’d recently lost.
Pizza was always good, right?
Determined to be a proper hostess—thank you, Mrs. Early—Jo went over and knocked on the bathroom door. “Hey. I know it might be overkill, but I’m going to order some Italian food. Would you like any?”
The last thing she expected was for him to open things up.
And yeah, wow, Syn had apparently turned the water temperature up to Scorched Earth, and given that the hot water heater was right next to the shower stall in the closet, it took no time for things to get toasty. Accordingly, a great swirl of humid air wafted around behind him, setting him off like he was a mystery centuries old—but that wasn’t the half of it. He’d taken off his jacket—and also whatever arsenal he wore under it—and then removed the skintight Under Armor shirt he seemed always to wear.
So his pecs were on full display. His abs, too.
As well as the pair of wing-shaped hip bones that flew above the waistband of his leathers.