Bound by Danger (The Alliance #6) - Brenda K. Davies Page 0,82

mid-June when she left, she’d closed all the windows before going out to the bar. It had been raining when she left, and she didn’t want to return to wet floors. However, June had given way to July, which had brought a stifling heat and oppressive air to the apartment.

Sweat was already beading on her forehead when Callie stepped into her living room. She made it a few feet before Lucien cleared his throat, and she turned back to him.

“You have to invite me in,” he told her.

“Oh,” she said and gave a nervous laugh. “I forgot about that. Come on in and enjoy the sauna.”

He smiled as he crossed the threshold and closed the broken door the best he could. Callie strode over to open one of the two windows facing the street. She pushed aside her sheer blue curtains, undid the latch, and shoved at the window. It took some effort to get the swollen wood to budge, but she finally got it to slide open.

While she worked on that, Lucien opened the other window. The muggy air coming through the windows did nothing to cool the place off, but it alleviated some of the staleness choking the apartment.

Lucien studied the living room with its gray sofa and matching armchair. A fluffy, cream-colored carpet covered the floor, and across from the sofa sat an entertainment center with a TV on top. Next to the sofa was an end table with a nearly empty glass of water on it.

Photos of horses, a farm, and a man hugging a child, who on closer inspection turned out to be Callie, hung on the beige walls. Another photo of a group of women hugging each other was on the entertainment center.

Callie was one of the women, and he assumed they were at an outdoor concert as a crowd surrounded them and there was a stage in the background. Different colors of paint splashed their bodies and faces. The glow-in-the-dark necklaces they wore illuminated their grins as dusk settled in behind them.

This is the life she’s lost, he realized with a sad pang in his chest. He was so glad he’d found her, she was the best thing to ever happen to his life, but whereas she’d only made his life better, she was losing so much.

He lifted his head as she walked over to the end table. She was so incredibly beautiful and though she’d lost so much, she didn’t complain about it or cry and rail against the unfairness of it all. His heart swelled with love, and the words rose in his throat but died on his lips. He’d never uttered the words before, and he didn’t know how to do so now.

Callie lifted the water glass from the end table and carried it into the kitchen. Remodeled in the early two thousands, the house retained some of its oldness in the kitchen cabinets. Because of their quaintness, she’d painted the wood around them a darker green while making the doors a paler green.

The contrasting tones helped emphasize the country feel of the kitchen, as did her fluffy, yellow curtains. She hated giving up her rented home for an apartment, so she’d done everything to make this place feel like home when she moved in, and she loved it.

She set the glass in the sink and opened the window above it before crossing the yellow, tiled floor to the back door. She checked the lock before peering out at the stairs winding down to the backyard.

There were three sheds down there; hers was the one to the right. She’d only lived here for a couple of months, and she’d stored all her containers inside the shed when she finished unpacking them. They would come in handy now.

She turned to find Lucien studying the built-in shelves in the kitchen. A delicate, old tea set with a red rose pattern decorated the shelves.

“That was my grandmother’s,” she said. “It was one of the few things my father kept after they passed. Apparently, it belonged to her mom.”

And it’s one of the reasons she was so insistent upon coming back here, Lucien realized.

Next to the shelves was a small table with chairs surrounding it. Only one chair wasn’t pushed neatly into the table. Everywhere he looked, he saw Callie in this place. It was warm and inviting, like her.

He followed her through the doorway off the kitchen and into a small room with a desk. A computer sat on the desk, and a