have a few things in storage downstairs, I’ll set them up in here to get you started.”
Poppy took a turn at being incredulous. “You will?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. You need help?”
“Help?” she asked, unsure what he meant.
“Hauling your shit. You got a boyfriend or a… whoever to help you out?”
Again, she shook her head. “There’s nothing heavy. Just one bag really.”
His eyes narrowed. “Still gonna tell me you’re not running from something?”
Considering what she should tell him, Poppy’s eyes rose to their top corners. A smile tugged at her lips. “If you’re nice to me, then maybe I’ll answer your personal questions.” She thrust her hand higher. “Will you shake my hand, so I know we have a deal?”
“No,” he said without apology as he turned to walk away. “My word is my bond and I don’t give it lightly.”
“Then how do I know we have a deal?”
“Because I say we do,” he said, returning to his workbench.
“But you won’t shake my hand.”
“No,” he said, casting a dubious eye over her. “The arrangement lasts as long as I say it does… I might throw your ass out in a week.”
Poppy went over to lay both hands on the opposite side of the workbench. “If I pay my rent, you have to let me stay.”
“Without a signature, I don’t have to do anything,” he said, slipping something out of his pocket: a cellphone.
“Why would you throw me out?”
He stopped typing on his phone to look at her again. “Because you irritate me.”
“But I—” The fast, intense eye he laid on her quieted Poppy’s protest. She held up both hands in surrender. “At your pleasure. Understood.”
The apartment might be her base, her home, but it was his workplace. Poppy hadn’t said anything about him only working when she wasn’t there and that wasn’t a request she could make. Technically, she was the intruder, but she’d do her best to be as un-irritating as possible. She was finally making progress and didn’t want to undo it all.
THREE
Because she’d been buying the essentials as needed, Poppy didn’t actually own luggage… not in her new life. So the first thing she had to do the following morning was go shopping for a suitcase. At the same time, she bought a larger purse as well.
Once everything from the hotel was packed and her bill settled, she stopped at the apartment building to drop off her suitcase as her new landlord had suggested. He wasn’t around, so she’d put it inside and gone to work.
For some reason, Charlotte wasn’t at work meaning Poppy couldn’t thank her for the recommendation. Her whole day was somewhat fraught. The purse she’d bought with the suitcase was for the money that, until that day, she’d kept in her hotel room safe. Leaving it in the suitcase in an unattended apartment didn’t seem smart. The purse was her only option. It just meant that she was paranoid about carrying it around all day.
Any sane person would suggest a bank account. The trouble was that they could be traced, like her grandmother said. Through his various contacts, her father would have pull with just about any higher up. Enough pull that if he chose to snoop, he could do it with little effort. Poppy didn’t want her father checking out where she bought her things or how much she was spending on them.
After getting through work, clinging to her purse practically the whole time, Poppy was excited to return somewhere that wasn’t the hotel. She stopped to buy a bottle of wine and was all the way back at the apartment building before it struck her that she had no way to remove the cork.
Even that wouldn’t dull her mood. Poppy had a place to live. Not just any place. It wasn’t like she’d got a standard apartment. She was doing as her grandmother said and embracing new experiences. The apartment wouldn’t be perfect. In fact, she might hate it. But there was something to be said for starting at the bottom.
Most people might have their first apartment in their teens or early twenties. Poppy was twenty-six already, a late starter, maybe, but she was giving it a shot.
As she ascended the stairs from the fourth floor, she realized that the apartment would be dark. Even then it only occurred to her because there was a flashlight propped on the post at the top of the stairs. Standing on its end, shining its light on the ceiling, there was a note taped to