for a girls’ night out with Luna once, and that had been before she’d even broken up with her ex-boyfriend. Which meant it had been at least four years since I’d worn anything this short, and I was feeling it now.
Hunter grinned when he walked past me, letting out a low whistle between his teeth. “Looking good, girl. I’m glad you’re here. Do me a favor and don’t leave until you’ve both put this behind you, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, though I wasn’t convinced that was up to me. I was the crazy chick who’d all but asked him to kill her ex-husband. I still couldn’t believe I’d done that.
Who does that?
Oh, right. Me. That’s who.
To top it all off, I’d also gone and told Chris I was pissed off at him for saving said ex-husband. And I had been really pissed off about it.
“I’ll give it my best shot,” I told Hunter. I managed to paste a smile on my face and waited until I heard the door closing before looking back up at Chris.
He was standing against the railing outside their office now, looking as gorgeous, confident, and cool as always. I bet it didn’t take him hours to achieve that look.
I, on the other hand, was a cool imposter. Having given myself a proper onceover in the mirror before I left, I knew I looked the part. But I also knew I didn’t feel the part.
Chris wore dark blue jeans and a black button-down shirt. His short hair was styled perfectly in that “oh, this? I didn’t do a thing to it” way that I happened to know meant he really hadn’t done a thing to it.
Those green eyes tracked my every move when I walked toward the staircase to meet him up there, but he didn’t say a thing. The closer I got though, the more I realized he wasn’t quite as cool and aloof as he’d appeared to be from down below.
There was tension in the rigid set of his shoulders and the tight line formed by his jaw. To my surprise, his first words to me weren’t “Get away from me, you insane woman,” or “I’ve called the cops,” or even “Have you forgiven me for not turning myself into a murderer for you?”
Instead, concern filled his eyes and he took a few steps closer to me when I reached the landing. “Are you okay?”
My eyes nearly fell out of my head, and the pure shock of hearing those words from him first made me stumble a little. Happily, I grabbed onto the railing before I fell flat on my face.
“I’m fine. You?” I straightened out my skirt, more to have something to do with my hands—other than reach for him—and stopped several feet away.
He surveyed the distance I’d left between us, sighed, and then nodded. “Sure.”
“Do you mind that I stalked you here?” A slightly nervous laugh bubbled out of me. “I went to the hospital first. I would’ve tried your place next, but I’d never have gotten in there anyway, so I figured I’d try here.”
“You can always get in there, April. I gave the doorman your name ages ago. He’d have let you up.” His brows pulled together. “So would I, if you’d told me you were there.”
A tiny burst of hope radiated through me. “So you haven’t told your doorman to be on the lookout for a possibly murderous redhead who has anger issues and a large cruise ship full of baggage that she drags around with her?”
The smallest hint of a smile touched his lips. “Actually, I told him that if he saw an assertive redhead who thought she saw an opportunity to get everything she wants and spoke before she really thought about it, to grab her and keep her for me.”
“You told him to kidnap me?” I joked. “Well, that’s a good sign.”
He scratched the side of his neck before he laughed. “Yeah, I guess that did come out a little creepier than I’d intended. What I meant was that I was so afraid you were never going to speak to me again that I would’ve had him ask you politely to wait for me if he did happen to see you.”
My eyebrows arched. “You were afraid I would never speak to you again?”
“Of course, I was. You weren’t exactly happy with me when you left the hospital yesterday.”
“No, I wasn’t,” I said. “But I wasn’t exactly happy with myself either. What I asked you to do…” I