But when a shadow stepped out from beside my steps, sending my pulse into a frantic stammering and my heart up into my throat, I maybe finally understood his point.
My mouth immediately opened to scream as I gripped my keys hard, trying to slip them between my fingers like I had heard some guy on the news tell women to do when they were walking home or something.
"Don't scream," a somewhat familiar voice, a smooth and sexy voice, said as he stepped out of the shadows.
"Jesus, Paine!" I hissed, my hand moving over my pounding heart. "Do you always hide in the shadows at women's houses?" I asked, then looked down the road where a black Challenger was parked. "How did you even get in here? This neighborhood is gated."
"Yeah, it is," he agreed, tucking his hands into his pockets.
"Care to explain?"
"I know the night guard, babygirl. Just a bit of luck that when I showed up, planning to wait for you at the gate, he was on. Let me in."
Well, that was seriously messed up. Friend or not, the guard had no idea if Paine's intentions were to rape and murder me in my own home.
"How did you even know who I am, let alone where I lived?"
"Babygirl," he said, giving me a charming smile.
"That's not an answer."
"Money like you, name like yours, name like your not-boyfriend's, all I had to do was ask around and I got a name. Elsie Bay, daughter of Edward Bay, the biggest schmuck this side of the city."
I felt myself laugh, caught off guard. It was something me and my close friends might have said about my father in secret, in whispers, but no one else ever had the balls to say something like that in a loud, confident voice. "It's still really creepy, Paine. Why are you here?"
"Invite me in for coffee," he suggested, his breath hanging in the cold air for a second.
"No."
"No?" he asked, head tilting, brows drawing together, like maybe he didn't understand the word.
"No. It's a complete sentence," I clarified and his lips tipped up.
"Smart."
"Yes, I am. Now tell me why you're here before I call the owner of this complex and have you escorted off the premises and your friend fired."
His smile spread, showing me his perfect white teeth again. He really was ridiculously good looking. I wasn't unaffected either. I was a bit of a workaholic since I started at my company, wanting to prove myself. And when I wasn't working, I was hanging with Rome or girlfriends and having my weekly Sunday dinners at my father's. I wasn't even sure the last time I had made time for a man. So, to put it perfectly frankly, I was horny. I was horny and Paine was attractive and charming and he had this tiny little hint of danger that made my lady bits clench in what I was convinced was a prehistoric, biological impulse to mate with an alpha male to pass on good genes to a new generation.
Yeah, well. That wouldn't be happening. First, because I had an IUD. Second, because I had absolutely no intentions on giving into some primal drive and having sex with Paine. No matter how much my belly fluttered when he called me babygirl or how nice of arms he had. So my body needed to chill the eff out.
"Elsie, we need to talk about why you were being chased by drug dealing pimps last night."
Well, that was blunt.
I cringed inwardly at the words 'drug dealers' and 'pimps' even though I knew that was what they were. A part of me flinched away from those... professions on principle. But, more than that, there was more of a personal reason I didn't like to be reminded of that. A personal reason I was praying to all hell that the Barrett guy could help me with.
"I don't see how it is any of your concern. You did a nice thing. If you do things solely because you want something out of it, even something as simple as explanations, then maybe you shouldn't be doing nice things in the first place."
"You'd rather I didn't help you?"
"I'd rather you didn't ask around about me, find out where I lived, then hide in the dark waiting for me to get home so you could badger me. That is what I would rather."
"Badger you?" he asked, taking slow steps toward me. "Is that what I'm doing?" he asked, his voice soft. It was soft in a way that was meant to be sexy. And, well, it was. It was sexy and I felt myself retreating, knowing it was only going to lead to somewhere not good (but, oh, so good) if he got too close to me. My back hit the railing to my staircase, stopping me. Paine closed the last step between us. "Babygirl, if I was badgering you, you would know it," he said, his hand raising and tucking my hair behind my ear. His fingers brushed down my bare neck in a way that made me do a small, involuntary shiver before they trailed over my shoulder and down my arm. His fingers brushed over the back of my hand as my eyes held his, my mouth parting slightly and even I knew it was an invitation. But a second later, it fell open wider when I felt his hand tug my keys out of my palm.