“Hey, you okay?” Erin touches my shoulder. I realize too late that she’s standing behind me, and I quickly shove the letters back into an envelope, shuffling them under the mail stack.
“I’m fine. Just got some notices about Gram’s place.”
Erin catches my eye, and the sympathy on her face right now is even worse than the interrogation she gave me about Pierce. If there’s one thing I hate feeling, it’s pitied. “If you need to talk or anything, you know you can tell me, right?” she says, and that just makes me feel even worse.
Because I don’t need to talk. I don’t need to complain about this situation, or vent my feelings. I need to fix it, once and for all.
I need Pierce’s money.
And I’m going to get it. No matter what it takes.
I force a wide smile, and even though it’s fake as hell, I can tell Erin won’t push me on it. “Everything will work out,” I tell her. “I’m a little tight at the moment, but I’m just waiting for back checks from the diner to come in. No biggie.”
She opens her mouth, probably to ask what the hell I mean, because the diner has never held my checks for me before. Luckily, a loud buzzer saves me from answering.
“I’ll get it,” I call, leaping out of my seat toward the intercom. Probably a delivery for Mrs. Bishop again. The delivery guys can never seem to be able to tell 2s from 3s. “Hello?” I ask the intercom.
“Delivery for Bonnie.”
Erin and I exchanged raised-eyebrow looks as I hit the buzzer.
“Did you order anything off Amazon?” she asks. I shake my head. I haven’t been drunk enough to spontaneously buy anything since the start of the semester, when I accidentally ordered 10 spiral bound notebooks instead of one.
When I open the door to the delivery guy, he hands me an enormous box. I frown at the label, but sign for it anyway, and bring it inside. “No return address,” I say, slowly, as a sense of dread begins to fill me.
Shit. Is this . . . But it can’t be from Pierce. He doesn’t know my address.
He dropped you off out front last night, points out the voice at the back of my head. How hard would it have been to check the address on the front door? To look at the labels on the buzzer and figure out which apartment B. Taylor belonged in?
But he wouldn’t do that. Would he?
“Open it already!” Erin demands, and I guess there’s nothing for it. Incriminating or not, I can’t exactly pretend this package didn’t just arrive.
I grab scissors from the kitchen and cut into the box carefully. Sure enough, the moment the tissue paper inside parts, I know who to blame for this.
Luckily the box on top is just the dress. Shorter than the last one he sent me, cut above knee-length, a deep V-neck top with a flowing, satiny skirt.
Pure white.
“Wow, did you get mixed up with a bride?” Erin smirks and dives at the box. Before I can stop her, she pulls out the next gift—high heels, at least four inches tall this time, and narrower than the last pair of heels. Also pure white, so blinding it almost hurts my eyes.
He did not.
That fucking bastard.
She keeps digging, unearthing a box set of jewelry next. When she opens that to find a pair of diamond-encrusted wristlets (which are shaped suspiciously like a pair of handcuffs, if you look at them for too long) and a narrow choker-style necklace to match, Erin nearly drops the whole box in surprise.
“Dude.” She whistles under her breath, eyes still bugging out of her head. Then she spots a little note attached to the bracelet case. “‘For my blushing Bonnie.’ Who did you say this spy of yours was again? And more importantly, does he have any friends he’d like to introduce me to?” She grins.
I snatch the jewelry boxes from her hands, blushing furiously. “He’s being ridiculous. I never asked for any of this.”
“Is he trying to propose or something? What the hell is with all the white?” She’s reaching into the box again, pulling out the last package, which of course is a matching set of barely-there lace panties and a filigree bra.
I grab that from her before she can inspect it too closely. “No, he’s just teasing me.” Because he is. White for my purity. White for virginal, innocent Bonnie.
If this is his idea of making a big deal of me losing it, I wish I had just fucked him in the car last night and been done with it. Shit.
On the other hand . . . I eyeball the bracelets, which Erin is busy trying on experimentally. I could probably resell those for at least a few hundred apiece. Which will pay back a decent chunk of that bill I just received.