“Ah, Lexi! There you are!” I startle at the sound of Livvy’s voice as soon as I step into the house, my hand flying up to my chest.
“You stayed up?” I ask, wincing from the movement in my shoulder.
Her eyes flit between mine before tracking down my whole body. “Lexi?” The concern in her voice is loud and clear as she lifts up out of the chair she always sits in to crochet or read. “What’s the matter?”
“I—it’s nothing, honestly.” I smile but can’t quite make my lips lift. Once I heard Evan close the main door behind him, I gave it two minutes before I locked up and walked home. I couldn’t even pick up the rag to dust, so there was no way I was going to be able to mop the wooden floors in the room that he was using.
“You don’t look fine.” She comes to a stop in front of me and I huff out a breath.
“I knocked my shoulder on the doorframe at the center. It’s just a bruise.”
She pulls down the corner of my sweater, her cold fingers causing me to jump and shiver. “Oh Lord have mercy! Your shoulder is…”
I try to twist around to see but any movement causes pain to flow through my shoulder and back.
“Come on.” She grabs my other hand and practically pulls me back out the door, not giving me a chance to refuse wherever she’s taking me.
She locks the front door behind us and takes hold of my good arm, walking us down the road and turning left at a driveway that looks familiar. I’ve walked this road quite a few times since I moved here over a week ago, but I haven’t met anyone other than Mal.
She comes to a stop outside a door with the numbers 109 on it and raps her knuckles on the door, not letting up until she hears the click of the door unlocking.
“Liv—”
“No time,” she interrupts, stepping into his house and bringing me with her. “Is Cal here?”
“Cal?” Mal asks, frowning at Livvy and then turning his eyes to me. “What’s going on?”
He closes the door and walks past us, waving his arm at us to follow. He walks through the second door on the left which leads into a giant kitchen complete with gray slate tiles on the floor and glossy black kitchen door cabinets paired with marble countertops.
“Is he here?” she asks again, still not telling neither him nor me what she’s doing. I stay silent, even though I’ve met Mal briefly, I haven’t been in his home, and I have a feeling if he knew who I was and where I came from he wouldn’t want me here at all.
“Livvy?” A deep voice echoes around the kitchen as we walk around the countertops to a pair of glass doors that lead out onto a wooden terrace. My eyes widen at the sight of the man standing there. His ink-black hair is styled to perfection, not a hair out of place and his baby-blue eyes sparkle with both concern but also wariness.
The top button of his dress shirt is undone, showing a smattering of chest hair that leads up to stubble on his face.
This must be Cal—the lawyer. That thought has my stomach dropping and my hands sweating.
“Thank God you’re here!” Livvy gasps. “You need to look at Lexi’s shoulder.”
“I—What?”
“Cal, this is Lexi. Lexi, this is Cal.”
He raises a brow as he looks from me to her. “Lexi?”
“It’s a long story, anyway… she’s hurt her shoulder at work and… just look.”
She lets me go and gives me a small shove toward the giant of a man. I try to tilt my head back to look up at him—he has to be at least six foot three—but the pain in my shoulder stops me and I make a noise in the back of my throat; the first noise I’ve made since I walked in here.
“What happened?” Cal asks after watching me for several seconds.
“Well… I… erm…” I look back at Livvy where she stands next to Mal, watching me and Cal. “I met someone at work today, he was teaching. Then I told him I was watching him, not in that way of course.” I roll my eyes at myself and wave my hand in the air. “Anyway, I tried to introduce myself and accidently hit him with my offered hand.” I hear a chuckle come from behind me but I ignore it and continue. “Then I fled to the office and he came in; he didn’t knock on the door, he literally just said, ‘Knock, knock’—”
“Are we getting close to what actually happened?” Cal asks.
My eyes shoot to his, his lips are in a straight line but I can see something sparkling in the depths of his eyes. Is that laughter?
“Yeah, sorry.” I clear my throat, cursing myself internally. “We had a conversation and then I walked past him but slammed my shoulder into the doorframe.”