I shrugged. “Getting there” At the driveway’s edge, I point out the mutilated security panel. “They could easily access the guts of the thing,” I explained. “It should have had some kind of protective cover on it that would be more of a deterrent, but it didn’t.”
“Why didn't it alert the police? It should have, right?”
I thought about simply assuring her that glitches happen, but I wasn't the type to baby anyone. “These things rarely do exactly what they’re advertised to do. Your service comes from across the country, or even outside the country. Mistakes happen more than you’d probably like to think about.”
The color drained from her face, and she swallowed hard. “I was a sitting duck, wasn’t I?”
“Essentially.”
Adrianne swallowed again as if she were trying very hard not to be sick. “We’re here now,” I soothed. “We won’t let anything happen to you.” She nodded, but the terror was still stamped onto her face.Might as well get it all out now, I thought. “Let’s keep walking, okay?” As we walked, I showed her where her hedges were thin and the wrought iron was rusted.
By the end of our little tour, she was obviously shaken, but I had to give her credit for toughing it out until the end.
“There’s so much that has to be fixed,” she mumbled.
“I can help with that.”
She looked at me. “You’d want to do yard work?”
“I like working with my hands,” I told her. “I’m the intel guy, but I like to build things.” I shrugged. “I like to be outside.”
Adrianne smiled, small and soft, and there was no wonder that Callan had made a move on her. She was beautiful all the time, but that soft smile was a killer.
“When I first saw you, I thought you were the surfer type.” She cocked her head, studying me. “Are you?”
I dipped my head. “In true Cali-boy fashion,” I admitted, and she grinned. “What about you?”
“I’ve been a few times, but I am absolutely atrocious.” She smoothed her hands down over the generous swell of her hips. “I’ve always been curvy, and while I love my body now, I didn’t always. Going to the beach and wearing a swimsuit were... not my thing. I didn’t feel comfortable going to the beach until I was well into adulthood.”
I couldn’t imagine anyonenotloving Adrianne’s body.
In the car, when she’d been making those helpless sounds and I’d had to keep my eyes on the road, it was absolute torture. “We’ll go to the beach,” I said. “I’ll help you with your technique.”
“I would love that.” She looked toward the house. “They’re taking a long time. Do you think they’re arguing?”
I glanced over my shoulder. There hadn’t been any distress signals. “Probably,” I said. “That’s pretty common for Ethan and Cal, though.”
Her smile faded. “I don’t want them fighting over me.”
“They’re not,” I assured her. “Not in the way you’re thinking, anyway.” I knew that she was worried about jealousy, but for us, that wasn’t as much of a problem. Not that she knew that.
“How can you be so sure?”
I didn’t want to talk about Laura... but I didn’t see how to explain this situation any better. “Come sit with me on the porch? I saw that you have rockers.”
Adrianne nodded, and as we crossed the yard, I took her hand and intertwined our fingers. Her palm was warm against my own.
How long had it been since I’d held hands with someone?
The few flings that I’d had, only ever because Cal or Ethan had pulled me in, had been just that. Flings. I wasn’t interested in anything else from those women.
But there was something in the fragile defiance enigma that was Adrianne Montoya that made my stomach burn with the kind of want I hadn’t thought I was capable of anymore.
We climbed the porch and sat in the two rockers that were tucked neatly away from the front door, but our hands remained interlocked. Seemed that Adrianne liked holding my hand just as much as I liked holding hers. I played my thumb over her knuckles, and that soft smile lifted the corners of her mouth again.
“You asked how I know that Ethan and Cal aren’t fighting over you,” I said. As if saying their names conjured them, we could hear the muffled dressing down that Ethan was giving Callan. It wasn’t clear what they were saying, but the tone was obvious.
She nodded. “Yes. How do you know that?”