I'm appreciating the clever titles when Lilah comes around the corner. She's showered, changed into light jeans and a red t-shirt and she's towel drying her long hair with a fluffy gray towel. That denim is doing the lord's work, highlighting every curve from her hips down to her calves.
"Sorry, that took a min--" she interrupts herself as she looks at the two books in my hand and makes a choked squeaking sound.
"I think you have a type," I say, laying on my accent extra thick as I hold up the cowboy and hot nerd books up on either side of my face. Now that I know she's got a thing for cowboys, you can sure as shit bet I will use it to my advantage.
"What are you doing?!" she squeaks, racing over to snatch the books out of my hands.
I chuckle and hold them out of reach as I bend down to kiss her.
"I kind of love this about you. These are dirty as hell."
Lilah's cheeks go from pink to scarlet. "Did you read those?" she asks in a strangled voice as she eyes the copy with the makeshift bookmark.
"A little. Just the highlights, really." I watch her face as she tries to recall what the scrap of paper marked, and her eyes go even wider.
"Can I steal this one?" I ask her, holding up the cowboy one. "I might need to bone up."
She groans at the pun and snatches the books from my hands, placing them back on their shelves.
"Stop teasing me. It's not nice." Lilah scowls at me and I see from the crinkle in her forehead, I've hurt her feelings. I wrap her up in a hug, resting my chin on top of her head. She stands still, her arms at her side.
"Hey, don't be upset. I wasn't teasing, Princess. Well, I was teasing a little, but I do want to read it. If you don't want to share, I'll order my own copy."
Lilah sighs and hugs me back. Her arms sliding around my waist is just about the best feeling ever. Just about.
"Fine, but don't start with that one. You have to start at the beginning." She untangles herself and grabs another book off the cowboy shelf. She slaps it into my palm and shakes her head, lips pursed as she gives me a wide-eyed, dubious look.
"I doubt you'll like it."
I kiss her and tuck the book into my back pocket. "We'll see. Just don't tell anyone about this." I give her a wink as we head to the front door. She grabs her purse and phone from the table by the front door, but not before I see an alert on her screen for four missed calls from an unknown number.
The worry I felt when we found her front door cracked creeps back in. I don't want to worry her unnecessarily, but something still feels off. I walk Lilah to her Jeep and kiss her goodbye, trying to hide my concern for the phone calls.
I head back inside my house, and pause just inside the front door, trying to decide what to look at first. Security cameras win out. I check the footage for the time that Lilah was here for breakfast. Unfortunately, the angle is all wrong and I can't see any of Lilah's front walk, much less her driveway or front door. All I can see are cars driving by.
"Fuck," I mutter to myself.
I turn my front camera so that it's pointed at her house. I'm torn. I know I should tell her I'm surveilling her house. The problem is, I don't know how to explain the high-tech cameras hidden in my bushes without telling her the truth about what I do. Normal people don't have military grade cameras with motion sensors in their front yard.
I need to figure out the best time to tell her about my extracurricular activities while I'm at it. Shit, I thought this would be easy.