But that wasn’t the real reason.
I just… wanted him there.
I didn’t understand it logically. I mean, objectively, I barely knew the man. But I was finding that I just… liked the way he handled me. I appreciated his personal brand of sweet kindness and care that never went overboard. He gave concern and comfort, then went ahead and moved things along, not harping.
It just… worked for me.
When he’d come rushing in and dropped down in front of me, reaching for my hands, giving me the soft eyes and the sweet voice, oh, man. If I believed it was possible to fall for someone you barely knew, I’d have fallen right that moment.
Then when he’d grabbed me and pulled me to his chest?
Good Lord.
The man… he was the dream, wasn’t he?
The guy we all secretly wanted, but didn’t quite believe actually existed.
Then he went ahead and cleaned me up.
I’d never had a man clean a wound for me before. The idea was so foreign it had seemed borderline laughable.
It was all just too much.
I was kind of glad he decided to go and look around, do some investigating. Because things were complicated enough.
I needed some space to put my mind and feelings back into place.
By the time the end of day rolled around, Brock was back and waiting for me, giving me a head shake as if to say he had nothing when he likely saw some hope on my face as I walked toward him.
“It was a bit of a blind spot,” he told me as we got in the elevator to ride down. “I could see the back of someone in a black puffer jacket, but their hood was up, so I really didn’t get much. Six foot, maybe. Somewhere between thin and average. That’s… it, unfortunately.”
“You’ll figure it out,” I said, some part of me picking up on defeat and disappointment in his voice, and not liking hearing it there. “It’s just going to take some time.”
“The super is probably a dead end,” he told me as we walked through the lobby. “He does have your card, but it’s all dusty and shit. I still have to find where the camera feed is, so I can access it, but it wasn’t in his office.”
“Okay. It makes sense. You can totally be a creep without being an attempted murderer.”
“And to put your mind at ease, I went through your place with a fine-tooth comb, making sure no one had planted a hidden camera anywhere.”
“I hadn’t even thought of that,” I said, chewing my lower lip at the idea of that sort of invasion.
“Now you don’t have to,” he assured me as he opened my car door.
That night and the following few days were pretty much the same. Brock brought me to work, then got lost working on the endless employee records and snooping around my building, trying to locate the room where the security cameras were.
Apparently, his best—and last, at this point—guess was the basement. Which was hard to get into since the access was behind the doorman’s desk, and he was rarely away from it long enough to sneak behind, go explore, then come back up.
He’d suggested we might need to work out a plan for me to be a lookout and distract Frank while he came back out.
As for me, well, I worked.
And I tried to pretend I wasn’t jumping at shadows.
“Damnit,” I hissed as the text came in from Cam while I was pulling food out of the delivery bag in my kitchen.
“What is it?”
“A charity event,” I said, sighing hard. “I’d agreed to it a full year ago,” I added. “With everything going on, I totally forgot about it.”