I clenched my teeth.
What was the point in living in the gated community if the residents couldn’t count on you to watch over their things while they couldn’t?
Wasn’t that the point of a camera?
“Of course,” I said. “I hate Howell. She told me earlier that he was on the case and I just cringed. Why does that man have to be so annoying all the time? It’s like he’s working against us. Doesn’t he see that we’re all on the same fucking team?”
James nodded. “Anyway, I just wanted to tell you what I heard. I saw her walking up with you, and thought you’d be interested in hearing it now, instead of later.”
I nodded and opened the door to the house, making a mental note to talk to both Luke and Lennox after dinner.
The most heavenly smell in the world wafted up to my nose the moment I crossed over the threshold of my front door, and the smell carried me all the way to the kitchen to find Lennox and Shiloh talking animatedly about the merits of cooking the potato before it was fried.
“What’re you cooking?” I asked the kitchen as a whole.
“Scalloped potatoes, fried chicken, homemade rolls, and asparagus,” she answered quickly.
Asparagus wasn’t my favorite, but I could deal. I knew for certain that Reagan hadn’t tried it, so it could turn out to be a good thing for her to try new foods.
“Cool,” I said. “Lennox, you remember James.”
Lennox nodded. “Yeah, I do. Nice to see you again, James.”
James nodded once at her, and his eyes went down to the chicken on the counter.
“Planning on feeding an army?” He asked.
I’d been silently wondering the same thing, but I’d managed to keep that thought to myself.
James, however, didn’t have the same self-control as I did.
“I usually cook for the entire ER, when I do have time to cook. I don’t know how to cook normal sized portions,” she admitted bashfully.
“Well then, I’ll just have to do you a favor and stay for dinner,” Shiloh grinned, rubbing her hands together forcefully.
James snorted. “My wife can’t resist carbs.”
“Hey, you said just this morning that you liked what carbs did to my…” James covered Shiloh’s mouth before she could get any further, and I shook my head.
The two of them were awesome, but when they fought it was like trying to separate two junk yard dogs from their bone. Impossible and eerily captivating to witness.
“Well,” Lennox said, opening the oven door to produce her potatoes. “Time to eat!”***“Are you sure this is okay?” Lennox asked worriedly.
I sighed and brought her into my room, shut the door, and then locked it.
“My daughter sleeps like the dead, and it literally takes me picking her up and standing her in the shower before she’ll move from Zombie Reagan to Awake Reagan. Trust me, she won’t care,” I urged, pulling her with me to the shower.
She reluctantly followed, practically dragging her feet the entire way.
“Your daughter’s really good,” she admitted as I pulled her inside.
I nodded distractedly as I stuck my hand into the shower and turned the water to hot.
“I have to thank my mom for the manners,” I confessed. “My way of doing things is just to take. Reagan’s is to ask. Which I guess is a good thing, mostly.”
“It’s a very good thing,” she agreed. “She’d fit right in at some of the dinner parties my parents forced me to attend.”
I stuck my hand into the water, testing the heat.
Satisfied with the degree, I turned to Lennox and slipped her shirt over her head.
“You’re lucky I had an extra set of scrubs in my car, or you wouldn’t have gotten me to stay,” she said, raising her hands up to allow the shirt to move without getting caught on her shoulders.
I snorted. “You were staying. I didn’t care what devious thing I had to do to accomplish that, either.”
She flipped her hair out of her eyes and looked at me worriedly.
“I’m going to have to go change my number and think about moving again, too. This time I think I’ll try a guarded gated community,” she whispered, shivering slightly.
I’d told her, after Shiloh and James had left, about what the fliers that’d been pinned to all of the cars had said and she’d paled.
Here was a woman that greatly valued her privacy, and one person singlehandedly ruined it for her.
“I’ll go with you to get the new phone before you have to be at work, and I’ll take you on the way to the station. As for the gated community part…it happened, but like I told you earlier, it’s more than obvious to me that she has some help somewhere. Whomever she is, she had to have help. It doesn’t make sense that she can do all the things she’s done to you without at least one witness pointing her out,” I explained.
She shivered as she got rid of her bra, followed quickly by her pants.
Then, suddenly, I lost my train of thought as all the blood rushed from my head, and straight to my dick.
As she yanked her hair out of her ponytail, she kept ranting about her circumstances.
“I can’t even live my life. It’s like every day I wake up and wonder if this’ll be the day she goes too far,” she muttered. “Well, obviously today was the day. And it was the first time I woke up without my mind immediately going there.”
As she spoke, I started to empty my pockets onto the bathroom counter, then slowly started on my clothes.
When she caught onto the fact that she couldn’t park at a mall without worrying, I shucked my pants, letting them drop to the ground around my ankles.
“Why does this water feel like it’s coming out of a jet?” She asked, going up onto her tippy toes and pulling the shower head off the hook.
Once she had it in her grasp, she started to twist the head as I got into the shower behind her.
“There’s a maid that comes in once a week,” I said, taking the shower head from her hands, turning it onto the shower portion before hanging it back up.