“Maybe you should take the hint,” Brick suggested dryly.

“Maybe you should take the message, Secretary Boy.”

“Maybe I see why she has you in her phone as Pain in the Ass.”

Inexplicably, this caused Raj to guffaw. “Ah, that ungrateful little twerp,” he said with what sounded like affection. “Tell her I called. Tell her to call me back or at least answer her goddamn emails.”

Raj—whatever kind of name that was—disconnected the call without any of the usual pleasantries, leaving Brick staring down at the phone in his hand. His gaze flicked to the bedroom. It had been a stupid move, answering the call. One a sober Remi would have his balls for.

He needed a game plan. One that had her opening up to him rather than him sneaking around behind her back.

The easel set up in the center of the room caught his eye. He wandered over to inspect the blank canvas and wondered why she’d bothered setting it up at all if she was supposed to be using his space for her studio.

An idea struck him. If he could make the studio space inviting enough—instead of just shoveling things to the edges of the room like he’d done—it would give him more time with her. And more time together meant more opportunity to drag some answers out of the woman.

It also meant more time resisting his insatiable physical attraction. But he’d spent fourteen years building a tolerance to it. He could handle a few weeks of proximity. Couldn’t he?

After a quick tour to check window and door locks, he was satisfied. Remi was safe. He could go home and for once not stare out his fucking window, wondering what the hell she was doing at 3 a.m. with all the lights on.

Instead, he’d go home and start clearing a space for her.

He was halfway across the street when he realized whose sweatshirt she’d worn to bed.

15

One second, Remi was miserably shoveling rainbow unicorn cereal into her mouth as a replacement for the dinner she’d forgotten to cook or order. The next, the Joy of Painting rerun she was watching went dark, as did the rest of the house. Her spoon flew out of her hand onto the rug.

“It’s just a regular ol’ power outage,” she told herself. “No deranged murderer is out there in this squall cutting the power just to break in and commit a homicide.”

Though maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a weapon of some sort on hand. Just in case. The wind that had been whipping the island since yesterday gave a particularly creepy howl outside the windows.

She tiptoed her way around the couch and into the kitchen, where after a brief, blind rummage through drawers, she found a pair of kitchen shears. Tucking them into the pocket of her sweatshirt, she began a search for candles and a lighter. She found one taper candle and a box of matches that had apparently gotten wet sometime in the last five years and were basically useless.