Kristi was gathering her bag together and reaching for the door handle. He’d lost at darts to her. Not once, but the best of two out of three, then three out of five. He’d only won one of their matches and he suspected that she’d intentionally mis-thrown so that his bruised masculinity wouldn’t be completely destroyed. Though that wasn’t really Kristi’s way. For as long as he’d known her, she’d been a competitor to the nth degree. Throwing a match just wasn’t her style.

He could have blamed it on the beer, but he’d only drunk three over the course of as many hours. She’d kept up with him and showed not one sign of having been affected at all by whatever alcohol existed in light beer.

So he’d lost the damned bet, but she’d agreed, albeit reluctantly, that he could take her home. So here they were in the parking lot of her apartment building, which was really an old three-storied clapboard house that showed influences of Greek Revival architecture with its massive white columns and wide portico. However, even in the poor light cast from a security lamp, he could see that the building had lost much of its original luster. Far from its once grand beauty, the old home was now cut into individual units, the massive front porch and veranda above now converted into walkways between the apartments.

A shame, he knew, but kept his mouth shut.

Kristi cast a glance in his direction. “Come on up,” she suggested, opening the passenger door and stepping out of his truck. “I’m on the third floor.”

Big mistake, he thought. No, make that impossibly huge mistake. And yet his hand was on the door handle as she slammed the passenger door shut. He stepped outside, pocketed his keys, and mentally chided himself for agreeing to this.

He comforted himself by thinking it might be a good idea to look around and ensure that she was safe. But that was just an excuse; he was rationalizing and he knew it. The truth of the matter was that he wanted to spend more time with her and, it seemed, she did with him.

He followed her past a row of overgrown crepe myrtles and some shrubs that looked like sassafras. Under the portico, on the far end of the building beneath the porch light, a single guy was seated in a plastic chair smoking, the tip of his cigarette glowing in the night. He turned to watch them head up the steps but didn’t say a word.

Kristi was already on the stairs and Jay followed.

Don’t trust her. Sure, she might have grown up in the last nine years or so, but what was it Grandma used to say? “A leopard doesn’t change his spots overnight.” Or in this case nearly a decade.