She stopped at the staircase railing, turned back to face him. It was one thing to suspect her of something like this, but she’d bet her life no one else in this building had ever done a dead-fish teleconference. She was ready to scold him with a passionate defense of her neighbors’ upright standards of conduct, but when she saw his face, she realized that his mask of tight, impatient frustration had temporarily slipped. He looked almost . . . chastened.

“No,” she said, more gently than she’d originally intended. She was helpless against that look. “They wouldn’t.”

He cleared his throat, dropped his eyes briefly, then nodded toward the door across from Nora’s. “I ran into Jonah the other day. After I had the dumpster here. He seemed pretty pissed.”

“It wasn’t really a dumpster,” she blurted. God! What was she, his attorney? It was as good as a dumpster. Sort of. Either way, she was already doing exactly what she’d been chastising herself for only a few minutes ago—forgetting herself.

She turned back toward the stairs, eager to get out of this hallway. At the very least, she couldn’t get moony-eyed around a man who was meant to be her enemy while she was inside of hell’s toilet bowl.

“Come on,” she said as she descended, but the truth was, she was talking to herself as much as to him.

“I don’t smell anything,” she said, standing inside the shockingly bright, shockingly clean space formerly known as Donny’s apartment. It hadn’t been that long since she’d last been in here, piles of Donny’s things everywhere, the apartment messy and stale-smelling in a way that’d been hard for her to confront. For all the boasting she’d been doing to Will Sterling about the community-mindedness of the building, the inside of Donny’s apartment had not, on first sight, suggested the surroundings of a community-supported man.

But now, the place looked sunny and felt fresh—the sliding door, open to the balcony, casting bright light over the newly painted walls, the floor mostly clear of debris except for a few boxes stacked tidily against one of the walls. Even with its old cabinets and countertops, she could see that the kitchen practically gleamed. Sure, it was still too bare to seem welcoming, but already it was a massive improvement.

Will had obviously put in a ton of work.

And he was obviously really, really close to finishing.

“I smell paint and bleach,” she added, because she had a feeling her stunned silence was noticeable.

Beside her, Will tipped his head to the right. “We gotta go down the hall.”