All day she’d been looking forward to a shower, but the idea of stripping naked behind that flimsy bathroom door with him on the other side wasn’t appealing. She grabbed her things anyway, carried them into the bathroom, and shot the flimsy lock.

She’d never appreciated a shower so much, despite her uneasiness over sharing a room with him. She shampooed her hair and brushed her teeth, reveling in the sensation of being clean again. Since she hadn’t thought to buy pajamas, she dressed in her new T-shirt and shorts, both of which fit her better than the clothes he’d bought for her. As she came out Panda shoved something in his pocket. “TV here sucks.” He flipped to a show about monster trucks.

I’m sure life without porn is challenging for a man with your vast intellect. “Sorry about that,” she said.

He scratched his chest and nodded.

He was exactly the kind of guy her biological mother would have gone for. Sandy had drunk too much, slept with too many men, and ended up dead when she was only a few years older than Lucy. They had the same green-flecked brown eyes, the same delicate features, and now the same irresponsibility.

She needed to prove to herself that wasn’t entirely true. “Could I use your phone?”

His eyes stayed glued to the monster truck rally as he leaned on one hip and pulled his phone out of the same pocket she’d seem him slip it into moments before. She took it from him. “Were you talking to someone?”

His eyes didn’t leave the screen. “What do you care?”

“Just wondering.”

“Ted.”

“You talked to Ted?”

He glanced up at her. “Figured the poor son of a bitch deserved to know you’re still alive.” His attention returned to the trucks. “Sorry to break the bad news, but he didn’t say anything about wanting you back.”

Her treacherous stomach did its customary death spiral at the thought of Ted, but if she started picturing what he was going through, she wouldn’t be able to function, not that she was functioning all that well now. And then another thought struck her. What if Panda was lying? What if he’d been calling the tabloids instead of Ted? Her story would bring him more money than he could make in a year. Years.

She itched to check the call record on his phone, but she couldn’t do it with him watching. The moment he went into the bathroom, she’d check. In the meantime, she had to let Meg know she was still alive, but when she started to carry the phone outside, Panda growled at her. “Stay here. Unless you don’t care about making friends with some of those characters I saw hanging around in the parking lot.”

“A problem decent hotels never seem to have,” she couldn’t help but point out.