Nine o’clock. Who would call so late? Gretch snatched the landline before Dwayne awoke from his snoring sprawl on the faux-velvet sofa. She glanced at the caller ID and murmured a greeting as she slipped into the kitchen.

“Oh my God,” Hannah exclaimed. “You’re all right.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You didn’t ask Sean to walk you home.”

Gretch winced at the accusing tone. “I was your personal trainer for six years, Hannah. I’m strong enough to defend myself.”

“In a minidress and stilettos? What if that creep had been lurking nearby?” Hannah sounded so worried that guilt wormed into Gretch’s defenses.

“I told you I never give out my real last name or address to new pickups,” she replied. “I lie about where I work on my alias’s social media pages, and I left during rush hour while it was still bright daylight.”

The silence on the line lasted long enough for her to hear her own words. She winced.

“Honestly, Gretch, that’s a bit sick.”

You have no idea. She inserted a carefree laugh. “Girl’s gotta have some excitement in her life.”

“Well, it’s come around to bite you in the ass.”

Gretch stiffened. “Has it? Because I’m home safe.”

Hannah made a sound, half sigh, half exasperation. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

“No, I’m sorry.” Gretch rested her forehead on the wall by the phone mount. “I appreciate your concern, sweetie, but I’m in total control.” Always.

Hannah’s second sigh mixed disagreement with surrender. “Okay. Let me call Sean. He’s still at the office, worried sick.”

Gretch jerked upright, a tingle of alarm zipping through her. “Sean?”

“When you gave me the thumbs-up, I emailed him my thanks. He just got around to reading it, and your cell phone isn’t on.”

Of course her phone wasn’t on. She didn’t want to field sicko texts from Brandon. “The battery’s dead,” she lied. She just had to ignore her phone for a few days until Brandon moved on. Problem solved.

“Listen,” Hannah said, “the self-defense course Sean teaches? You’re going to find out when it is and go.”

Sean wearing the black belt of a martial arts master? All buff and in command? Giving combat demonstrations and instructing her? Oh, hell no! “Says who?” she demanded.

“Says your boss. You lied to me during work hours.”

Gretch rolled her eyes. “Giving you the thumbs-up is not telling a lie. I’m not doing anything that involves Sean.”

“And when I call him back, I’m giving him your address,” Hannah said, as if Gretch hadn’t spoken. “He’ll be on your doorstep at eight to escort you to work.” She hung up while Gretch was halfway through shrieking a profanity.

Dwayne grunted awake in the next room. “Another mouse?” he called out gruffly.

“No.” Gretch peered around just in case, then slunk back into the living room. Should she update him on what a creep Brandon had turned out to be? No. Just one more friend who’d freak out unnecessarily. “Hannah,” Gretch said, replacing the phone in its charger cradle. “Treating me like a goddamn child.”

Dwayne sat up with the prolonged groan people with weak core muscles emitted. “It’s about time someone treated you like a child,” he mumbled. “You constantly act like one.”

Gretch grabbed the remote and shut off the TV. She hadn’t had a childhood—literally didn’t know what “acting like a child” meant. She slumped into the club chair adjacent to the sofa. “I don’t need people bossing me around or protecting me, damn it.”

Dwayne cocked his head. “I’d give anything to have that confidence.”

Confidence. Sean in white pajamas and a black belt. Gretch hugged a throw pillow. She had to get out of going to that class, period. And the humiliation of Sean—Sean!—escorting her tomorrow. Maybe she’d get up super early and give him the slip. When he showed up, Dwayne could tell him she’d already gone in to work. She plumped the pillow with her fist and threw it aside.

No. Hannah would never forgive her.

* * *

Sean pressed the Allen/Collins buzzer outside the apartment building, then jammed his clammy hands in his windbreaker and rotated on the step. The aromas of coffee, bacon, and Dolgo crabapple blossoms permeated the cool morning. Sheathed newspapers lay scattered around his feet in a disorganized mess. He nudged one with his toe until it was perpendicular to the step, started in on the next one, then whistled out a breath. Calm the fuck down. This isn’t a date. He tore his eyes from the disorder and glanced around.

Gretch’s refurbished neighborhood was in a good location, close enough to downtown but still holding a quiet, suburban feel. Spring buds bloomed along the boulevard. Down at the corner, a blue awning boasted a mom-and-pop grocery store.

After what seemed like a pointedly rude delay, the outer door opened with a faint squeak, and he braced himself for Gretch’s caustic greeting. An obese African-American stood with a hand on his hip, looking him up and down in that clichéd effeminate way. Irish Spring and a dense knockoff cologne overpowered the air. Sean swallowed his cough.

“Please tell me I didn’t haul my fat ass all the way down here so you can hand me a religious pamphlet.”

This was her housemate? The call button did say Allen/Collins. “I—uh—I’m here for Gretch?” Why had he said it like a question? He cleared his throat. “She’s expecting me.” Hopefully. What if Hannah hadn’t notified her?

The man’s brows rose to comical height. “She’s never brought a man home before.” He studied Sean again, lips pursed. “And you sure don’t fit her type.”

Right back at you. Sean shifted his weight. “I’m a colleague. Sean Quinn? I’m taking her to work?” For the love of God, why was he saying everything like he disbelieved it himself?

“Oh.” Collins’ face cleared. “Well, come on up.”

“I’ll wait here.”

A slow smile spread, and black eyes twinkled. “Naw. This’ll be fun. I’m Dwayne Collins, her long-suffering housemate.” They shook hands, and Collins held the door wider.

Sean slid by and hesitated in the small foyer. Collins pointed to a tiny, ancient elevator with a sliding grate. There was no way that thing would hold them both. “I’ll take the stairs,” Sean said. “What apartment?”

“Five A.”

He nodded and bolted up the steps two at a time. At the turn he spotted Collins still in the foyer watching with that peculiar smile. Like, given the eager sprint up the stairs, the man didn’t believe Sean was just a coworker. But it wasn’t eagerness. It was basic physics: burning off nervous energy.

Sean turned the corner and bolted up flight after flight until he was on the right floor. By the grinding squeal, the elevator was still ascending, and Sean waited politely, heart trip-hammering. He glanced at the brass 5A. Such an ordinary white door with a metal peephole and black-soled scuff marks at the bottom. Probably made by someone with their arms full of grocery bags. Someone impatient. Goosebumps raised the hairs along his arm to stiff attention.

She was in there. Maybe it was his imagination, or the heightened sense that always happened around Gretch, but her peppery perfume was unmistakable from here.

Collins squeezed out of the elevator and lifted an eyebrow. “Damn. You’re not even out of breath.”

Sean shrugged. The climb actually felt good. He rolled his shoulders and followed Collins into the apartment. Yep. Mingling with her housemate’s robust scents were Gretch’s perfume, hyacinth soap, oatmeal, cinnamon, and coffee.

“Your Ladyship,” Collins called. “Your princely escort has arrived.”

Sean sucked in a breath. “Uh…”

“I hope you left him in the foyer,” came a muffled reply amid the rapid click-click of heels. A door opened at the end of the narrow hallway and there she was, in an azure silk blouse and black miniskirt that squeezed her without mercy. Sean’s heart thumped painfully behind his Adam’s apple.

“Oh,” she said with a shaky inhale, glancing at Collins. “You didn’t.” She waved haphazardly, like shooing a fly. “Get yourself a cup of coffee, Sean, I’ll be right there.” The door slammed shut.

Collins’ smile was as shiny as a toothpaste commercial. “Well, well, well.”

“We’re not dating,” Sean said so fast it sounded like one word.

“Yes, I see that, darling. And I’ll raise you a: not yet.” Collins cocked his head. “What do you take in your coffee?”

“I—I’ll just wait outside.”

“Don’t be a fool. This is our chance to dish on the queen. Believe me, she’s in there shitting bricks, and I want to know why.”

So did Sean. And he liked the way Collins referred to her in royal terms.

Sean followed him into the kitchen, but something about this reminded him of the few awkward dates he’d experienced as a teenager. What to talk about while he waited? What to do with his hands? He folded his arms. No. As his brothers enjoyed pointing out, now he looked like he was pouting. He stuck his hands in his pockets. Yeah, that worked. He leaned against the counter, confidence growing. “What do you do?” he asked, almost high-fiving himself at how causally that came out.

“Banking. Customer due diligence.”

Finance, sports, legalese, and the mechanical workings of engines. Sean never had a response to these subjects. He nodded thoughtfully.

“So.” Collins prolonged the word as he poured coffee into a mug stenciled with She Who Must Be Obeyed in garnet and gold. “How long have you two known each other?”

“Couple years. Ever since I began working for Moore and Morrow. How about you two?” It wasn’t curiosity as much as Sean instinctively redirected any subject away from himself. Hell, the details of his life bored even him.

“Oh, honey, I’ve known her since the fourth grade.” Collins handed him the steaming mug. “Her mama chased a man here from California. I’ll never forget the sight of that little girl showin’ up in class. Little blond pigtails and a don’t-fuck-with-me expression—teacher had no idea she was coming either.”

“What was she like as a kid?” Sean sipped the coffee, which blistered his lips, but it was better than gawking at the surprising gossip.

“The same ice queen she is now, only on a miniature scale.”

“How do you live with that?” Maybe he could pick up some tips.

Collins snorted. “That act is like the tippy-top of the iceberg.” He flicked a hand. “There are channels and floes and thousand-foot waterfalls underneath all that snippy PMS shit.”

Right. Sean rubbed the back of his neck, squinting. “Channels and flows and waterfalls of what?”

Collins laughed, belly and chins shaking with mirth. “I like you, Sean Quinn. I’m beginning to understand the door slam.”

“No, seriously.” Sean’s heart beat way faster than after the five-floor sprint. He was standing at the precipice of a huge secret. “Tell me what she’s like underneath.”

Collin sobered and shifted his weight, wincing. “She’s incredibly protective of the suffering and downtrodden.” He gestured with his mug. “Take me, for instance. I was bullied and beaten every day of my childhood, and you should’ve seen how fierce she’d get. Like this little girl had an invisible Wonder Woman costume.” He waved his other hand toward the window. “Now she volunteers at a women’s shelter Wednesdays, and a crisis line on Sundays. Spends every Thanksgiving and Christmas working a soup kitchen—first one there, last one to leave. And before she buys groceries, she stops by Mrs. Ferguson’s next door to see what she needs. The poor dear has macular degeneration and is legally blind.”

Sean nodded because speech was beyond him. For sure this wasn’t Gretch-from-the-office. Although she had recruited the office staff to support Hannah at her apartment eviction meeting last October. That had been damn decent.

Collins air-toasted him. “And she’d kill me if she knew I told you all that.”

As if on cue, a door opened and Gretch’s assertive footsteps drew close. Sean thanked Collins for the coffee, pouring the rest down the drain. He’d have rinsed the mug out, except the man was beside him in an instant, reaching for it.

“Don’t keep her waiting over something stupid like that,” Collins warned Sean under his breath.

Sean’s universe righted itself. Yes, that was the Gretch he knew.

He nodded his thanks and met her in the hall, masking any hint of how her nearness and that spicy scent wrecked him. “Ready?” he asked, opening the front door. She wiggled her fingers at her housemate and sailed on by without responding.

Collins grinned in undisguised glee. Glad someone’s enjoying this. The man held out an open tin of cinnamon mints. “Here. Just in case you get lucky.”

Sean took one. “By lucky, I assume you mean I spontaneously drop dead and the medical examiner appreciates my fresh breath?”

Collins chuckled. “Or lucky as in: you man up, handsome.” The door shut in Sean’s flaming face. He inhaled unsteadily and turned. Gretch stood by the open elevator, and he headed for it like it was a guillotine. Not because he feared the ancient contraption. Because of how close they’d have to stand together, and how long it would take for that damn thing to descend.