Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 154595 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154595 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Fuck. This place definitely wasn’t safe enough or good enough for her.
Getting to her door, he knocked. There was no sound. Fuck. She wasn’t here. At least she wasn’t ignoring him, he guessed.
He got out his phone and leaned back against the wall. He felt stupid standing here with flowers. For the first time in a long time, he felt awkward.
Unsure.
He hated feeling that way.
Where was she?
Gray: Where are you? I’m at your place.
Nothing. Fuck. Was she mad at him? Well, she’d just have to get over that, wouldn’t she? Because he wasn’t going anywhere until she talked to him. He could be far more stubborn than her.
Ten minutes passed and he was about to start knocking on doors when the door across from her room opened.
An older woman peered out at him. “Who’re you?”
“Friend of Maeve’s,” he replied shortly.
“Some friend. Don’t you know that she’s gone?”
“What do you mean, gone?” He straightened. “Out shopping or something?”
“No, boy. She’s left. Packed up her stuff and left in a hell of a hurry. Rude, really.”
She’d left.
What the fuck?
“Were those for her?” she asked, nodding at the flowers. “You hoping for something from her? You don’t look her type.”
He didn’t care what this old woman thought was Maeve’s type. He brought his phone up to his ear, then shoved the flowers at the older woman. “Here.”
“Everyone is always giving me flowers,” she muttered, disappearing into her room.
“Wait!” he said. “When did she leave?”
“Ahh, think it would have been three days ago.”
The same day she’d tried calling him? Had she been ringing to say she was leaving? Or was something else going on?
“Where’s the building manager?”
“Doris? Basement level.”
He nodded and ran downstairs. Where the fuck was she? When he got to the basement level, he knocked on the building manager’s door.
“Hold your horses,” she yelled out in a rough-sounding voice. Then she started coughing.
Fuck, how long was she going to take?
Damn, it was dark and musty down here. This was where the kitchen area was? No wonder Maeve didn’t use it.
He tried calling her. Voicemail. Fuck.
The door opened and a wizened lady in her seventies stepped out. She looked after this building? “What is it? You after a room? Got a free one on the third floor.”
Maeve’s room.
“Yeah, I want it for the night.”
“Only do week by week. We ain’t no hotel for you to bring your whore back to.”
“How much?” he demanded.
“Hundred.”
He drew double that out of his wallet. “I’ll give you twice as much if you tell me what you know about the girl who was there before?”
The woman stared up at him through rheumy eyes. “What’s to say? Name was Maeve. Came here from somewhere, left in a rush. Put the key under my door. Made a hell of a noise on her way out.”
He handed over some cash and she handed him the key. When he stepped into Maeve’s apartment, it looked like she’d never been here. The bed was stripped and someone had cleaned the place from the look of it.
There was none of Maeve’s mess. Her personality. He searched through everything, but he couldn’t see anything.
Then something caught his eye. Crouching, he pulled a piece of paper out from under the sofa. It was a photo of Maeve with a heart around her face. Had she done that? But it didn’t seem to make much sense. None of it did.
And why the hell wasn’t she answering her phone?
Fuck it. He didn’t have any other way to contact her and if she’d left . . .
Maybe she left because of you. Maybe she doesn’t want you.
Anger built inside him at the idea that she’d run off and left him without a word.
“No. Not happening, girl.”
He didn’t care if she wanted to leave. He didn’t care about her reasons.
Maeve was his.
And he’d do whatever the fuck was needed to get her back.
Maeve should enjoy this time, because as soon as he found her, he was bringing her back here.
And never letting her go.
Even if he had to tie her to his bed, lock her in his room, secure her to him, that girl . . .
She was going to be his.
And running from him? Well, that just made his possessive instincts roar. Those feelings he’d thought were muted in him were suddenly all he could hear.
Find. Claim.
Mine.
The chase was on.
20
Maeve limped her way up to the huge gates of the private community that Jenner and the others lived in. She’d arrived in downtown Nashville early this morning. She’d miscalculated her funds and had ended up with just a couple of dollars to get bus fare out to here. But she’d gotten off too early and had to walk the last ten blocks. She was exhausted, starving, and thirsty. Over the last seventy-two hours all she’d had to eat was three granola bars.