18. June 15th

JUNE 15TH

TB

No one had ever beeninside his apartment at Tribe. No one. He didn't even invite the team in. One more first she was bringing into his life.

Squash that shit down. Don't think about it. If you don't think about it, it's not an issue.

The other voice in his head just snorted in derision.

He had expected it to feel weird for her to be inside his space. It didn't. However, he did watch her like a hawk as she wandered around checking everything out. Her long skirts dragging at floor level made her look as if she were floating. When her arms raised to run along blank shelves and furniture edges, her delicate fingers extending from the ruffled long sleeves, she reminded him of that elf princess in that movie Nemo had forced him to watch.

The apartment was relatively bare. The furniture had come with the place, and he hadn't bothered to make a single change in the space. The reality was that it was just a place to maybe eat some takeout and then crash at night. He'd never even used the kitchen other than the refrigerator and the microwave.

He tried to look at the room from her perspective.

There was a brown leather couch and chair, a loveseat, a coffee table, and a large-screen TV.

The kitchen was all stainless steel. A couple of stools at the breakfast bar. No dishes in the sink and very few items in the cupboards and drawers. Even his refrigerator was bare except for a couple bottles of beer and bottled water.

Eventually, she floated down the hall.

His bedroom was just as utilitarian as the rest of the space: bed, nightstand, dresser, and chair with gun magazines stacked on it. A plain navy blue comforter on the bed with lighter sheets. Blackout curtains over the floor-to-ceiling, bulletproof window.

He had a second room across the hall, a carbon copy of this room, except it had a green comforter, matching sheets, and no gun magazines. No one had ever slept in it.

And the bathroom had all the standard amenities. Nothing was on the countertops, no towels hung on the towel bar, just a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap inside of the shower.

He was just packing his laptop into his duffle bag when she finished her tour. "Very you."

He frowned at her. "That didn't sound like a compliment."

"Oh, it wasn't," she admitted truthfully. "Very clean and precise. Sterile. Unemotional." She trailed her fingers along the wall to the small TV table underneath the monitor, which held a DVD player. "Decorate it yourself, did you?"

He grunted, zipping the bag. "No. This is how it was when I moved in. Minus my stuff."

"You mean the gun magazines addressed to the office? And the closet contents of six pairs of jeans, ten Henleys, two pairs of boots, and a leather jacket, all in shades of black and gray. Easy matching, I commend you. Add to that, roughly half dozen sets of gear in various environmental camouflage. Then there are your drawers with about two weeks' worth of socks and underwear, a couple pairs of sweatpants, and some T-shirts and tank tops. That takes up two of the four drawers. That stuff?"

"You went through my things?"

She shrugged. "Well, I figure you're going through mine right now, or your team is, so turnabout should be fair play."

The tic in his jaw was the only sign of emotion on his face.

She gave a cynical smile. "Look at it this way. I refrained from going through your bathroom drawers and the nightstand. I was actually afraid of what I might find there."

His brain tried to inventory the contents. "Only use the top right drawer of the bathroom. Nightstand? Probably better that you didn't. Ka-Bar knife at the ready, gun in the false bottom."

"Darn. You really are no fun. Thought maybe I'd at least find the sex toys."

He would not have been surprised if his eyes were bugged out like a cartoon character right now. "I don't need sex toys."

Then it hit him.

She was teasing him.

Huh. Forgot she was sneaky-funny, didn't you?

One of the things I love about her.

Love?

He smacked aside that slip.

Instead, he said to her, "So I'm depressing and lacking, is what you're saying."

Her lips moved to one side as she considered her response. "Depressing? No. Lacking? Oh, yeah. There's a total sense of someone who has no emotional attachments to anything. I mean, walking in here, I can't even tell where you usually sit. Like you don't even have a butt imprint on a favorite chair."

"That's just… weird."

She shook her head. "No, it's you that's weird." She shrugged. "But that's okay. At least you're clean."

He leaned a hip against the breakfast bar. "And what will I see when I come to your home?"

"I don't know. I mean"—she gestured to the room—"it doesn't look like this. But knowing you? I guess you'll see what you want to see."

He felt a twinge inside. He wasn't sure what that meant, but it didn't sound good.