“H-how did you find me?” I ask. This law of attraction business is really working, and it’s working fast!
But in my confusion, I don’t realize he looks just as surprised as I feel.
“Hey,” he says, his stern expression returning to his face as quickly as it slipped. “It’s you.”
“Yes… it’s… me.”
An awkward silence dances between us, and I can’t help but notice that his head is almost grazing the top of my door frame. He really is huge, even bigger than he looked out on the streets of Broadway. His muscular shoulders push against the thick fabric of his black sweater, and I can see every pack clearly defined on his torso.
A small cough ripples through the quiet. “I’m looking for V. Mikos. Is he here?”
He tears his steely blue eyes away from mine and they drift to the apartment behind me. Embarrassed at the size, and the fact that all of my panties I hand-washed last night are strung over every surface to dry, I shut the door a little.
“I was Violet Mikos. Now I’m Violet Washington.”
Is that how he found me? I must still be listed in the Yellow Pages under my husband’s name…
“You’re related to Johnny Mikos?” He asks, a pleat forming in his brow.
My heart sinks. I haven’t seen that goddamn man since forever, yet he always comes to haunt me in the strangest ways, every single day.
“What is this about?” I snap, coming back down to earth with a heavy thump. This clearly isn’t the start of my Happy Ever After. It’s just another stumbling block in the Johnny Saga. It seems like it’ll never end.
“Maybe I should come inside.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Honestly, I think you’d rather I did.”
Without another word, he gently pushes me aside and breezes past me into my apartment.
“Excuse me!” I hiss, taken aback by the sheer rudeness of it.
Once inside, he casts a judgmental eye over the bare walls, damp ceiling and my makeshift washing lines. I feel my cheeks prickle with a mix of embarrassment and anger.
“Well, what is it?”
“You really live here?”
“Why do you want to know?”
He shakes his head, the stony expression never lifting from his face, before he takes a seat on the edge of my sofa. “Ah, it’s about Johnny… he’s owes us a lot of money.”
I roll my eyes and start putting last night’s leftovers in my bag to take to work with me. This won’t take long.
“And what do you want me to do about it?”
“We can’t find him. You’re the guarantor. So you have to pay up, I’m afraid.”
I can feel his eyes boring into the side of my face as I slam my bag down on the kitchen counter and let out a snort. “Join the queue. That asshole has your kind knocking on my door every couple of days. It’s not my business anymore. We’re divorced. And I’m not even going to ask how much —”
“Over two mil.” He interrupts, lifting a folder up.
I choke on my sentence, blood rushing to my face.
“As in, dollars?”
The man nods, his face as expressionless as ever.
“This must be some kind of joke.” I laugh, shaking my head. “That man, honestly. He’s really messed up this time.”
He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he watches me carefully as I continue getting ready to leave. There’s no way I can be late again, especially not at the expense of my ex-husband.
“So, I’m guessing you can’t pay it.”
“Of course I can’t pay it!” I snap, gesturing around the pokey apartment. “Does it look like I can pay it?” My hands claw at the letters building up on the coffee table and I throw them into his lap. “I can’t pay a single one of these. So what do you want me to do? I’m already working two jobs — if I could afford to pay even a fraction of that debt, do you really think I’d be choosing to wash my pants in the bathtub? You can take the T.V, if you want. It only gets a few channels, though. Maybe you can rip the copper out of the wiring, that might get you a few bucks.”
I realize I’m shouting, and my chest heaves as I pant to catch my breath back. There goes my positive vibes for the day.
I’m not even mad that Johnny has another debt collector turning up at my door. I’m more mad that I’m seeing this gorgeous man again, and it’s not because he’s sweeping me off my feet.
Nothing like that would ever happen to me. I was stupid to even allow myself to think that, even for a split second.
“Why don’t you sit down, and we can talk about it.” His voice is a lot less gruff than it has been, and it allows me to notice a faint accent. One that I can’t quite place.
“I don’t have time. I’ll be late for work.”
“You have five minutes. Everyone has five minutes.”
The softness in his tone makes my legs go weak, which goes completely against the frustration building up in my chest.
So I take a seat on the other side of the sofa, as far away from his overbearing presence as I can possibly get.
“So I take it Johnny is your ex husband?”
Maybe if I’m polite and answer his questions openly, he’ll realize it’s got nothing to do with me and will leave me alone.
“Yes. We’ve been estranged for a year, but I only managed to get the judge to approve the divorce papers six months ago. Like you, I couldn’t find him to get him to agree to it.”
His stare is so intense that I feel like it’s penetrating my soul. I wonder what he’s thinking. His expression doesn’t change.
He’s silent for a while, and I’m praying that he’s mulling over the situation, with the end result being just to leave me the hell alone and forget about it.
“You know, when the guarantor can’t pay, we kidnap them until the debtor raises the funds.”
Blood rings in my ears and I put my hand on the sofa cushions to steady myself. He’s watching my reaction carefully, and I don’t know whether it’s because he’s trying to call my bluff. If he is, he must be stupid. You only have to take a glimpse into my apartment to see that there’s no way I have that type of money.
I decide to call his bluff.
“You’ll have to kidnap me, then.”
We stare at each other, and I refuse to be the one who breaks eye contact first. My mind begins to wander at the thought of him kidnapping me, and to my surprise, a hot heat soars through my pussy. This scary stranger tying me up, doing what he wants with me until —
“How about I propose another deal?”
His gruff voice snaps me out of my mini fantasy.
“Listen, if it’s about paying it off in installments, don’t even bother. I’m so broke I can’t — “
“I’ll wipe the debt if you marry me.”
I’ve clearly heard wrong. I blink a couple times and cock my head. “Excuse me?”
“Marry me,” he says, his eyes not letting up. “And I’ll pay off the debt myself.”
His words hang heavy in the air. I don’t know quite what to do with them.
“Why…?”
“Why what?”