But as I’d predicted, we didn’t see him.
I did make sure to put all the receipts back into the binder. That was where I found Sheila’s detailed walk-through for Milo’s bedtime, and going through each of the steps seemed to soothe him. He was asleep before I’d read the first page of the book he’d picked out. I waited a minute or two more and then sneaked out of his room.
I had decided to grab myself a snack and head back to my room to do more studying when I heard a knock at the door.
At first I wasn’t sure what to do. This wasn’t my home. Should I be answering the door? It could have been one of the Crawfords, if they’d lost their key or something, but wouldn’t they have called first? Or gone to the front desk to get another card? Maybe it was a member of the hotel staff.
The only way I was going to find out was to answer it. I grabbed one of the knives from the butcher block, just in case. The Crawfords were rich. What if someone had come to steal Milo? It was my job to protect him and I was ready to do that.
When I got to the front hallway I looked out the peephole. I saw a shoulder. Definitely a man. Who was standing off to the side. Why? So as not to be seen? Now I was officially freaking out.
I opened the door, keeping the knife at my side.
It was Griffin.
I felt relief that there was no kidnapper, but now I was freaked out that he was standing there. “What are you doing?”
“Knocking on the door,” he said with his beautiful smile. “Isn’t that why you opened it? Because you heard me knocking?”
He was messing with me via his excess of charm, but I was so confused by seeing him here that I didn’t know what to do.
“You didn’t stand in front of the peephole,” I said in an accusing tone.
He shrugged, and I understood that to mean that he’d done it deliberately. Did he think I wouldn’t open the door if I knew it was him? That little bit of insecurity on his part was endearing.
It was then that he saw the knife I held. “I know I didn’t call first, but I don’t think that my breach of etiquette merits a stabbing.”
Griffin stepped closer to me, which surprised me, and while he was busy giving off all that masculine-scented warmth, my hand went lax. Fortunately, he noticed. He grabbed my wrist and the shock of his skin on mine, his strong fingers wrapped around my arm, caused my own fingers to tighten so that I gripped the handle tightly.
“Careful. That was pointed at my feet,” he said. “It would have been bad if you’d taken off one of my toes. I’m rather attached to them.”
“I know you assume that’s clever and funny, but you do know it’s just a camouflaged dad joke, right?” I tugged my wrist free and then set the knife down on a side table. I wondered what the penalty was for dismembering the toe of a relative of the queen of England and what our extradition situation was with that country. My heart, furiously pumping away first from fear and then from something else, finally started to calm down and I felt like I could breathe again.
“I already knew you were dangerous, I just didn’t realize it was also in a physical sense,” he said.
Dangerous? Me? He was the one who was dangerous. Standing there in clothes he probably thought were casual—Gucci jeans and a merino-wool, dark green sweater, his hair slightly tousled, looking way too handsome to be real, teasing me. And even his dumb dad joke was funny.
Heaven help me.
“How did you know where I live?” I asked, still not able to believe that he’d just shown up. Like I’d conjured him or something.
“I realize my showing up here isn’t helping my earlier assertion that I am not, in fact, a stalker, but you told me you were staying in this suite.”
Oh. Right. I was the one who had been passing out information on my whereabouts like it was candy and I was Willy Wonka.
He added, “I had my secretary double-check, just to be sure.”
“Secretary?” I said, picturing a buxom blonde sporting 1950s horn-rimmed glasses. I irrationally already hated her.
Griffin smirked, as if he could read my thoughts. “Yes, secretary. A fifty-three-year-old man named Louis who is more of a snob than my grandmother.”
“Oh.” I did feel better and told myself that my reaction was way over the top—I had no rights to this man, despite the fact that I wanted to climb him like a mountain and plant my flag on the top of his head in order to stake my claim. “So you’re stalking me by proxy.”
“Not quite.” He grinned. “Just attempting to uncover some useful intel.”
Panic rushed through me. “What kind of intel?”
“If you’d invite me in I could explain.”
Did he know? Was he about to confront me? He probably had access to really good private investigators. It wouldn’t take much for him to unravel my entire life and tell the Crawfords everything. Had he come here to expose me?
I took a deep breath. I was being irrational. He wouldn’t be grinning at me like that if he was about to blow up my whole life. I was letting my paranoia get the best of me. Plus, hadn’t I promised Alice a picture?
He was still standing in the hallway and I wondered whether anybody was listening in on our conversation. It would be better to have him come inside. Right?
Then again, I didn’t know what the rules were. The Crawfords had never said I couldn’t invite someone over. But that could have just been an oversight; it probably hadn’t occurred to them that I might.
I glanced toward the kitchen. Knowing Sheila, the answer to my question was in that binder. But that would take some explaining that I didn’t currently want to do.
“Are you arguing with the angel and devil on your shoulders?” he asked.
Constantly, ever since I’d met him. I decided to let him in, but to make him stay in the front entryway. Where we would stand with several feet of distance between us. Remaining vertical so that I wouldn’t be tempted to go horizontal. “Come in.”
I backed up and he put his hand on the door, letting himself in, then allowed the door to shut quietly behind him.
“We need to keep our voices down,” I told him. “I’m babysitting and Milo’s asleep.”
“Understood.”
Crossing my arms, I asked, “Why didn’t you call or text?”
“I don’t have your number,” he said triumphantly.
“You know which room I’m in. You could have called the front desk and asked them to connect you.”
The look on his face let me know that he’d considered and then rejected this idea. “You’ve caught me. I should have rung you, but I wanted to see you in person. You did say I could come by.”
“I did? When?”
“When I asked if I could call on you.”
“That’s what that means?” I asked. I’d had no idea.
“Do you often agree to things you don’t understand?”
More often than I was about to admit. “Sometimes. But the things I agree to don’t usually involve people doing their best Mission: Impossible impression.”
He looked sheepish at my words, and we both stood there, as if unsure what to say next. It became awkward and strange and I didn’t know what to do.
Then Griffin broke the tension by speaking. “Now I understand why that prince held on to Cinderella’s shoe.”