The Apartment (3 page)

For the first time, he wondered if he'd made the right decision. His mother had died long before he could remember her and his father had remarried when he was five. Sean had felt oddly out of place within his own family.

He'd enlisted in the army as soon as he finished high school and had been in the Special Forces for the past nine years. One of those years had been spent in Saudi Arabia. He now spoke Arabic well enough to pass as a national.

Dave phoned around ten that morning. Sean didn't mention the mix-up with the apartment. No need to, since it was fairly obvious to him what was going to happen.

Hilary didn't want to move. He didn't, either. And it wasn't likely she was going to be able to come up with his deposit and first month's rent.

They had no choice.

Hilary had rarely had a more unnerving morning. Now her afternoon wasn't going much better. Just when she was beginning to understand what Mr. Murphy expected of her, Sean Cochran casually strolled into the store.

Talk about a bull in a china shop! The man couldn't have been more out of place.

With Mr. Murphy smiling serenely toward her, indicating she should assist this newest customer, Hilary walked purposefully toward Sean, doing her best to disguise her irritation. This entire situation irked her. It seemed that she was never going to be free. First her mother, and now…Rambo.

“How may I help you?” she asked calmly, although her eyes were spitting fire.

“Do you have my cash?” he asked.

Hilary briefly closed her eyes, calling upon every ounce of composure her mother had so laboriously drilled into her. “I've already explained that I don't.”

“Any chance of getting it?”

Hilary had spent the majority of the morning pondering that same question. She couldn't very well ask for an advance on her salary since she'd only been employed for three hours.

She'd debated approaching her mother for the money and decided it was out of the question. The bank wasn't likely to give her a loan, either, since she was from out of state and had only recently established credit.

Hilary didn't know what to do.

“Well?” he pressed. “Do you have a way of getting it or not?”

“Not on such short notice,” she admitted reluctantly.

“That's what I thought.”

“I'm doing the best I can,” she said between gritted teeth.

“Is there a problem?” Mr. Murphy inquired.

“None at all,” Sean assured the music-store owner with a satisfied smile.

“Are you trying to get me fired?”

“Not when you owe me money.”

“I don't owe you anything, the Greers do.” The man was becoming increasingly unreasonable. He looked even more intimidating now than he had earlier.

“But the Greers aren't here. You are,” Sean reminded her casually.

“I'd give it to you if I had it.” Hilary knew that was little consolation, but it was all she could offer.

“Listen,” he said, rubbing his hand along the back of his neck. “I've come up with a tentative solution. For now it's the best I can do.”

“All right,” she said, hoping he had more ideas than she did. As far as Hilary could see, they were deadlocked. She didn't have the money and he wasn't going to budge until he got it.

“We share the apartment,” he said, “just until the Greers are back.”

Share the apartment!
So much for being independent. So much for freedom. She'd leapt from the frying pan into the fire. “But that's six weeks,” she said, tasting defeat.

“I know how long the Greers are going to be gone,” Sean returned testily. “I'll stay out of your way and you stay out of mine. It isn't like I plan on sticking around there much. I haven't got a job yet, otherwise I wouldn't be so concerned about the cash.”

“I'm going to be busy, as well,” Hilary added, realizing they had no choice and might as well make the best of a difficult situation.

“Do you agree to sharing the apartment, then?”

Hilary hesitated. Things were not going as she'd planned.

“Well?” he demanded.

Feeling frustrated and miserable, she nodded. Glaring at him, she added, “But only on one condition.”

His jaw tightened. “Name it.”

Hilary glanced over her shoulder to be sure Mr. Murphy wasn't listening. “Under no circumstances are you to answer the phone. My mother can't find out about this… Is that understood?”

H
ilary woke to the rhythmic sound of clapping. She didn't know what Sean was up to now, but she guessed it was something unpleasant. Something specifically designed to irritate her. Heaven help her, she didn't know why she'd ever agreed to this arrangement.

Struggling out of bed, she reached for her robe and traipsed into the middle of the living room. Sean was dressed in gray sweats and was down on the floor doing push-ups. Just when he'd levered himself off the carpet, he slapped his hands together and caught himself in time to keep from crashing into the floor. It was an ego thing, she guessed, to prove how strong he was.

Before she could comment, he twisted around and started doing sit-ups, moving so fast his upper body seemed to blur.

“Is this really necessary?” she asked, walking into the kitchen to brew herself a latte
.

He ignored her, which was fine. She'd spent much of the previous day pretending he wasn't there. Not that her game had helped any. Sean had assured her he'd stay out of her way, and naively she'd believed that meant they wouldn't be seeing much of each other. They didn't really spend long stretches of time together, but even thirty minutes was more than she could take. His presence in her home had quickly become a constant source of irritation. He apparently felt the same way about her.

“You left the radio on your country-and-western station again,” she remarked, not bothering to disguise her resentment. “In case you've forgotten, and apparently you have, I prefer classical music. Since it's
my
radio, I'd appreciate it if you'd kindly change it back to my station once you've finished.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Stop calling me that.” Hilary hated the tag he'd given her. He seemed to delight in calling her names of royalty. If she wasn't Fergie or Diana, she was Princess Grace. Hilary normally didn't give him the satisfaction of knowing how his name-calling annoyed her, but she couldn't stop herself now. What troubled her most was that her mother's pet name for her was Princess. She didn't like the tag any better from her parent than she did from Sean, but at least when her mother called her Princess it was done with genuine affection. Sean did it to get her goat, inferring that she put on airs when all she was doing was protecting her own space.

“I'm only asking that you… Oh, never mind.” Talking to him was next to impossible.

“You left three pairs of panty hose hanging over the shower stall,” he said indifferently. “How am I supposed to close the shower curtain with a bunch of nylons dangling in my face?”

“You might have moved them.”

“As I recall, you asked me not to touch anything that belongs to you.”

“You ate my dinner.” She'd been furious with him and rightly so. After a grueling three-hour rehearsal with the symphony, she'd arrived home, hungry and exhausted, to discover Sean had eaten her shrimp salad. He claimed it was an honest mistake, but she didn't believe him.

Somehow, someway, she suspected her mother had brought this man into her life to torment her. Since she couldn't convince Hilary to move back home, she'd hired a Rambo to make her life miserable.

“You've got a memory like an elephant, haven't you?” Sean asked, continuing his sit-ups with an intensity that irritated her even more.

“Okay,” Hilary said, inhaling a deep, calming breath and briefly closing her eyes. “As I see it, we've got a choice here. We can continue to insult one another all morning or we can call a truce. Thus far, all we've managed to do is make one another miserable.”

“You can say that again.”

Hilary shivered, then realized it was more than his continuous insults, more than the fact they couldn't be civil with each other. The apartment was freezing—literally. Her teeth were starting to chatter.

Fuming, Hilary walked over to the thermostat, then whirled to confront Sean with this latest atrocity. “You turned down the heat!”

“I couldn't stand it. You had it set hot enough to grow orchids in here.”

“You have it set so low I could store ice cream in the living room,” she bellowed, losing all control. Before she had met Sean Cochran, she'd barely raised her voice. Now, inside of a week, she was a shrew. “Don't you dare touch this thermostat again.” Ignoring his glare, she readjusted the temperature. No wonder she was shivering.

Adroitly Sean stood, reached from behind her and set the thermostat back to where he'd placed it earlier.

Hilary wanted to scream, but she realized it would do no good. “This isn't working,” she said, close to breaking into tears of frustration and anger. They'd tried. They'd both given it their best shot, but they were never going to make this arrangement work.

“You're telling me,” Sean said, his teeth clenched. “Living with you is like walking on eggshells. You have more rules than the Pentagon. We might have made a go of this if you weren't so damn unreasonable.”

“Me? I'll have you know, buster, I'm one of the most even-tempered, good-natured women you're likely to meet. At least, I used to be until I met up with a bullheaded, illogical exercise freak.”

“You want to talk about excesses—fine, ” he shouted, crossing his arms over his massive chest. “I've never known anyone in my life who's as compulsively neat as you are. I don't dare leave a magazine open because you'll close it and stack it under the coffee table.”

“I happen to like my home tidy. Is that such a sin?”

“Yes,” he returned heatedly. “Furthermore, you're Mommy's little girl. You're so afraid of doing anything that will displease her.”

“You don't know anything about my mother and me!”

“I know you're so afraid of her finding out about me that I dare not answer the phone.”

“I'm not afraid of my mother.”

“Heaven forbid she learns her sweet little girl is living with a man.” His voice raised in a strained falsetto.

“Leave my mother out of this,” Hilary cried, stamping her slipper-covered foot.

“Gladly. If she's anything like you, I'd prefer not knowing anything about her.”

Hilary wrapped her hands around her middle to ward off the chill his words produced. He was right. As much as she wanted to be on her own, live her life as she chose, she remained tied to the apron strings.

She
was
worried about her mother finding out about Sean. It shouldn't matter what Louise thought. But why was Hilary so concerned? There certainly wasn't anything romantic going on between Sean and her.

What troubled her more was what Sean said about her being a neat-freak. Her mother was like that. All her life, Hilary had hated being constantly followed around and picked up after. Now she found herself doing the very same thing. It boggled her mind.

“You keep me up half the night practicing that flute of yours, then complain if I so much as turn on the television,” Sean continued.

“All right, then let's end it right now,” Hilary stormed, slicing the air with a karate-chop motion that was so full of anger she nearly lost her balance. “I'll move. Gladly. If you wanted me out of here, then congratulate yourself, because you've succeeded. Write me out a check for the deposit and my fair share of the rent—then I'll be more than happy to make other arrangements.”

Sean went silent. He lifted the towel dangling from his neck and wiped the perspiration from his face. “I don't have it.”

“You don't have it,” Hilary echoed, and to her horror her voice cracked. “Then what am I supposed to do now?”

“I don't know.”

“You're making it impossible to live here.”

“Living with you hasn't exactly been a bowl of cherries, either,” he growled.

“But I don't fiddle around with your radio station.”

“I didn't use your shaver on my legs,” he snapped.

“I didn't do it on purpose—I thought it was my own.”

“How was I supposed to know three tiny shrimp on a bed of lettuce was your entire dinner?” Sean asked, his voice growing less irritated. “Admit it, there've been sins committed on both sides. What you said earlier makes a lot of sense.”

“About me moving?”

“No,” he said reluctantly. “That we call a truce. We're both mature adults—at least, I'd like to think we are.”

“So would I,” she murmured, surprised to realize her hands were trembling. She hid them behind her back, not wanting Sean to notice.

“We can make this work if we're both willing to put forth the effort,” he said after an elongated sigh. “Are you willing to give this another try?”

Hilary nodded slowly, hesitantly. “All right.”

“Good, then I will, too. It won't be for much longer—just how long can five weeks last?”

“I don't think I want to know,” she muttered under her breath. There wasn't time to discuss this armistice, since she had to be at work within the hour. Twice a week she went directly from work at the music shop to the symphony. She wasn't sure if Sean had figured out her schedule yet. On her way out the door, she hesitated.

Sean was seated at the table, eating a gigantic breakfast of eggs, toast, fruit and cereal. In one meal he consumed more food than she downed in a week.

“I'll…be late tonight,” she said, hoping she didn't sound defensive. “I have practice with the symphony after work… I thought it might work better if we let each other know our schedules.”