Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance (27 page)

When Hudson lifted his head, I opened my eyes and returned his relaxed smile.

“Much better,” he said. “Now, where was I? Here?” He kissed the tip of my nose. “Or was it here?” He licked water from my neck, sparking a cascade of goose bumps down my body. He leaned back to admire my tightened nipples. “I think I was here.” His lips closed around a nipple, and I moaned, arching into the heat of his mouth.

Hudson teased both nipples until my fingers curled into his scalp. Abruptly he lifted his head, leaving me gasping.

“Oh, that’s right.” He shifted to kiss a bruise on my ribs. “I was here, making all your bruises better.”

I tightened my fingers in his hair and urged him back to my breasts. He rolled laughing eyes up to look at me. In the shower’s spray, I couldn’t be sure, but I thought champagne bubbles floated from his skin. I relaxed my grip and slid my hands to his shoulders as he kissed down my stomach to the vee of my legs. His hands slid around to cup my butt, lifting me toward him.

“I don’t remember getting hurt there,” I said. I leaned back against the shower wall and closed my eyes, curling my fingers around his biceps to anchor myself.

“We should make sure, just to be safe.”

Perhaps a shower stall wasn’t so bad after all.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I woke to the silence of the house. With the curtains backlit by a streetlight and the clock beside the bed dead, it was impossible to determine the time. My eyes felt gritty, so I guessed it was early. Like three o’clock early.

Hudson sprawled on his back, the covers pushed to his waist. One hand rested on his stomach, the other on my thigh. I listened to the muted sounds of sporadic traffic and stared at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to return. It’d been a long time since I’d slept in an unfamiliar house. Memory of my trashed home started my pulse pounding and chased away any chance of me falling back to sleep. Easing out of the bed, I grabbed my bag and closed the bedroom door behind me. I dressed in the front room in jeans and a tank top and a loose, cowl-neck sweater.

I selected a leftover slice of pizza and meandered through the house as I ate. The pizza had been cold last night, too, when we’d finally gotten around to eating.

I peeked out the window beside the front door. The sky above the rooflines held a mix of blue with the yellow city glow. It must have been closer to five than three. Cars lined the street, and if Hudson’s friend, Matvei, sat in one, I didn’t see him.

I turned my back on the window, the world, and the stresses of the day awaiting me. Padding barefoot back to the kitchen, I grabbed a second slice of pizza, then roamed down the hall. Of the house’s two bedrooms, I’d seen the master, complete with its sad little master bathroom and tiny walk-in closet. A half bath was squeezed between the bedrooms. Its oppressive navy tiles and stark white walls enhanced its squished-closet feel.

I cracked the door to the second bedroom, then pushed it wide, stunned. Nothing about the room matched the rest of the house. For starters, it was full. Bookcases lined one wall, overflowing with thick tomes, binders, and flotsam. A narrow table ran along another wall, buried beneath a slew of mysterious electronic paraphernalia. Where the rest of the house was neat in an almost sterile, unlived-in way, this bedroom embodied chaos. Beneath the table were two extension strips plugged into different outlets, and I counted fourteen cords leading up to doodads on the table. A desk pressed beneath the window, supporting three monitors and a filing cabinet’s thrown-up last meal. A sleek chair sat behind the desk. Smaller tables held a printer and an explosion of office supplies and open-faced binders. A clear pathway led from the chair across the hardwood to the burdened table, but piles of bags and books and more electronics clogged the rest of the floor.

Gripping the door frame, I reminded myself that I had no right to make any changes to Hudson’s home. If he wanted a cluttered health-hazard office, that was his prerogative. With a herculean effort, I shut the door and walked away.

I pulled out my work folder and opened it on the coffee table, but I couldn’t focus on it. I tried a few yoga stretches that my jeans and injuries would allow. Moving my sore muscles felt good, but a walk or swim would have been better. I considered writing Hudson a note and going for a walk, but thoughts of ninjas lurking outside, waiting to pounce, nixed the idea. So I paced the front room and pondered last night’s conversation with Jenny.

Her whole story didn’t make sense. First of all, why steal the very thing she had been hired to create—an elephantini—the moment it was created? If she was a spy for the American company, why not pass Kyoko along to them? Why lie to both companies? I didn’t believe she’d suddenly found compassion for lab animals. Plus, if Jenny’s sole reason for abducting Kyoko was to ensure she didn’t spend the rest of her days in a cage, why foist her off on me? For that matter, why bring her to LA at all? Why not take her to Asia and set her free with a herd or find an elephant rescue center that could take her?

I did my best to ignore the ever-present
Why me?
question. On that, Jenny’s explanation had actually made sense. I
was
hard to track. I had limited online interactions—limited being
zero
—and as she’d predicted, I had enough connections to figure out a way to hide Kyoko within five hours of having her dumped on me. And, of course, she had my silence, bought by my terror of becoming discovered and studied.

Pushing past the snarl of anger and panic simmering behind thoughts of Jenny’s blackmail, I tried to focus on solving the puzzle that was Jenny. Why was she running? Even if she convinced everyone Kyoko had died, couldn’t her Japanese company use Jenny’s process to create another elephantini without her?

I needed to make a list. Maybe if I could see it all on paper, I could sort through the lies and figure out how to force Jenny to take Kyoko back and quietly leave my life forever.

I grabbed my notepad out of my satchel and jotted Jenny’s name at the top of the paper, then started listing everything I knew about her and Kyoko. The pen ran out of ink three lines in. When I couldn’t find a backup in my satchel, I tried the pen by the phone. It gooped ink in blobs as it wrote. I braved the office, hoping I’d find a pen lying on top of a pile. No such luck. Markers and highlighters peeked out of the desktop mound of books and papers and cords and tiny electronic parts, but no pens.

Opening the top desk drawer was a mistake. A clump of rubber bands snagged around erasers, pens, pencils, and paper clips. I lifted a pen, and a wad of office supplies came with it. I sat down in the chair. It wouldn’t hurt to organize this drawer. I’d leave it better than I found it, and Hudson would have a nice surprise the next time he needed a paper clip.

I pulled the drawer out, upended it on the floor, then sat cross-legged in the small cleared pathway and sorted the items into piles. The normalcy of the activity soothed my psyche and put a halt to the endless circle of my thoughts. When I finished with the top drawer, I peeked into the next. More chaos. The silly thing was, Hudson had plenty of organization tools at his disposal. A handy plastic box made up of dozens of tiny drawers sat beside his desk. Half of the drawers were even labeled. It didn’t take much effort to match the items to the correct drawers. Beneath the heap on his desk and amid the clutter on the table, I found more bins and trays, all waiting to be properly used. In no time at all, I’d lined up the bins and stacked the trays, and sorted mystery items into each of them.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I jumped. Hudson stood in the office doorway in cherry-print boxer shorts and nothing else, his hair spiked on one side from sleep. Fury pinched his mouth and furrowed his brow. A gold band encased his left ring finger, then a dozen circled it from base to tip. They retreated like a slinky back to one, then expanded thicker than before to coat his finger. Little green army men lined up on his shoulders, their tiny guns all pointed at me.

“I was looking for a pen—”

“And you thought you’d find one under my soldering gun? In my Dremel box?”

I glanced where he pointed, feeling like I was waking from a dream. Sometime after the second drawer, I’d turned off my brain and immersed myself in the uncomplicated pleasure of organization. The office included breathing room now, with a better energy flow, not to mention greater usability. The entire desktop—I could see actual wooden surface now—the overflowing bookcases, and the storage bins were now arranged for optimal efficiency. I hadn’t touched the worktable cluttered with bizarre doodads and tools, but I’d cleared floor space and had been contemplating moving the desk to a better location. All without Hudson’s consent.

“Normally I tell all the women who stay over to steer clear of this room, but I thought you . . . I can’t believe . . .” He gestured expansively at the tidied office. “How am I supposed to find anything? You’ve ruined my whole system.”

I folded my arms over my chest. Any part of me that might have felt apologetic for my uninvited intrusion into his private space drowned beneath a surge of anger at being lumped in with
all the women
who’d come before me.

“
Ruined
it? Because it’s organized? How dreadful.”

“Where’s my projects book? Where’s my backup flash drive?” He pawed through the neat stacks on his desk. “I’m not a client, Eva. I didn’t ask for a
consultation
.” He infused the word with derision. “I don’t need you practicing your feng shui crap here.”

“Of course not. You’ve got things perfectly under control, don’t you? Your life must be running smooth as clockwork—”

“It was until I met you.”

I snapped my mouth shut, turned on my heel—and screamed. A man loomed in the office doorway. His stocky, muscular frame filled the space. A blond buzz cut did nothing to soften his scowl or the sharp line of his jaw. Throw a fur-lined cap on him, and he’d look like he stepped straight out of a Tolstoy novel.

* * *

“Nice boxers, Hud,” he said. He shifted to lean a shoulder against the doorjamb. A cartoon monkey slid down his arm and danced in the air near his knee.

Hudson ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “It’s all right, Eva. This is Matvei.”

I lowered my hand from my chest, where it had leapt to hold my heart.

“I heard you bellowing from outside and thought you might be in trouble. I let myself in.” He made a point of looking around the office. “Looks nice in here.”

Hudson glowered and shoved him aside. I listened to him stomp down the hall and the bedroom door slam.

“Is this your work?” When Matvei grinned, his menacing edges softened.

I forced my jaw to unclench. “Yep. This is the work of the devil herself, doing a little early-morning organization.”

Matvei snorted. Hudson passed behind him, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt.

“Hud’s little MIA act makes sense now.” Matvei raised his voice enough to be heard by Hudson in the front room. “I can’t remember the last time he missed two days in a row, but if ever I saw a good reason . . .”

“Are you a coworker?” I asked.

“Yep. I’ve been the poor schmuck responsible for picking up all of Hud’s slack.”

“That’s why you get paid the big bucks,” Hudson shouted back.

“It seems I’ve overstayed my welcome, Matvei. If it wouldn’t be too much to ask, could I bum a ride home from you?”

A pink ribbon slithered around Matvei’s neck and tied itself into a neat bow beneath his Adam’s apple.

“Ah . . .” Matvei hemmed. He backed up when I stalked toward the doorway, giving me plenty of space. I strode straight to my satchel and packed up my notebook.

Hudson accessorized with a silver top hat and a flare of army men on his shoulders. The men arrayed in a defensive formation, and one climbed the slick side of the metal top hat and took lookout from the rim. I’d seen the Monopoly pieces enough in the last forty-eight hours to know they appeared with Hudson’s frustration. The connection didn’t make any sense to me, but interpreting one of the less obvious divinations brought a little satisfaction.

“My landline? My fucking landline is dead?” Hudson vented a string of curses. It was actually his cordless phone that was dead, but I didn’t correct him.

“He thinks he’s been cursed.” I made my tone express how crazy this made Hudson sound, and I didn’t feel the least bit guilty.

“Five cell phones and now my landline? I don’t
think
I’ve been cursed; I
know
I have,” Hudson said.

“He’s going to go on like this for at least another ten minutes,” I said, speaking from experience. “I’d rather not be here for the whole show. If you can’t drive me, can you point me in the direction of the nearest bus stop?”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Hudson said.

I straightened. “Are
you
going to attempt to stop me?”

“Damn straight, I—”

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” Matvei said.

We turned our glares on him. He lounged against the wall, arms crossed, watching us with undisguised amusement. The dancing monkey had been joined by the rest of his troupe.

“What do you know?” Hudson asked. He crunched the cordless phone back into its cradle.