She spins, screams, and then, with ninja-fast reflexes, grabs an industrial-size bottle of shampoo, also from the edge of my tub, and hurtles it at my head.
“Stop!” I order.
“Intruder!” she yells over the infernal music. “Marshmallow! Attack!” She grabs a towel and flings it at me too.
I dodge it easily, though my weary body would prefer this was unnecessary. “Stop.”
For the love of every Razzle Dazzle film ever made, why did I finally choose today to ditch my security team?
Her robe—my robe—is gaping open, revealing creamy skin, lush breasts, and half-waxed not going there, but her state of undress doesn’t stop her from diving across the bathroom to my vanity, where she grabs a tube of toothpaste and throws that at me too. “Thief! Murderer!”
I take three steps toward her, and an electric toothbrush comes flying my way. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Help!” she yells. “Marshmallow!”
I swat aside a flung box. What the fuck is marshmallow?
Is she kinky? Is it her safe word?
Does she think I’m a stripper? Or a paid companion?
And I thought this couldn’t get worse.
She grabs the towel stand that sits in the middle of the vanity, but I reach her and wrestle it out of her grip before she can send that flying also, snagging her hands to keep them from causing more damage.
“What,” I breathe in her green-goop-covered face, “are you doing in my house?”
She flips her wrist, ducks, and escapes my grasp, diving for the closet. “This isn’t your house!”
Is she playing technicality games? Christ on a crumpet, I hate talking to people almost as much as I hate that I’m still having to shout over this infernal music. “It’s sure as fuck not your house.” Whoops. There I go with the fucks. Apologies, Mother. “What are you doing here?”
“Marshmallow!” she bellows. She’s spinning in a circle, muttering about too many damn doors, the towel on her head tilting, robe flapping open and giving me more of a view than I want of any woman today, and I finally catch on.
Fear.
She’s afraid.
Slow on the uptake, Hayes?
I grunt to myself, fist my hands in my pockets, and lean in the closet doorway, forcing myself to calm down and look at her like a math problem instead of as a fleshy ball of emotions who’s latched on to a hair dryer and is aiming it at me like she can blow me out of the doorway.
“Who are you?” For the record, it’s damn hard to keep my voice steady. I used up every last drop of my peopling skills five minutes into my brother’s wedding reception last night and had to fake it for another six hours. I have nothing left to employ for patience with this woman today, but she’s between me and overdue alone time.
She shifts back and forth on the balls of her feet, towel drooping, robe swaying, hair dryer still aimed at me. The green goop coating her face is getting spots, like she’s sweating through her face mask.
“I rented this house fair and square, and you need to leave.”
“I own this house, and I didn’t rent it to anyone.”
“Prove it.”
Prove it? “You have no idea who I am, do you?”
“Are you kidding me?” she mutters. “Another one? Marshmallow!”
“Stop yelling marshmallow. What the hell—”
It’s the last syllable I utter before I realize what a marshmallow is.
It’s a dog.
A large, black-and-brown, long-snouted, pointy-eared, teeth-baring, snarling attack dog.
I have a feeling I’m about to be its breakfast.
This day truly can’t get any worse.
2
Begonia Fairchild, aka a woman who would like to stop regretting every last decision in her life. Any day now. Really…
Go on a post-divorce retreat and spoil yourself in a place without internet or cell signal so your mother can’t reach you for a couple weeks, I told myself. Look, there’s a lovely beach mansion rental miraculously in your budget that just came available. It must be fate, I told myself.
And it was.
For two glorious days.
Now?
Now, I’m interrogating an intruder while my dog holds him against a closet wall, with no cell service to call the police, and the full knowledge that my dog will most likely stop growling any second now because he is truly the world’s worst guard dog, and the last bit of leverage I have against this mansion-invading murderer will be gone.
“Who are you? And don’t pull any of that arrogant you should know who I am because I’m so important baloney,” I order the man currently held hostage by my dog between clothing racks in a corner of the massive closet.