Scarred wood floors covered the layout, and I smiled at the small mason jar sitting on the table with wildflowers in it.

The Joneses would have cried that this wasn’t the Ritz, but it was perfect. It had everything I needed, and it reminded me of the house I’d lived in with Mom with wood-paneled walls and just the… warmth of it.

It really was perfect.

For the first time, I let myself feel genuine excitement over my decision. And now that I did, it felt good. Hope sprang up inside of me like a Roman candle. It only took three trips to carry my bags, box, and cooler up.

You would figure that packing up your life would take days, even weeks. If you had a lot of belongings, it might even take months.

But I didn’t have a lot of stuff. I’d left Kaden just about everything when his lawyer—a man I’d sent Christmas cards to for a decade—had sent me a thirty-day notice to move out of the house we’d shared, the day after he’d ended things. Instead, I’d left hours later. All I’d taken with me were two suitcases and four boxes worth of belongings.

Good. It was good it had happened, and I knew it. It had hurt then, hurt like a son of a bitch, and afterward. It didn’t anymore though.

But… I still sometimes wished I’d sent those traitors a pie made of shit just like in The Help. I wasn’t that good of a person.

I had just opened up the fridge so I could put the sandwich meat, cheese, mayo, three cans of strawberry soda, and single beer inside when I heard a creak from downstairs.

The door. It was the door.

I froze.

Then I grabbed my pepper spray from my purse and hesitated—because the owner wouldn’t just walk in, would they? I mean, it was their property, but I was renting it from them. I’d signed an agreement and sent a copy of my license over, hoping they wouldn’t do a search of my name, but oh well if they did. At a few of the rentals I’d stayed at, the owners had come over to see if I needed anything, but they hadn’t just strolled in. Only one of them had done a search and asked a lot of uncomfortable questions.

“Hello?” I called out, finger on the pepper spray trigger.

The only response I got was the sound of feet on the stairs, these loud clunks that sounded heavy.

“Hello?” I called out a little louder that time, straining to hear the steps continuing up the stairs and making me clench the pepper spray in my hand just a little tighter.

In the time it took me to hold my breath—because that was going to help me hear better—I caught sight of hair and then a face a split second before the person must have taken the last two or three steps in a leap because they were there.

Not a they. A he. A man.

The owner?

God, I hoped so.

He had on a khaki-colored, button-down shirt tucked into dark pants that could have been blue, black, or something else, but I couldn’t tell because of the lighting.

I squinted and laced my hands behind my back to hide the pepper spray just in case.

There was a gun at his hip!

I threw my hands up and squealed, “Holy shit, take whatever you want, just don’t hurt me!”

The stranger’s head jerked before a raspy-rough voice spit out, “What?”

I held them up even higher, shoulders around my ears, and gestured to my purse on the table with my chin. “My purse is right there. Take it. The keys are in there.” I had insurance. I had copies of my ID on my phone, which was in my back pocket. I could order another debit card, report my credit card as stolen. I couldn’t care less about the cash in there. None of it was worth my life. None. Of. It.

The man’s head jerked again though. “What in the hell are you talking about? I’m not trying to rob you. What are you doing in my house?” The man shot out each word like they were missiles.

Hold on a second.

I blinked and still kept my hands where they were. What was going on? “Are you Tobias Rhodes?” I knew for a fact that was the name of the person I’d made my reservation with. There had been a picture, but I hadn’t bothered zooming in on it.

“Why?” the stranger asked.

“Uh, because I rented this garage apartment? My check-in was today.”

“Check-in?” the man repeated, his voice low. I was pretty positive he was scowling, but he was under a gap in lighting and shadows covered his features. “Does this look like a hotel to you?”

Ooh, attitude.

Just as I opened my mouth to tell him that, no, this didn’t look like a hotel but I’d still made a legal reservation and paid upfront for the stay, a loud creak came from downstairs a split second before another voice, a lighter, younger one, shouted, “Dad! Wait!”