But not much food. There was stuff but it looked like enough for a day or two of consumption. It wasn’t stocked for a person who liked to cook and Millie had loved to cook. She’d also loved to bake. She was adventurous with it, skilled because her momma taught her well, and successful. They’d had spices. All different kinds of oils. Everything you could possibly need at the ready to make chocolate chip cookies, brownies, cake.
In her kitchen now, there were odds and ends, but nothing like what they’d had.
He stood at the back door, his eyes drifting through the space, his mind consumed with uncomfortable thoughts that Millie had not only been a ghost plaguing him the past twenty years.
She’d lived like one.
She didn’t exist.
Not even in her own fucking house.
Making a decision, he pulled out his phone and made his call.
“Yo,” Shirleen answered.
“Dig deeper,” High ordered.
“Say what?” she asked.
“Millie,” he replied. “Get Brody on her and you tell that guy he says one fuckin’ word, I’ll break all his fingers.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothin’,” he answered. “And that ain’t no blow-off,” he shared. “Just did a walkthrough of her house and not even sure she’s been breathin’ the past twenty years.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means what I said,” High returned. “Nothin’. There’s nothin’ to the bitch.”
There was a moment of silence before, “High, gotta ask again, you know what you’re doin’?”
“I know what I’m doin’, just don’t know what I’m gettin’.”
“Now what does that mean?” Shirleen asked.
“If I knew, I’d say.” He turned and looked out the window of the back door, and Christ, windows in both doors. She was asking to get fucked. His eyes hit the studio. “Got shit to do, Shirleen. Call me when you got somethin’.”
“Am I gonna find something?”
More than he wanted to admit, he sure as fuck hoped so.
“No one can live twenty years this quiet, Shirleen,” he told her. “You’ll find something. Just wanna know what it is.”
“And we’re talkin’... ?” she prompted.
It pained him to start it the way he did, but he had to.
“Who she’s fucked. If she’s lived with anyone. What she spends her money on. Where she goes. What vacations she’s taken. Piece together her life for twenty years and give that to me. Yeah?”
“Yeah, High.”
“Right, later.”
“Later, and, High?”
“What?” he asked, hand on the door handle.
“You say you know what you’re doin’. Just sayin’, I sure hope you do.”
He had no response to that except a repeated, but firmer, “Later.”
“Later.”
He shoved the phone in his pocket, walked out, used his tools to lock up behind him, and then moved across the courtyard to the studio.
It was time to get to phase two of today’s mission and he was looking forward to it.
He didn’t even pause before he opened the door and stepped in. Eyes to her sitting behind her desk, he closed the door behind him and locked it.
High didn’t pay a lot of mind to the office. What he saw was like the house—pretty, feminine, but professional.
And again perfect.
What he saw of her was the same. Tricked out for work even if she was doing it in a little house behind her home.
He also saw her eyes were big and her lips were parted.
“Up,” he ordered.
She did not stand up.
She asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Up, Millie, and panties down.”
At that, her mouth dropped open but he saw the flush hit her cheeks.
Then he saw her eyes flare before they narrowed.
“Are you crazy?” she asked.
He moved in to the space and repeated, “Up, babe.”
“You are crazy,” she whispered, still eyeing him.
He rounded her desk and she swiveled her chair to face him as he did, stubbornly not rising and still glaring at him.
“Not gonna say it again,” he told her.
“This is my place of work,” she snapped.
“And?” he asked, stopping close so she had to tip her head back deep to keep his eyes, something she did.
“And you can’t stroll into my place of work and order me around,” she bit out.
“Can, seein’ as I just did. Now, up, Millie. As I’m right here, I’ll take off your panties.”
Again her eyes got round, her cheeks got pinker, but her gaze got angrier.
“You’re not to be believed,” she hissed. “I have work. I have things to do. One of which is needing to leave in ten minutes to meet a client at the florist but I have three emails I have to reply to before I can do that.”
“They’ll have to wait.”
She squinted up at him, even more pissed off, before she ordered, “Get out.”
He put his hands on his hips. “Millie, get up.”
She pushed her chair away, gaining a foot, leaned back, and crossed her arms on her chest.
“Okay, we’ve got this bizarre game going on. You know I’m in. But there need to be rules,” she declared.
He shook his head. “No rules.”
“I have a mortgage, High,” she told him sharply.
Fuck, why did he hate it when she called him High? It wasn’t the name given to him, but it was still his goddamned name.