Page 84 of Rocked By the Alpha

Is it good enough?

Is he just stalling?

Fuck it.

He snatches the data stick and heads out the door. Of course, he could email it to her. But he’s going to deliver this in person.

He’s already pulled out the driveway and been driving fifteen minutes when he realises he should probably have showered and changed his clothes first. He looks a fucking mess. His hair disheveled, his face tired, his shirt crumpled and, yep, he smells.

Well, too late now. If he turns around, he might not have the guts to leave a second time.

The traffic is far too slow, crawling at the pace of a snail. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel and hums out the tune. Should he sing it to her too? Surely that would be going too far.

The car shunts along and he passes a florist with displays in the window.

Flowers.

Women like flowers.

He screeches to a halt and jumps out, giving a finger to all the drivers honking him. He grabs a dozen blood-red roses and jumps back in the car. The traffic’s hardly moved, but he still gets another round of angry hoots.

The flowers fill the car with a pungent floral aroma and it reminds him of her. Not that it’s the same as her scent, but there’s something similar about it. Sweet, but not sickly so.

It brings images of her racing through his mind. Little moments of times they’ve spent together that are going to haunt him if this doesn’t work out well. The way one side of her mouth always curves first when she smiles. The snorting noise she makes when she’s laughing so hard she can’t catch her breath. The way she’d fit so perfectly in his arms when they’d curled up together and slept in his bed. Her scent lingers all around his house, adding to his misery. And he may, once or twice, have sniffed the keys of the keyboard just to inhale that scent.

Finally, he breaks through the traffic and starts to move at a decent speed and before he knows it he’s pulling up outside her house.

Her team have installed a fence and a gate — about fucking time — so he straightens his shirt as best he can, shoves the data stick into his pocket and grabs the roses. Leaning on the buzzer, he realises he doesn’t know what the hell he’s going to say. He’s put it all into the song but he’s going to need some preamble, some explanation. He can’t just thrust the data stick at her and expect everything will become clear.

But he’s spared that pain because no one answers.

Which is hardly surprising.

He hasn’t thought this through.

This isn’t the movies. Of course there was no guarantee she’d be home.

He holds his thumb down on the buzzer anyway, to make sure. Then strolls back to his car.

He’ll have to wait.

The roses land on the passenger seat, when a voice calls out to him from the next door plot.

“Are you after Ruby?” It’s the woman from next door, the house she’d sought refuge in the night that psychopath had broken into her house.

“Hi, Mrs …” He struggles to remember her name.

“Mrs Joseph.”

“Mrs Joseph.” He smiles and she returns it rather shyly, her cheeks flushing. “Yes, she’s not in.”

“She’s gone off on her tour. Left last night. She’s going to be gone for three months.”

His heart falters in his chest. Actually stops. And the oxygen chokes in his lungs.

Left?

Without telling him?