Page 9 of The Player Next Door
Am I too good-looking? Is that it?
He couldn’t say for sure, and the fact of the matter was, no woman in the last ten years had given him so much as a glancing consideration of being the sort of man you took home to meet your parents. He could hardly say he was blameless in this, but still. Amber saying it so blatantly had wounded his considerable pride, and he was fixating. He glanced up from his phone long enough to hit the button for his floor and then clicked over to Amber’s new boyfriend’s profile, but it was private.
“Dammit,” he mumbled, and the person next to him snorted.
“Instagram-stalking not working out for you?” The Nerd asked, grinning up at him.
“Didn’t your dad teach you not to read over people’s shoulders?” he replied, unable to stop his own smile.
“Your phone was practically in my face, there were no shoulders involved,” she said as the door slid shut. “Besides, you’re like a foot taller than me. I’d never be able to see over your shoulders.” She hit the button for the floor below his and cocked her head. “Who were you looking up?”
“No one,” he said, pocketing his phone. “No dog today?”
“Just coming home from work. I’ll have Kiki next weekend, though.”
“Should a dognapper be broadcasting their plans?”
“You going to rat me out?” she said without missing a beat.
The elevator juddered to a stop and Logan’s retort died on his lips. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he grumbled. The building had two elevators, each of shocking unreliability considering how much he paid in rent. Plenty of times he just took the stairs to avoid this possibility, but six flights was a long-ass walk, and he was tired today.
Clare already had her phone out. “Yeah, it’s 5D,” she said without preamble. “Elevator’s stuck again.” She paused and jerked her chin at Logan. “Which one are we in? I wasn’t paying attention.”
“West,” he said, and she relayed the information.
Logan pried the doors open a few inches, only to find solid, bare wall. “Between floors,” he reported, and she glanced up at the screen above the door.
“Between four and five, no way out,” she told the super. She paused, listening, and rolled her eyes. “I appreciate it, but also . . . come on, this needs to stop. This has got to be an ADA violation. Yeah, yeah, I know.” She hung up and sighed heavily. “The super is going to call the fire department and reset the system in the meantime. If the reset doesn’t work, the fire department should be here in twenty minutes.”
“We pay entirely too much to deal with this bullshit,” he said, taking off his messenger bag and setting it by his feet.
“We do, but I’d say even people in cheap buildings deserve functioning infrastructure no matter their socioeconomic status,” she said, and he realized belatedly she had scolded him, just so gently he almost missed it.
“Fair enough,” he said, glancing around the elevator to cover his embarrassment. “But that still means we have twenty minutes to kill.”
“That we do,” she agreed, because the super always promised to try “resetting the system” when the elevator failed, but it never worked. She leaned back against the side of the elevator, looking up at him.
She was cute, for sure. Not his usual type, but appealing. And she was funny, that much he had established during their first short conversation. There were far worse ways to spend twenty minutes.
“So what do you do? When you aren’t dognapping, obviously,” he said, leaning against the other side.
“I’m a game designer for Quest Gaming,” she replied.
“Oh, so like . . . video games?”
“Tabletop role-playing, actually. There is a video game division, but I’m on the tabletop side, which is way bigger.”
Logan wasn’t entirely sure what that was, to be honest, but the way she said it seemed like she expected him to know, so he nodded. “Impressive.”
“It is,” she said cheekily. “You?”
“Not very impressive, sorry to say.” He waited for her chuckle, absurdly pleased with himself when she did. “I work in finance,” he said vaguely. That was all he said usually, since the women he was talking to normally didn’t care.
“I have an aunt who works in finance,” she replied. “It always sounds so interesting.”
“It isn’t,” he said honestly. “But I make a decent amount of money doing it, so I guess I don’t really care.”
She gave him a small grin and once again, he felt stupidly proud of himself. It didn’t seem that hard to make her smile, and yet he felt like he deserved a medal. Her phone rang and she grimaced at the number. “Yeah?” she answered, and then sighed. “Are you kidding me?” Another long pause. “Yeah, I’ll tell the other tenant stuck in here with me. And seriously, if you don’t get this fixed, I’ll be talking to my lawyer.” She hung up, looking disgruntled. “Fire department is busy on an emergency call, and since we’re safe, we’re stuck until they can get to us. Probably going to be a while. More than twenty minutes, I’d guess.”