Tease Me (Private Listing #4)

Her eyebrows lift as she takes the tool. “This is going to take some time, isn’t it?”

My heart squeezes in my chest with what I feel for this woman. She told us she loves us last night, but I didn’t want to tell her in that moment. Our first kiss was after I almost lost her to Val and Jeff. When I tell her I love her, I want it to be special. I want it to be right.

She opens the tools and finds the Phillips-head screwdriver before glancing at me.

She’s mine. She belongs to me, with me. I’ll find the right time to tell her, but I know she can feel that I love her. How could she not know?

“Yeah, love. It’ll take time.” The way she lights up every time I call her love is enough. Like she knows it means something, because it does. I’ve never felt for anyone the way I feel about Madison.

She grins and goes to the register, sitting on the floor. Shaking those thoughts out of my head, I go to the light switch and get to work.

The living room camera was in one of the registers. Madison’s squeal of joy when she discovered it startled me. But it wasn’t as bad as the shriek when she found a dead mouse.

“I touched it,” she cries. Tears run down her cheeks as she scrubs her hands in the sink. She’s rubbing too hard, like she can scrub off the feeling.

Coming up behind her, I wrap my arms around her to keep her from rubbing her hands raw. “You’re fine, love.”

Gently, I wash each of her hands before drying them. She leans back into me.

“It squished,” she whispers in horror.

Chuckling, I turn her in my arms and tip her chin up. Using my thumbs, I brush away the tears remaining on her cheeks. “I’ll clean it out. Are you good to keep going?”

She draws in a breath. “Yes, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m so emotional.”

Her forehead rests on my chest and my heart thumps. Her hands clutch at my t-shirt. I glance around the dimly lit room. This place is haunting her even now. We’ve barely made it through the living space. We still need to go through her bedroom and Val’s.

Maybe questions will help her not think of the stalker and what we’re really looking for here: evidence of this person who’s been terrorizing Madison.

“How long did you live here?”

She steps away and grabs the multi-tool. “I moved in here my third year at school. I lived on campus the first couple years, but it was so expensive. Even living in a triple.”

I crouch in front of the open register and use a paper towel to fish out the little pile of fur left and slide it into a trash bag. “You said you did internships every summer?”

Her gaze flicks to me as I screw on the register cover. She shakes her head and takes off the cover on the vent. Using a paper towel this time, she reaches into the opening. I quickly wash my hands.

“I did. The first year is when I worked for the Becks. I babysat a lot during high school, so it made sense to take on the nanny position. The kids were great. Anna and Patrick were nice, but they were definitely involved in their own careers.” She puts the register back on and screws it tight. “Anna would sometimes vent to me about her husband and how much he works. Other times she’d talk about the dinners they had out. It was always surface stuff though. The kids were really fun ages. I spent most my time there with them.”

“You like kids?” I move to the electrical outlet and loosen the screws holding the plate.

She arches her eyebrow. “You don’t have to do this. I’m over being squicked out from feeling up the dead mouse.”

“Maybe I’m curious.” I lift the plate off and check around the box. A small bag of weed is the only thing I’ve found so far, which might have been from previous tenants since it’s legal now.

“If I like kids?” She laughs. “Yeah, I guess I do. I’ve never really thought about having kids though. Or even what life looks like after I achieve my dream. It’s all kind of just waiting in the background. Until I figure out how to do that.”

Standing, she dusts off her bottom before moving into the kitchen. There’s a register up high above the cabinets. She glances around and walks over to grab a chair from the table. When her fingers close on it, she freezes and her eyes widen. I’m not even sure she’s breathing.

“Madison?” I say, hoping to pull her out of whatever nightmare has her in its grip.

Her shoulders shake as she looks at the ground. “I couldn’t stop thinking there was no hope. That they could do anything to me and no one would know. No one would come looking for me. No one expected me until Monday morning. It was Friday night. They could have tortured me all weekend. They could have killed me and I would have been just another statistic.”

I stand during her speech and move behind her, but I don’t touch her. Her knuckles are white around the chairback.

“They didn’t care about me. They just wanted money. They wanted to use me.” Anger strains her voice, but tears drop on the chair. “They let someone into my life. Gave them pieces of me without me knowing. They knew my patterns and used them against me.” She lifts the chair and slams it down on the floor.

I rest my hand on her shoulder gently, giving her my strength.