Stuck With You: A Sweet Romantic Comedy

Part 3

Bianca

For a few seconds, I froze, so surprised by the house not being empty, that I didn't even step back.

I could only dimly see the outline of the man's face in the darkness.

He'd reached out and gripped my upper arms when we'd collided in the darkened hallway.

It was a delayed reaction, but several seconds into the shocking encounter, I screamed.

I kept screaming until the man extracted himself and flipped on the light.

The man was wearing a damp robe, and his hair was wet. He'd obviously just gotten out of the shower. Equally obvious was that he, too, believed he had the house to himself.

The man moved back about eight feet. Judging by the look on his face he was questioning both my sanity and my right to be roaming at large in his home.

For a split second, I toyed with the notion that I'd somehow wandered into the wrong house, but that was a hard theory to embrace since the hall walls were covered with pictures of my brother Rob's family.

"Who are you?" he said. "Did you follow me here?"

It was only then that I realized that I was being stared down by Mr. Spectacles.

Without the old-man sweater and the wire-rimmed glasses, I hadn't immediately recognized him. I did now. The scowl was the same.

"I'm Bianca," I said. I started to extend my hand, then thought better of it.

"You're Rob's sister?" Mr. Spectacles asked.

"Yes."

"Bianca?"

"Yes."

"Who's coming to stay for two weeks?"

He asked it in the same tone of voice one uses when asking the exterminator how long one can expect to keep seeing cockroaches after they've bug-bombed the place.

"Two weeks. Maybe longer."

He didn't seem pleased by my introduction of uncertainty into my departure date.

"I thought you weren't arriving until the 3rd."

"Technically, it is the 3rd."

"Are you sure?"

Did this man seriously think I'd followed him all the way from the restaurant, broken into his house, then pretended to be his employer's sister?

"I'm calling Rob," I said, raising my phone to my ear.

I'd been warned on pain of death not to call Rob or Camille unless the house was burning down, or I'd gotten arrested. Nothing was on fire, but I had a feeling that getting arrested was a possibility.

Rob and Camille hadn't gotten an international calling plan, and, Rob said, he didn't intend to take out a second mortgage on their house just because I needed a chat.

Rob's not wrong. I do like to chat.

"Don't call Rob," said Mr. Spectacles. "I believe you."

"Good."

"I'm Timo," he said.

Timo didn't say it was nice to meet me. I couldn't blame him.

"I'll probably be picking up the kids when you get up in the morning," he continued, "but help yourself to anything in the kitchen. Clean towels are in the linen closet at the top of the stairs."