Okay, so he hadn’t thrown everything out in a fit of manly I-know-what’s-good-for-you-ism but, instead, he’d merely organized all her crap so that she had a clean apartment and actually knew that her carpet was a festive plum color. And he’d managed to do all that in a few hours.

Blayne briefly gnawed her bottom lip, much like that badger had gnawed on her face, but she knew she couldn’t avoid it. She had to apologize and say thank you. All in the same sentence preferably. To Bo Novikov.

Suck it up, Thorpe. He’s done in four hours what would have taken you three years and an official threat from National Health Services.

Taking in a deep breath, “Bo—”

That’s when he swung her around again. Now she was staring at the small dining table that was in her living room because she didn’t really have a dining room. Of course, even if she had a dining room, she wouldn’t have used the table to eat on because usually it was covered with old and new bills, business paperwork she’d been promising for a month—or was it two?—to get finished for Gwen, and the empty family photo album and box of family photos she’d been trying to put together since she’d moved in for her dad’s upcoming birthday. Yet all that stuff was neatly piled and arranged on a side table—the urgent bills in their scary pink envelopes right on top of everything with a large piece of paper that had written on it, “Pay these now!” taped across—so those things weren’t completely out of sight, which meant they would not be out of mind.

So what was on the table now? Dinner plates and glasses—I remember those plates and glasses!—chopsticks, and a rather large quantity of Chinese food from her favorite twenty-four-hour place on the corner.

“Oh . . . wow. I—”

And that’s when she heard her front door slam shut.

Blayne cringed and looked over her shoulder. And yeah. She was completely alone. “Dammit!”

Bo was at his truck when he stopped, his head lifting. He sniffed the air and snarled when he realized it was wolf he smelled. She-wolf. Already in a bad mood, he turned toward the scent coming from an alley across the street, but before he could go find out why a She-wolf was lurking around Blayne’s apartment, Blayne leaped in front of him, her arms outstretched, her legs straddling the curb. He knew it was her rather pathetic attempt at blocking him from going any farther.

Considering she couldn’t fight off a badger, Bo had to admire her moxy.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

To be honest, he didn’t expect her to apologize. At least not right away. And if she did apologize, he didn’t expect her to mean it. But she did mean it. He could tell.

“Please don’t go,” she begged. “I was a totalbitch. I know. And I’m sorry.”

If she could be an adult about this, then so could he. “And I’m sorry if I freaked you out. I was only trying to help.”

“I know. I know.” She pressed her hands on his chest and, um, that felt awfully nice. “And I really appreciate it. I just freaked out because one time me and my dad got into it about my ‘pig sty’ as he liked to call it. And he threw out all my shit. With me standing there! I was fourteen at the time, but I’m sensing now that I’ve never recovered from the trauma of that event.”

Bo wanted to laugh, but he knew she was serious. “He just threw it out?”

“According to him he didn’t have time for my lazy ass to shift into motion and do what I needed to do, which meant now, not later, and not when I felt like it. You hear me, little miss?” she demanded in a much lower and bellowing voice, most likely imitating her father.

Bo cleared his throat, held back a smile. “Your old man wasn’t a Marine, was he?”

Her smile was resigned but still loving. “Navy.”

“I figured. My uncle was a Marine. He raised me after my parents died. I recognized the . . . uh . . . tone.”

“That explains everything,” she said with a rush of cheeriness he’d never seen from any predator before in his life. “Military parents or guardians raise two types of kids. Either the super-orderly kid, which is you. Or the rebellious messy one, which is me.”

“So I’m boring?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“But you’re the rebel and I’m the orderly one.”

“Yes. But I bet you can find whatever you need whenever you need it.”

“This is true. Which I guess explains why I kept finding four or five packages of the same products lying around?”

She cringed. “You mean like plastic sandwich bags?”

“You had sixteen boxes of those. Most of them unopened or with only a few baggies used.”

The cringing grew worse. “Dammit!”

Chuckling and relieved she’d simply forgotten about those bags and wasn’t using them for some kind of illegal-drug business, Bo asked, “Did you take the rest of the antibiotics? You need to take the rest of them now that you’re up.”

She peered up at him with those gorgeous brown eyes. “I’ll take ’em, if you come back with me and have some of that Chinese food that I am dying to eat. I’m starving,” she whispered.

“And if I don’t come back in with you?”

“I don’t take the meds and then the infection returns, I die a horrible and sad death in my spotless apartment, and it’ll be all on your head.”