"I thought I might do you a favor," Ari responded as he closed the door and came over to her. "The new lock is fiendish." Even she sometimes had trouble with it, not that she would tell him that. If he'd picked it faster than she could, she'd have been rather put out.
"Eventful, anyway," she answered his question, offering him a smile and immediately propping her legs across his lap. "I just spent half an hour with Merri, as you no doubt surmised, which may have been the highlight of my evening but was also a little exhausting. How can he live with all those nerves?"