Kinsley can have him.
Except, she’s shaking her head. “No, thank you. I’m in my workaholic era. No time for men.”
Arianna laughs. “That’s what I thought before Dallas strolled into my library like he owned it…and me. The Wilde men have a way of steamrolling everyone in their path. Besides…” She looks down at her papers, picks them up, and taps the bottoms as if they need to be tidied.
“Besides…what?” Emilia asks. “Is there a juicy scoop? Did Brody meet someone? How did I not know this?”
I stiffen. It should not bother me to find out Brody has met someone. I have zero claim on that man. I didn’t even give him my name for fuck’s sake. My one and only encounter with the man included him reprimanding me for cussing and me fleeing the library. He probably doesn’t remember me. I was a blip on his radar. Some random girl he met for two seconds.
Arianna’s gaze comes over to mine.
My face heats. I know with that one look that I’m wrong. Brody knows exactly who I am.
Fuck.
Chapter 3
Brody
* * *
“There is nothing better than a flustered woman,” Dallas teases as we enter the archive room, rubbing his palms together with glee.
I shake my head. “I don’t know about this. Melody didn’t so much as glance at me. I’m not sure she even knew I was behind her.”
“She knew. Did you not see her body language?”
I shrug. “So what? She tensed. Maybe she was perturbed that we busted into their book club. We don’t even know for sure she remembers meeting me.”
Dallas claps me on the back. “Brody. Dude. She very specifically told Arianna to make sure you were not going to be here. She wouldn’t have said that if she didn’t remember who you were.”
I smirk. “Fine. But are you listening to yourself? She insisted she would not come if I was going to be here. And here I am, probably making a fool of myself.”
“Nope. She’s definitely interested.” He pulls a huge box toward the edge of a shelf. “Help me with this.”
“Ah, so we’re actually going to do something worthwhile in the middle of this insane mission?” I shake off my nerves and take the other end of the box, helping Dallas set it on the table. I’ve been here with him several times. The man is obsessed with the town’s blueprints. They are impressive, and the fact that they exist in this forgotten room of the library is even more shocking. They’re going to come in handy, helping me get renovations underway. Nearly every building in town has been neglected for years, and they are all in desperate need of improvements. Some are close to being too far gone to salvage. A few should have been condemned years ago.
And the man at fault for all this disrepair is Old Man Wilde. A man none of us ever met. Our fathers left this town and never looked back before any of us were born. To this day, we still have no precise idea why.
But Amos Wilde is gone, and the geezer left the most bizarre will anyone’s ever heard of. Any grandchild willing to move to Wilde and keep the town running for ten years gets their share of the inheritance. Apparently, it doesn’t matter when they arrive, as long as they stay for ten years.
I’m not counting myself among those prospective inheritors. I have a business to run in San Antonio. I’m only in Wilde for a few months to help my cousins and siblings get things started. They need my expertise in construction. Then I’m gone. I have a lucrative company I love. I’d rather keep my business running than hang out in this one-horse town for a decade just to collect a paycheck. No, thank you.
There’s no reason why I can’t have a bit of a dalliance along the way, though. Why not? Melody Thorne caught my attention before she even turned around. That unruly strawberry-blond hair was the first thing I saw, and I’ve always had a hard-on for redheads. Her tight little body and that filthy mouth.
My cock gets hard all over again every time I think of the cuss words coming from those pretty lips. I hadn’t even seen them yet when my body went on full alert. But when she’d turned around… Damn. Green eyes. Pale skin. Freckles all over her nose. Perfect high round tits. Just the right handful.
Melody was incensed by my threats to discipline her. She’d rolled those pretty eyes, cocked out a hip, and refused to give me her name.
Game on.
That had been my thought as she’d walked out the door and burned rubber trying to get away from me. It had been comical. I can’t really blame her. After all, I’m the fourth Wilde to arrive in town. The first three found a woman, claimed her, and dragged her to the altar so fast that if rice were still something people threw at the bride and groom at weddings, it would still be floating through the air all around Wilde. Most of it wouldn’t have had a chance to settle yet.
“Earth to Brody.”
I jerk my attention to Dallas, who’s got blueprints spread all over the table.
He’s smirking again. He does that a lot. “Better find a replacement.”
