“Why don’t you make sure the door is unlocked?” I told her. “I’ll start cleaning up and then we can unload.”
With attitude dripping from her pores, she slunk out of the car and headed for the cottage’s front door while I began picking up the disaster that was the inside of our car.
A minute later, she opened the passenger door, sank into her seat, and pulled out her phone, not saying a word.
“Um…hello? What’s up?”
She lifted a single shoulder in a shrug. “It’s locked.”
I blew out a sigh. “Of course it is.”
Quinn had set all this up for us—something I was eternally grateful for—and this was the first snag we’d hit. I didn’t want to spend time running around looking for this key. I just wanted to move in as much as possible before it got dark, get some pizza and that ice cream I’d promised Laurel, and relax after three days of driving.
“All right, I’ll go to the mansion and see if anyone’s home to give us our key.” I stepped out of the car and headed toward the main house, hoping Quinn had squared everything away and my new landlord knew we were arriving today.
I climbed the porch steps, rang the doorbell, and waited. And waited. Annnnd waited. Just my freaking luck—an empty house, which meant nowhere for Laurel and me to go. We could explore town, but we were both exhausted.
Giving it a final try, I rang the bell once again just as a man grumbled from inside, “Jesus, I’m coming.”
The door swung open, and I came face-to-chest with an absolute beast filling up nearly the entire width of the doorway. I slid my gaze up and up…and up…to a tense jaw covered in a short, thick beard, a pair of full lips, and a stern brow drawn down over whiskey eyes.
Whiskey eyes I wasveryfamiliar with.
The last time I’d seen them had been when I’d kissed him, thanked him for the whoppingeightorgasms, and headed back to my room and my daughter. What I hadn’t done was wake up next to them, despite how much I’d wantedto.
But we’d both known what our time together was and what it wasn’t. Just a single night of fun, nothing more, nothing less. And I hadn’t realized exactly how much I’d needed it.
Thanks to my most recent dating disaster, I’d practically sworn off men. But if I was going to do a round two—or three, as it were—Mr. Tall, Dark, and Grumpy wouldn’t be the worst choice.
Except…fuck.
“I’ll call you back,” he said into a phone I hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. Probably because I’d been too stunned. Not anymore, though.
The reality of the situation was slamming into me, pieces my brain was too slow to pick up on finally clicking into place.
My savior from the hotel bar was nowhere to be found. In his place was this man who was somehow scowling even harder than he’d been last night, and I hadn’t thought that was possible.
Worse, he was standing in the main house on the property my daughter and I were renting.
Fuck me. I’d had a one-night stand with my landlord.
Because of course my first foray into the land of book-worthy sex would be with someone I shouldn’t have slept with.
But it didn’t have to be a big deal. Maybe itwouldn’tbe a big deal. We were both adults. And there’d been no false pretenses of what our time together had been. Maybe he’d shrug it off. Maybe we could laugh about the coincidence of it all. Maybe?—
“Are you stalking me?” he snapped, his voice whip-sharp, eyes even sharper. His words were so unexpected, it took a moment for them to register.
When they finally did, I could only huff out an incredulous laugh as I stared up at him. “Excuse me?”
His jaw ticked as he shot a glance behind me, before sweeping his gaze over me from head to toe. Except this time, there was only derision behind those eyes. Nothing like the heated looks he’d given me last night. Nothing like the gazes that had set my soul on fire.
“How do you know where I live?” he demanded. “Did you go through my wallet when I was in the bathroom? Do you evenhavea daughter, or was that a line?”
“Okay,wow,” I said, dragging out the word.
I was used to people making snap judgments of me and my life, but this was a first. Astalker? Like, what, I just hung out in hotels, waiting for unsuspecting men to fuck me into a stupor and then followed them home because I had nothing better to do?
“Look, buddy, I hate to apparently be the first one to break this to you, but your dick isn’t that good.”
