“I didn’t say this arrangement wasn’t useful to me in other ways,” he said, but before I could ask what he meant by that, a house came into view.
Although describing it as a house was a laughable understatement, and this was coming fromme. It wasn’t like my family home was a shack.
Even so, this was an absolute mansion perched on a rise overlooking rolling pastures dotted with cattle. It had balconies, wraparound porches, stone pillars, and huge windows reflecting the sunset, like a billionaire had merged a ranch with a resort and then casually lived in it like it was no big deal.
I went silent, forgetting to question myself for thinking about kissing himandto question him about how my presence here was supposedlyusefulto him. Instead, I just gawked.
Trent pulled up right in front of the monstrosity, put the truck in park, glanced at me, and the faintest twitch of amusement ghosted across his mouth. “Not what you were expecting, huh?”
“I thought you lived in a barn.”
“I do,” he said without skipping a beat. “This is just the house attached to it.”
Oh, well, that’s just great.
He hopped out and grabbed my luggage again, then turned andjoggedup the front steps. I sighed deeply as I opened the door, peering up at the house that would be my temporary home.
Digs could be worse, I guess.
Honestly, I prepared myself for the interior to be a letdown. A soulless, empty modern version of a cavern that creaked and had one couch, some moldy cheese in the fridge, and half a bottle of bourbon on the bathroom counter next to a used razor.
Once again though, I quickly learned that I didn’t really know my brother’s best friend at all. The inside turned out to be even more absurd than the facade. Every room was huge but warm, with wood beams, glass walls, leather furniture, shelves of books, and a fireplace that could roast an entire herd of cattle.
With a home this impressive, he would never need to brag. The majesty spoke for itself. For possibly the first time in my life, I came very close to gaping, but I managed to keep my jaw and my eyes in check as I followed him upstairs.
Trying extremely hard not to notice the strength in his broad shoulders as he hauled my luggage up a wide, comfortable staircase, I found myself staring at his denim-clad ass instead.
Damn it, Charlotte.
With no other choice since he was immediately ahead of me, I finally just looked at the floors all the way up. Trent stopped around halfway down a long hall and opened the door to an airy bedroom with high ceilings and large, long windows looking out over the fields.
“This is you,” he said. “I’m across the way.”
Just casual. No big deal.He was putting me, his fake girlfriend, in a bedroom directly opposite his.Sure. Absolutely normal.
He started to turn before he seemed to remember something. “I’ve got a few things to check on, but I won’t be gone long. We’ve got dinner in town at seven. It’s a good spot. We’ll be seen. So just get settled and I’ll be back.”
As soon as he started moving again, for some insane reason, the thought of staying behind while he went off to…cowboy? Ranch? Do whatever he needed to do… made my stomach churn.
“Can I go with you?”
He glanced at me over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised and questions written all over his face. “Do you really want to go get your hands dirty and yell at ranch hands?”
“No, but I also don’t want to sit in this giant house alone, pretending I’m not creating thirteen different versions of my future in my head.”
A beat passed before a tiny hint of a smile appeared on his lips. It wasn’t a smirk or a cocky grin, just a shift in his expression that said he saw me. That he understood.
“Alright, then,” he said, grabbing a hat from a hook on the wall and spinning it once in his hand like the most aggravatingly confident man alive. “Come on, Westwood. Let’s see how you do outside the country club.”
I was about to take a step forward when he suddenly tilted his head toward my suitcase. “Would you like to change first?”
I looked down at my travel dress and kitten heels. “Why would I need to change?”
He just shrugged again, one corner of his mouth pulling up like he was actively trying not to laugh. “No reason.”
That was an absolute lie, but he offered no further explanation or gave any hints. All he did was nod with a half-smile that made me suspect he was enjoying the fact that I had no idea what I was walking into.
Because I had apparently declared war on my own dignity today, I followed him anyway, still wearing my sparkling clean city shoes and my wrinkled dress, and with absolutely zero indication of what I had just volunteered for.
