"No." A shadow darkened her expression. "Not anymore."
She glanced away, her face taking on a sharpness that didn't suit her pretty features. "Am I sleeping on the couch, or is there a guest bedroom?"
"You can have the guest bedroom upstairs," I answered after a few beats of decision. "It's right next to?—"
"Great, I'll find it myself." Sunny turned and grabbed her trash bag before I could finish directing her—not to the downstairs guest suite I usually used for my standing dates, but to the temporary bedroom space I'd been planning to turn into an office when I found the time. In nearly five years, I hadn't found even a couple of spare hours to do much outside of work.
Not until today, when I'd magically made the time to get fake engaged to an unwitting pawn who appeared to no longer be interested in an additional consensual agreement to enjoy no-strings-attached sex on the side while I pulled off my real plan.
With a clenched jaw, I watched Sunny disappear up the stairs.
Needless to say, the night did not end the way I'd wanted it to when I brought my strangely alluring fake fiancée home to live with me.
CHAPTER10
Cole
And the nextmorning didn't start off any better.
I woke up to my usual pre-dawn alarm in a foul mood that couldn't fully be attributed to the early rise time.
It was all her fault.
I'd spent much of the night tossing and turning. A certain part of my anatomy reminding me with increasing insistence that Sunny wasright there.In the very next bedroom. Her soft, curvaceous body was lying underneath a couple of sheets and a thin blanket, which I would only have to pull back to…
Around 2 AM, I was forced to take care of myself like a high school boy to finally get to sleep, andeven that hadn't been enough.
I woke up with morning wood and ended up having to jerk off again in the shower just so I could walk downstairs in a pair of joggers without embarrassing myself.
The chessboard feel of my personal abode didn't give me my usual satisfaction as I made my way to the kitchen that morning to put together a pre-workout drink. The House was always supposed to win, and I was the CEO of The House. But this sudden low-key obsession with a woman who was only meant to be a pawn in my board game?
Let's just say, I did not feel like a winner as I tore open a package of high-quality protein powder and dumped the contents into my sports shaker.
Regardless, I stuck to my usual morning routine. Today's plan was a long workout with my personal trainer. Then I'd head into the office until it was time to leave for the CEO dinner.
While I chugged my pre-workout shake, I picked up the phone I always left charging in another room (as all the productivity podcasts suggested). But along with the usual a.m. digest of emails from Agnes, I found several alerts from my state-of-the-art home security system.
Apparently, there had been movement on the main floor shortly before 12 a.m. and again around 4 a.m., with someone coming in and out of the penthouse while I'd been sleeping.
Furrowing my brow, I opened up the security camera app, where I found two videos of Sunny. In the first, she was leaving the penthouse at 11:40 p.m. in a short, shimmering green dress with a red Benton Girl swag coat draped over her left arm. The second video showed her returning about two hours ago, now wearing the coat. With careful movements, she pulled off her slingback heels, then tiptoed toward the stairs to return to the room I'd provided her.
Where the hell had she been?
A red, angry bile rose inside of me as my head filled with possible answers to that question.
"Hey, what are you doing up so early on a Saturday morning?" Sunny's voice suddenly asked behind me.
"I'm getting ready to work out," I answered, raising my head from the phone to confront her. "What were you?—?"
The rest of my question stuck in my mouth when I took in her appearance.
I was accustomed to women whomade every effort to present themselves impeccably. Full makeup, sophisticated outfits, with a spritz of perfume on top.
Sunny looked like she just climbed out of a tumble dryer—rumpled, oversized T-shirt, glossy curls going every which way, including up. Yet her bountiful curves, barely contained by the drawstring shorts she'd apparently changed into before going to bed in the wee hours of the morning, sent a lightning bolt of lust straight through me.
Which I forcibly tamped down to finish asking, "Where did you go in the middle of the night?"
"Was I too loud?" Worry filled her pretty eyes. "I tried to be quiet as I came back up the stairs. I didn't want to wake you."
