Good grief, that was hot.
God. She dabbed at her eyes as the credits rolled. Phillip laid a sympathetic paw on her knee.
She really had a problem.
Or maybe it was a solution.
A little Googling would help her decide which it was.
The problem was that she’d gone about the business of Gold Nugget Property Management all day, marking up big “For Sale” and “For Rent” signs with a big Sharpie, talking to tenants about trimming trees and fixing sprinklers and the like, and all the while she’d fully expected the John Tennessee McCord effect to fade from her body and mind, the way you eventually got your hearing back after a loud and fabulous rock concert.
But instead the rest of her day had been like that scene inThe Wizard of Ozwhere Dorothy opens the door and suddenly everything changes from black-and-white into blazing color.
Only in reverse.
Everything was now dimmer. She was a little afraid he’d permanently altered her body chemistry by his mere proximity.
Just two days ago she’d been content with the rhythm of her days. Now she knew “content” was a synonym for “safe little box.”
She took a deep breath and typed some search terms in the browser window.
She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to Google him again. But this wasn’t frivolous, voyeuristic Googling, she told herself. It was a fact-finding mission inspired by a sentence he’d uttered today. Which was:
“Can’t remember the last time I did that.”
Slammed a headboard, that was. With a noisy and willing partner.
What she discovered was that while Rebecca Corday was linked with Anthony Underhill and was seen in photos grinning her eight-mile-wide grin alongside him in various venues, from restaurants to red carpets, as far as she could tell, J. T. hadn’t been photographed with a woman anywhere.
She couldn’t find a single photo of him with a woman on the internet for at least the last six months.
Though there were photos of him out with what looked like his buddies at lunch, and one of him leaving a karate dojo in Los Angeles. But if any women had been in the picture, J. T. had definitely kept it on the down low.
He was only going to be in Hellcat Canyon for a little while. He’d be out of here in time for Felix Nicasio’s wedding for sure, which was in about a month.
Some women might put that in the “con” column.
For her purposes, she decided it belonged in the “pro” column.
In the sidebar of one of the pages with the photos was a link to an article intriguingly entitled, “Top Ten Reasons Rebecca Corday is better off without John Tennessee McCord.”
Yikes.
It was quite a list. Snarky and juvenile and absolute clickbait for lovers of Hollywood gossip. But it was Number Eight that caught her eye.
8. Because he’s allergic to the “L” word.
Britt exhaled.
Ironically, she’d put that in the “pro” column, too.
Her plan was taking shape.
She liked that her solution was still technically a box, in that it had parameters and a finite volume. So there was comfort in that. The parameters were defined by a guy who in all likelihood wouldn’t want anything more from her than a good time, who had known commitment issues (he’d never moved in with Rebecca Corday, after all), and would be gone in a couple of months.
Insidethat box could be lot of hot sex.
Provided, that was, she saw him again. He didn’t seem like a guy who gave up, however.
