Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (41 page)

And then he kissed her.

The kiss was deep and hard, its intent
clear.
 
His hands encircled her
waist, making her feel tiny against the width of his body, and his tongue
slipped into her mouth, exploring.

She told herself to push him away, and her mind
screamed that this was a terrible idea, tried to remind her of the heartbreak and
sleepless nights this man had caused her.
 
But her body screamed back, louder than her mind, telling her this felt
right, telling her to let him take her, to give him whatever he wanted.

And then, just as her resolve was all but gone,
there was a knock on the door.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice called.
 
“Chace?
 
Are you in there?
 
It’s me, Michelle.”

Chace froze.

Lindsay took a step back, then grabbed the
sweater that was lying on the floor and quickly slid her arms through it.
 
“Who the hell is
Michelle?”
she asked.

The knock came again.
 
“Chace?” the voice whined.
 
“I’m cold!
 
Are we going to go inside or not?”

Lindsay looked at him incredulously.
 
“You have a
girl
with you?”

He didn’t say anything, just crossed the room
in his easy gait and swung open the door.
 
The girl standing on the porch had long blonde hair, blue eyes, and
couldn’t have been more than twenty-two.
 
“Hey!” she said brightly.

Maximilian ran up to her, his tail
wagging.
 
Traitor,
Lindsay thought.

“Oooh, a doggie!”
 
Michelle giggled.
 
“I love dogs.
 
Hi, doggie, dog, dog!”

“Yes, well,” Lindsay said, “thanks so much for
stopping by to pick up your dog.
 
You can go now.”

“Okay,” Michelle said happily.
 
She was apparently too stupid to figure
out there was something more going on here.

Chace slid by Lindsay and out the door.
 
But before he did, he leaned down and
 
whispered in her ear, “This isn’t over.”

Her nipples tightened and excitement surged
through her body.
 
But she was done
with Chace Davenport.
 
And this
time, she really meant it.

***

But when Lindsay got back into bed, she
couldn’t stop thinking about him.
 
His smile.
 
His body.
 
His face. The way she could feel his
stubble against her skin when he kissed her.
 
She put her hands up to her face, slid
her finger over her lip, remembering.

She wasn’t used to sleeping in the new house,
and she tossed and turned restlessly, kicking at the sheets.
 
Finally, she drifted off into an uneasy
slumber.

When the first trace of light slipped over the
trees, she decided to give up on getting any more sleep.
 
The wood floors of the house were cold,
and she rummaged through some boxes before finding a pair of purple-and-white
striped fleece socks.
 
She dressed
in a pair of black yoga pants and her favorite sweatshirt, a soft grey one with
the Temple University logo on the front.

By some miracle, she was able to find the
coffeepot, and as the aroma of French roast filled the kitchen, the house
started to feel more like home.
 
She
would get some work done on the book she was writing, she decided, and then
spend the afternoon in town, poking around and picking up some area rugs. This
was her new house, the house of her dreams, and she wasn’t going to let the
fact that she had a womanizing asshole for a neighbor detract from that.

Feeling determined, she took a long sip of her
coffee and gazed out the kitchen window.
 
The early autumn sunlight brushed against the leaves, making the golds,
reds, and coppers appear brighter.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash
movement on the driveway next door.
 
Chace.
 
Coming out of his
house with that blonde girl from last night.
 

He was wearing a pair of dark jeans, a white t-shirt,
and a leather jacket.
 
The girl
(Michelle?) was wearing the same thing she had on last night, a ridiculously
short skirt that was completely inappropriate for this time of year.
 
She was hunched over in the cold,
looking miserable as she climbed into Chace’s truck.

Better
you than me, honey,
Lindsay
thought.
 
A stab of sadness pierced
her heart as she remembered how it had been last year.
 
It was exactly this time of year when she’d
met Chace for the first time. She closed her eyes, letting herself remember
that night.

Then she forced herself to stop.
 
It was nothing.
 
What they had was nothing.
 
Besides, she’d worked too hard to forget
him to let herself relapse.

She brought her coffee over to the table and
booted up her computer.

***

An hour or so later, she was happily ensconced
in a scene, when there was a knock on her door.
 
She stopped with her coffee halfway to
her lips, then crossed the kitchen and looked out the front window.
 

Oh, for the love of God.
 
It was Chace.
 
He was standing there on the front
porch, a toolbox in hand.
 
He was
wearing the same outfit she’d seen him in his morning– the tight jeans,
the crisp white t-shirt, the beat-up leather jacket.
 
She looked around for a place to hide,
wondering if she could slip back to the bedroom without him hearing.

He knocked again.
 
“I know you’re in there,” he said.
 
“Your car’s here.”

“So?” she said.
 
“Maybe I got a ride somewhere.
 
You don’t know.”

“Open the door.”

“What do you want?” she asked, trying to make
her voice sound annoyed, like she was in the middle of something very
important.
 
Which she was –
her book was very important.
 
If she
didn’t get it done, she didn’t get paid.
 
And if she didn’t get paid, she didn’t have money.
 
And if she didn’t have money, she didn’t
eat.
 
Eating was very
important.
 
So obviously she didn’t
have time to just be answering random knocks on the door in the middle of the
morning.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to talk.”
 
She knew she sounded like a baby, but
she didn’t care.
 
She wasn’t going
to let him in.
 
Just because he
lived next door didn’t mean he could just come waltzing over here any time he
wanted.
 
She wondered briefly if she
should look into getting some kind of restraining order against him.
 
Her sister Jamie had gotten one once,
when an ex-boyfriend wouldn’t stop calling her.
 
Apparently it was super easy, you just
went down to the courthouse and filled out a form and voila, the person had to
stay away from you.
 
Easier than
going to the DMV, even.

“We need to figure out what we’re going to do
about that fence,” Chace said, and knocked again.

“What fence?”
 
She peeked out the window.

“The broken down fence that Maximilian got
through.”
 
He was looking up at the
sky in exasperation.
 
His eyes
shifted over to the window, and she quickly stepped back.
 
Damn.
 
Had he seen her?

“Of course,” he went on,
 
“if you want Maximilian to get hurt, we
can just leave it the way it is.
 
Or, better yet, I can get the county inspector down here to look at it,
and then we’ll have to pay all sorts of fees and processing.
 
Plus, once he gets down here, he’ll
probably start poking around into all sorts of things that aren’t up to code.”

Lindsay thought about it.
 
Obviously she didn’t want Maximilian to
get hurt.
 
But she also didn’t
believe for a second that Chace was going to get an inspector down here.
 
That smacked of bullshit.
 
It might be her first house, but she was
pretty sure the county couldn’t
order
you to
have a fence.

On the other hand, the fence
was
kind of an eyesore, and if Chace wanted to fix
it, who was she to say no?
 

She sighed, then went to the door and opened
it.

“Fine,” she said, glaring at him. “Knock
yourself out.”

He cocked his head, giving her a smile.
 
“That’s all I get?”

She stared at him.
 
“What?”

“I come over here, offer to repair your fence
out of the goodness of my heart, and you don’t even invite me in?
 
That’s not very neighborly.”

He moved forward so that he was dangerously
close to stepping into the house. She stood in front of the doorway, blocking
him.
 
He was so close she could feel
the heat coming off his body.
 
He
smelled like a delicious mixture of outdoors and hot man.
 

“Yeah, well, it’s not very neighborly to bring
someone’s garbage back over, either.”

“That was yesterday,” he said, like it was ten
years ago.
 
He moved even closer.

“No way.
 
You can fix the fence, but you’re not coming in.”

“Why not?”
 
He looked her up and down, his eyes lingering over her body.
 
She was thankful that this time, he
wasn’t getting much of a show.
 
Her
yoga pants and sweatshirt weren’t exactly made for ogling.

“Because.”

“Because you’re afraid of what’s going to
happen.”
 
It was a statement, not a
question.
 

Lindsay shook her head and opened her mouth to
protest, but he put a finger to her lips.
 
His gaze locked on hers, and he shook his head like he was amused.
 
“Oh, Lindsay,” he said, sighing like he didn’t
know what to do with her.
 
“Always
afraid of something.”

It was the first indication he’d given that
they had a history.

He moved his lips toward hers, and she held her
breath, waiting for the kiss.
 
But
at the last moment, he turned around and hopped down the stairs.
 
“If you’re not going to let me in,” he
called over his shoulder as he headed for the yard, “at least bring me a
lemonade.”

C
hapter
T
hree

Lindsay didn’t have any lemonade.
 
It had too many calories, and besides,
lemonade was a summer drink.
 
All
she had was a few bottles of water, and so after she’d forced herself to write
for an hour, she grabbed two and headed out to the backyard.
 
This time, she was dressed in jeans and
a cream-colored cable knit sweater, her hair brushed and pulled back into a
ponytail.
 
Her boots crunched
through the leaves as she made her way over to the fence.

Chace was dismantling the old fence, taking the
huge pieces of rotting wood and stacking them up against the side of the house.

“Oh,” Lindsay said as she got closer.
 
“I thought you were just going to make
some repairs.
 
I didn’t know you
were going to build a whole new one.”