Total pages in book: 27
Estimated words: 25127 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 126(@200wpm)___ 101(@250wpm)___ 84(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25127 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 126(@200wpm)___ 101(@250wpm)___ 84(@300wpm)
I truly have no other options, which means I’ll have to play on his sympathy and hope his kindness and hospitality continue. Okay, kindness might be stretching how he’s treated me, but he brought me here, gave me a room, clean clothing and breakfast. He might be grumpy, but he hasn’t turned me away. Until now.
“Look, I realize we don’t know each other but you do have an extra room. The one I slept in last night.” I’ve never been so pushy, but I really need more time to figure out my life.
He shakes his head. “It’s about to become a study.”
“But for now, there’s still a bed.” I bat my eyelashes in a futile attempt to flirt, but I’ve never been any good at it.
He studies me, those chocolate brown eyes taking me in. He’s good at hiding his emotions. I’ll just have to be better at breaking through his walls.
* * *
Maddox
I stare at my too-innocent looking guest and groan. She gives off a guileless appearance, but Gabby knows just how to work me to get what she wants. I doubt she’s evil or manipulative like many women I’ve been unlucky enough to meet. Just young and desperate, which has her chipping holes in my defenses. Not that I’ll show her as much.
She’s adorably cute and extremely sexy in my overly long T-shirt. I’m not used to women wearing my clothing and seeing her in my thin tee does something for me. Her legs are lean, tanned, and I can imagine them wrapped around my waist as I back her into a wall, kiss her hard and slide my hand beneath the hem of that shirt, stroking her wet sex to make her come. Those are the reasons I’m fighting so hard against her staying. I cannot allow myself to get involved with her. She’s too young, which might mean too flighty.
But there’s something about the innocence I sense that calls to me. No other woman I’ve been with, especially not Felicia, who I dated for six months and thought I was falling for, had this appealing, wholesome side to her.
Felicia was elegant and looked perfect on my arm at any event we attended, but she lacked the genuine warmth Gabby possesses. And at the very mention of me possibly resigning my job at the investment firm, she lost her mind, yelling, shouting, and threatening to break up with me, and that was before I revealed my intention to leave the rat race and move here.
No sooner did she react than I knew I had to end things. Learning she wasn’t in love with me but with my status was a blow, but at least I walked away with my dignity intact. Only with hindsight did I realize I liked similar things about her, how we fit together for business and yes, the sex was good. As shallow as I discovered the relationship was, the road to getting over her still wasn’t easy.
My temporary houseguest already evokes protective emotions and those feelings make me weak. If she stays, I might give in, and I refuse to fall for the poor little rich girl. One who could decide to run back to her rich family and leave me alone to pick up the pieces. Been there, done that. I don’t care for a repeat.
“Maddox?” Gabby waves a hand in front of my face. “Are you listening?”
I groan, aware I’ve been lost in thought for way too long. “Look, you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.” It was hard enough to sleep knowing she was a short distance away in my study, on the bed my brother used while he lived here. My shower consisted of jerking off to thoughts of Gabby and being too pissed off at myself to fall asleep after. “How about we get dressed, drive over to the bar, and you can figure something out?”
She shakes her head. “I already thought things through. Everything around here is booked in the summer, rentals included. I’m not going back to the city. My parents will follow. And I am not going to their summer home so my mother can push her agenda, forcing me to hang around with that rich, handsy loser, Preston Barrett, III, thinking I’ll agree to marry him.”
“You said Preston Barrett?” I know that name.
“The third.” She wrinkles her nose in distaste.
I agree with her assessment of the prick her parents want her to marry. I know him too well.
“You know him?” she asks, her eyes wide in surprise.
I can’t prevent the half smile from lifting my lips. I didn’t plan on revealing anything personal, but with this common connection, I can’t hold back. “If I told you before I managed The Back Door, I was a money manager in the city, would you believe me?”