Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
“You don’t need to do a walkthrough first?”
“I’ve seen it before. It has everything I need,” I murmured, staring at her mouth.
“It comes furnished and the bed is only a queen. You won’t fit.”
There was no way that wouldn’t suck, but I wasn’t going to haggle for my bed yet. I didn’t want to chance her changing her mind. “Still better than Bernie’s couch.”
“We can try a month-to-month lease,” she finally said, putting me out of my misery. “That way if you throw wild keggers and leave blow-up sex dolls in the pool, I can kick you out.”
“Month-to-month and no sex dolls,” I repeated dutifully, reluctantly following her as she started toward the front door in an obvious bid to send me on my way. “You won’t be sorry.”
Wade-ing around. That was the phrase my sister always used to describe my style of taking too long to go after what I wanted.
I was done with that now. I knew in my gut this was the last chance I’d ever get with August Retta. I needed to take it before it, and she, disappeared on me. I needed to give both of us a chance to finally find out what we’d been missing all these years we’d spent dancing around each other.
I needed a plan.
6
AUGUST
Five days later…
I was breathless as my fingers flew over the keys of my laptop, and not only because I was excited to be writing again. The story unfolding on my screen was affecting me physically. It was actually making me blush, and I was the one writing it.
This was not my usual fantasy saga. Not even close.
A lusty short-term lodger. A sexually repressed landlady. An ice storm that forced them into comic but sizzling-hot proximity. And foreshadowing about a secret that would eventually, but hopefully only temporarily, force them apart.
I bit my lip and pressed my thighs together, flushed with arousal as I read over the scene where my hero backed the heroine into a corner she really didn’t want to get out of, seducing her with his talented hands and hungry lips. It wasn’t porn, exactly—it had a compelling external plot and there were no tentacles in sight—but the heat level was beyond anything I’d written in any of my previous books.
This hero wasn’t simply like Wade, the way all my other heroes had been. Cade was Wade. Since there was no denying it, I’d barely bothered changing his name. And the heroine was me. A more confident, capable and sexually open-minded me, who could apparently get her freak on at the drop of a hat without worrying things to death or getting anxiety sweats.
Wade’s rental application had landed in my in-box five minutes after he left my house last week, and since then my imagination had been racing full, horny steam ahead, my fingers itching to get to the nearest keyboard. He was to blame for this onslaught of fevered creativity, so why not give credit where it was due? It wasn’t like he—or anyone else besides Chick—was ever going to read it.
You said he irritated you.
There was a slight possibility that Wade Hudson didn’t irritate me anymore.
I sat back and flexed my fingers, shaking out my wrists while I looked over my latest efforts with a rush of satisfaction. I was writing words again. And not grocery lists or sad poems about my feelings. This was a story.
A filthy, smutty story.
The inspiration for it was currently outside, preparing to host an afternoon Lemons meeting. He’d texted this morning for permission and asked if it would bother me if he mowed my lawn and cleaned the pool of debris.
I had no idea a renter would be so handy.
Getting to my feet, I stretched hugely, rolling my head back and forth to work the kinks out of my neck and shoulders. Then I raised my arms over my head and wiggled my hips in a mini happy dance. “I’m back, baby!”
I’d thought my muse was gone for good. That the black hole left by my mother’s death, exhaustion from my illness and the new and wonderful world of hormonal issues had stripped away my ability to write forever.
I’d never been so happy to be wrong.
I went to the window overlooking the courtyard to see if Wade was still out there and the air left my lungs in a rush. He’d taken off his shirt and hooked it to the back of his jeans, his ball cap pulled low over his eyes. His broad, tanned chest gleamed with sweat as he swept the skimmer back and forth, scraping the leaves off the pool’s surface. The way his thick biceps bunched and flexed rhythmically had me fanning my hot face.
Who could blame me for being inspired by that?
Careful. He might look up and see you drooling.
I should probably walk away, since I was staring at him like I was the lovesick adolescent he used to know. Or a woman outright objectifying the man to whom she’d promised privacy on a legal document, which might be problematic, unless she was using the experience like I was—for research purposes only.