He walked two steps before he heard her speak.
“This isn’t going to happen.”
His heart was practically in his throat as he turned around. “What isn’t going to happen?”
“This.” She waved her hand between them. “It’s not happening.”
“You don’t want to rent me the room?” Lance was pretty sure that wasn’t what she was saying but he needed to make sure.
“No. I mean…yes. You can rent the room, but there will be no funny business.”
Ah, there it was. She was addressing the elephant in the room—namely, the insane chemistry and sexual attraction between them.
“Funny business?”
Now he was just fucking with her by feigning innocence. He knew exactly what she was talking about, he just wanted to see what she’d say next.
He found himself doing that a lot with Leah. Unlike most people, who he wished would just shut the hell up, he couldn’t wait to hear the next words to come out of Leah’s pretty mouth.
“There will be no bow chicka wow wow. My lady parts and your man parts are never going to meet. This is going to remain purely professional.”
“Professional?” Everything she said was fucking adorable.
“Platonic,” she corrected.
“Did I give you the impression that I was interested in you?” he asked in polite confusion. Fucking with her was fun. He could see that becoming an addiction.
A small flush rose on her cheeks. He wondered if the heat was from anger or embarrassment. He couldn’t picture this woman getting embarrassed very often, if ever.
“No… I … it’s just…” she stuttered for a moment, wide eyed, before he finally cracked. His lips turned up at the corners, revealing that he was messing with her.
Her response was to chuck a pillow at him, which he easily caught before it tagged him in the nose.
“I’m serious. I’m not dating anyone that I’m attracted to.” She ticked the items off on her fingers one by one as she explained, “No tattoos. No bad boys. No motorcycles.”
Apparently she wasn’t the only one that checked all the boxes. No wonder their chemistry was so intense.
“So, do we have a deal?”
He wanted to ask why she’d sworn off guys she was attracted to but apparently his mouth was no longer taking orders from his brain, because instead he asked, “Who is big rod sixty-nine?”
All day he’d wondered who the hell would have a name like that. Obviously he was a douchebag, but Lance wanted more specifics.
“Oh…it’s just a guy.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Do we have a deal?”
He waited, knowing there was more to the story and hoping that his silence would cause her to finish it. He was constantly amazed at how much people talked when he didn’t.
The moment she sighed and let her head fall back against the couch cushion, he knew that his plan had worked. With her head still tilted up toward the ceiling she blurted out, “It’s a guy I matched with on Tinder. He stood me up for lunch. I thought you were him.”
Lance was still silent, but this time it was because he was trying to wrap his mind around the information she’d just given him. A man had actually stood this woman up. Now he knew he wasn’t just a douchebag he was also an asshole. Not to mention a moron.
She lowered her chin until she was staring directly at him, a flame of challenge lit in her eyes. “I know you’re dying to make some crack about his name, or him being a no-show. Go ahead. I’m an idiot, I know.”
“He stood you up?” Lance wanted to make sure that he’d heard her right, because in no world could he imagine any man having a shot with this woman and not moving heaven and earth to make it happen.
“Yep.” She popped the p before repeating, “Do we have a deal?”
He held her glossy emerald stare. “Then he’s the idiot.”
His response came out as a growl. Her lips parted as if she were going to say something, but then her mouth closed.
Leaving her there, speechless, he turned and headed back down the hall. Pausing for a moment just before he left the room, though, he put the final nail in the coffin of his fate. “We have a deal.”
Chapter 5
An orange and pink hue blanketed the rolling green hills as the sun rose in the distance. Lance’s feet pounded on the walking path next to the flowing river that ran through the center of town. The air was fresh and crisp as he pushed his body to the limit on his morning run. Nature was truly awe-inspiring. The colors, the textures, and the scents were things that he believed most people didn’t notice.
He did, though. There was so much that he didn’t take for granted anymore, and the outdoors was definitely number one on the list.
His phone buzzed. When he saw who it was, he slowed to stop and answer, immediately thinking there must be something wrong due to the early hour. “Hi. Is Kitty okay?”
“She’s fine. I just got off the phone with her and am going to head over to the hospital soon. I just wanted to check in to see how things went with Leah.”
“Fine.”
“Are you…with her now?”
Lance’s brow furrowed in confusion. It was barely 6:00 a.m. Why would he be with her? “No.”
“Oh…well you’re out of breath…and…” he stammered.
Holy shit. His grandfather thought Lance was banging Leah. And not only that, he thought he’d answered the phone while he was doing it.
Damn, the “getting to know you” process is speeding along faster than I ever imagined, he thought with a grimace.
“I’m out on a run.” Lance was quick to set the record straight.
“Oh, right.” His grandfather cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable at where his mind had wandered. “Well, did it work out? Are you going to be staying there, at Leah’s?”
“I think so.” Which meant he was sentencing himself to walking around with a permanent hard-on. But the gauntlet had been thrown down last night and he was not about to back out now. He’d told Leah she had a deal knowing full well that keeping his end of the bargain would be torture.
“Leah’s a sweet girl, don’t let her fool ya.”
Sweet wouldn’t be the first adjective he’d use to describe Leah, but he supposed he didn’t know her that well. Or at all.
“She talks a big game, but that’s all it is—talk. She’s got a hard shell, but inside she’s a softie,” his granddad continued. “When her twin sister lost her fiancé, that Miss Leah put her life on hold to make sure that Bea was okay.”
Leah hadn’t mentioned having a twin sister, but he’d seen pictures around the house. Uneasiness settled in his gut.
“And is she?”
“What?” his grandfather asked.
“Is Bea okay?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s doing just fine. She just married CJ Rossum.”
“The baseball player?”
“That’s the one.”
Damn, he guessed she was doing okay. CJ Rossum had retired after having one of the largest contracts in MLB history.
“All right, well, I better get going. I need to stop by the office on my way to the hospital to see your grandma.”
“I have a client first thing this morning, but then I’ll be by this afternoon.”
“You already have a client?” His grandfather sounded surprised.
“Yep.”
Lance had always suspected his grandparents didn’t really take his profession seriously. The truth was, he was pretty damn successful in his field. Back home he had a six-month waitlist for a consultation. And every time he did a guest spot somewhere, he immediately booked up. Hell, just yesterday he’d posted on social media that he’d be in town for the week and within a few hours his schedule had filled to capacity.
Of course, he’d never told his grandparents any of that. He barely knew them. But he wanted to change that. He wanted to get to know his grandparents, and he also hoped to find out more about his dad.
The past year
had been a bit of a mind fuck for Lance. His mom had passed away from addiction complications a year ago. Then just a month later, Lance’s then-girlfriend (now ex-girlfriend) had lied to him about being pregnant.
Although the pregnancy had turned out to be fake, it started making him really take a look at his family. He was close to his mom’s parents, who had raised him, for all intents and purposes. He had extended family on that side that he saw on holidays—aunts, uncles, and cousins.
But he knew nothing about his dad or his dad’s side of the family. He’d always felt uneasy at the idea of contacting them because of his past. But Leo had found him on social media, and the two had been in contact for several years.
So when his cousin texted that their grandmother had fallen and was in the hospital, Lance made a rash decision, something that was way the hell out of character for him. He’d hopped on his bike and rode all night to get here.
He couldn’t change the past, but he hoped that his time here might change the way they looked at him. Thought about him. Saw him.
“I heard you’re gonna be renting the spot above the girls’ shop?”
“I am.” Lance couldn’t believe how fast information traveled here.
He also noted that his grandfather had made it sound like Leah owned the pet shop, maybe with her sister.
“Well, now, it looks like you two, you and Leah, will be seeing quite a lot of one another.”
When Lance was working, he doubted he’d see her at all. Other than possibly crossing paths in the shared laundry room, he didn’t see them running into each other. Still, he got his grandfather’s point.
“I guess so.”
“Now, listen. Leah’s like family to me and your grandma. She doesn’t always make the best decisions when it comes to gentleman friends, but I trust that you will treat her as family.”
Ah… so that is what this call was about. It was a not-so-thinly-veiled warning not to mess around with Leah. Lance had a feeling if it was Leo who was renting the room, he wouldn’t have received the same call. If anything, his grandparents would’ve been ecstatic for Leah to be involved with someone in the family.
He understood why his grandparents felt the way they did about him. Out of their two grandchildren, himself and Leo, Lance was certainly the black sheep. His life read as a cautionary tale, not something you’d brag to the neighbors about. He didn’t blame them for not feeling about him the way that they felt about Leo.
Still, he couldn’t help but feel the sting of the thinly veiled warning-off phone call.
“Okay, well, we’ll see you later then. Your grandma and I are very excited that you’re in town.”
Lance hoped that was the truth. “Me too. See you later.”
He disconnected the call and jogged back to the house. His mind was replaying what his grandfather had told him about Leah. Not the part about treating her like family. He was thinking about what he’d said about Leah herself. Lance wasn’t surprised to find out that her tough exterior was really just protection for a sensitive soul. And although she didn’t scream nurturer, at least not a very clean nurturer, it rang true to him that she’d put her life on hold to care for her sister.
He may’ve only known Leah for less than twenty-four hours, but he considered himself a fairly good judge of character. It was a skill he’d learned the hard way. He’d had to grow up real fast and judging people’s character was something he’d had to learn to survive. Literally.
Leah struck him as someone who didn’t let a lot of people in, but once she did, he had a feeling that she was fiercely loyal. Smart, funny, and entertaining would also describe her.
Lance still hadn’t figured out what was wrong with her, but there had to be something. In his experience, he was only attracted to truly damaged human beings. Not that it mattered. Leah had made it very clear, in no uncertain terms, that there’d be no funny business.
A smile spread on his face as he used the key that had been sitting on the kitchen table for him when he’d come out to make coffee that morning, along with a post-it that had his name on it. The grin dropped when he walked into the disaster zone that was Leah’s living area.
He briefly considered ignoring the mess since he might only be there a week, but there was no way he could live like this, even temporarily. Plus, he needed to make breakfast and that would be impossible without any clean dishes.
It looked like he had some work to do.
* * *
Nervous energy zipped through Leah’s body as she stepped out of the shower and dried herself off. As she ran the terrycloth towel over her skin, it tingled all over. The prickly sensation had nothing to do with the hot water she’d just stood under and everything to do with her new roommate. He’d left quite an impression on her, both physically and emotionally.
For the past few months, thanks to her love of true crime TV, Leah had been unable to sleep because she was scared that a murderer would break in the moment she closed her eyes. Every noise she heard had convinced her that she was about to be attacked, which didn’t lead to peaceful nights of sleep.
Last night she couldn’t have felt safer, yet she’d barely slept a wink. It seemed that arousal was more of a jolt to her system than fear—or even caffeine, for that matter. After her sleepless night, she hadn’t had a single drop of coffee yet this morning, and still she was wide awake, buzzing with energy.
The entire situation felt surreal to her. It had to be some sort of cosmic joke. The moment that she decides to only date men that she’s not attracted to, the hottest man to walk the planet appears before her, rents the space above her shop, and then shows up on her doorstep to rent a room.
If that wasn’t proof that God had a sense of humor, she didn’t know what was.
She slid on her underwear and wondered if chastity belts were a real thing. If so, she considered the very real possibility that she might need to invest in one. She’d made it clear to Lance that nothing would be happening between them, but she barely even believed it herself.
As she slathered lotion on her legs, she replayed the night before over in her head. Part of her still couldn’t believe that the mysterious stranger that she’d met, or not met, in the laundry room was Doc and Kitty’s grandson.
He was an enigma at every turn.
He was imposing, yet Leah felt totally safe.
He was self-contained, yet Leah felt a connection with him.
He was private, but there was also an openness about him.
He was Doc and Kitty’s grandson, but somehow they’d never spoken about him in the five years that she’d known them.
He was off-limits, yet she found herself coming up with justifications as to why she should break her “no dating men she was attracted to” rule for him.
That one was more about her, but still. It was confusing.
And then there were his damn compliments. They were subtle and layered and somehow felt so much more personal than any others she’d ever received.
After she’d admitted to Lance who BigRod69 was, she’d been so prepared for him to make some joke about the situation. What she hadn’t been prepared for was to have him call the guy an idiot with so much sincerity and gritty rawness that his voice and words practically set her panties on fire. Holy balls!
Everything about him screamed real man. Forget bad boy with a heart of gold, it seemed her true weakness was a real man with sincerity. The gravelly voice didn’t hurt either.
As she removed her shower cap and then took the rollers out of her hair, her mind wandered to what Lance might be doing.
Was he in the bathroom down the hall, in the shower naked?
A vision of what he’d look like with water dripping down his body formed in Leah’s mind and caused her pulse to jump. The tingle on her skin intensified. Every cell in her body came to life picturing him a few doors down, buck ass naked, in her shower. Or at least the shower she’d used for five years.
The same thing had happened when she’d laid in bed
the night before, thinking about him sleeping in her bed. Never in a million years would she have guessed that she’d have a man like Lance “in her bed” and wake up as sexually frustrated as she was.
Of course, she never knew a man like Lance existed.
After removing the curlers, she pulled a portion of her hair up and pushed bobby pins in place. After she was satisfied with her hair, she leaned over the counter and carefully applied liquid eyeliner to her top lid, making sure to thicken the end in a perfect cat-eye. It had taken her years to master that particular look, but that was before YouTube. Now there were tutorials for everything.
She wondered if Lance watched YouTube videos, and if he did, what kind? And what about music and television? He’d agreed to watch Snapped with her but they’d barely made it five minutes before she’d interrupted their viewing experience to grill him. Maybe he liked thrillers, like she did. Or maybe he loved documentaries and they could catch up on a few that she’d been wanting to see.
No.
This was not a direction her mind needed to go in. Spending more time with him was not the goal.
With a little more aggression than was really necessary, she pushed off the counter and stomped across her room. She flung her closet door open and reached in to get her “uniform” which consisted of jeans or shorts and a Barks, Balls & Bellyrubs shirt. But instead of grabbing the clothes that she’d planned on, she found herself being drawn to her skimpiest options in both categories.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that her hope was that Lance would see her in them.
She sighed. And then what? Maybe he wouldn’t be able to resist her womanly charms and he’d tell her the deal was off. That he couldn’t stand to spend one more second with her without knowing how she tasted. Then he’d lower down and pull her bottom lip between his teeth and…
“No,” she said aloud to herself.
This behavior was ridiculous. Lance was hot, so what? She was not about to be uncomfortable in booty shorts and a low cut shirt all-day while she was working on the off chance that Lance might catch a glimpse of her.
Just One Look - Leah and Lance (Crossroads Book 15) Page 5