How to know when you'd met the person who could change everything.
"Enough to get by," he said instead, and spent the rest of dinner trying not to stare at her like a man who'd just realized he was in way over his head.
Like a man who was falling in love and had no idea how to stop it.
Like a man who didn't want to stop it even if he could.
Chapter 5
Vanessa
The sound of Dustin's shower running at five in the morning had become part of Vanessa's daily routine, even though she tried to pretend it wasn't. She lay in bed listening to the water through the shared wall, torturing herself with images of him naked under the spray, soap sliding down that lean body she'd been trying not to notice for the past week.
Trying and failing spectacularly.
A week. She'd known him for a week, and he'd already become the first thing she thought about when she woke up and the last thing on her mind before she fell asleep. This wasn't normal. This wasn't how rational adults behaved. But every morning she woke up feeling like a teenager with her first crush, and every night she went to bed aching for things she had no right to want.
It was getting harder to ignore the way he moved through her space like he belonged there, how he left coffee ready in the pot when he knew she had early interviews, the way he'd started cooking dinner most nights without being asked. Yesterday it had been some kind of pasta dish that made her kitchen smell like an Italian restaurant. The night before, grilled chicken that was better than anything she'd ever ordered at the expensive places she used to frequent when she had a steady paycheck.
He was trying to seduce her with food, and it was working.
The shower shut off, and she buried her face in her pillow, trying not to picture him toweling off that body that looked like it had been carved from stone. Trying not to wonder what hisskin would feel like under her hands, whether he'd be gentle or demanding, whether he made the same low sounds when he was turned on as he did when he was concentrating on cooking.
Her phone buzzed with a text message. Another job interview, this one at a company forty-five minutes away that wanted to pay her twenty thousand less than what she'd been making at Hartwell's. She should be grateful for any opportunity, should be jumping at the chance to get back to some semblance of financial stability.
Instead, she deleted the message and rolled over, listening for the sound of Dustin moving around in his room.
She was losing her mind. A week ago, her biggest concern had been finding a tenant who wouldn't steal her silverware or leave pizza boxes on the counter. Now she was lying in bed at dawn fantasizing about a man whose lifestyle represented everything she'd spent her adult life avoiding.
A man she was pretty sure she was falling in love with.
The realization should have sent her scrambling for the insurance adjuster's number, for someone safe and predictable who wouldn't make her feel like her entire world had tilted on its axis.
Instead, it just made her want him more.
Her bedroom door was cracked open, and she could hear him in the kitchen making coffee. Real coffee, not the instant stuff she'd been buying to save money. He'd shown up three days ago with a bag of beans and a French press, claiming the coffee maker was fine but she deserved better than whatever generic brand she'd been drinking.
She deserved better. Like he'd already decided that taking care of her was his job now. Like they were building a life instead of just sharing space until his ankle healed and he disappeared back to whatever rodeo called his name.
She needed to get up, shower, get dressed for another day of interviews that would probably lead nowhere. Instead, she lay there listening for the sound of his voice, wondering if he was on the phone with someone from his world, making plans to get back to the life he'd been living before a horse had stepped on his ankle and landed him in her spare bedroom.
The thought of him leaving made her stomach twist. Not just worry about the rent money, but actual physical pain at the idea of waking up to an empty house again. Of making her own coffee. Of eating dinner alone. Of not having him there to look at her like she was the most interesting thing in his world.
When she finally made it to the kitchen twenty minutes later, dressed in her most conservative interview suit, he was sitting at her breakfast bar with his laptop open and a mug of coffee in his hand. He looked up when she walked in, and she saw his gaze sweep over her from head to toe in a way that made her skin burn.
The look in his eyes said he was picturing her out of the suit. That he'd been thinking about her the same way she'd been thinking about him.
"Morning," he said, and his voice still had that rasp from sleep that did things to her pulse. "Coffee's ready."
"Thank you." She poured herself a cup and tried not to notice how domestic this felt, how right it seemed to start her day with him sitting in her kitchen. Like this was their kitchen. Their morning routine. Their life. "What are you working on?"
"Checking the standings, seeing what I've missed." He turned the laptop so she could see the screen full of names and numbers that meant nothing to her. "Trying to figure out when I'll be ready to get back out there."
Back out there. Away from her kitchen, away from the dinners they'd started sharing, away from whatever this thing was that had been building between them for the past week.
Away from her.
"How's the ankle feeling?"
