He was right. He wasn't what she'd been looking for. He was everything she'd spent her adult life avoiding. Unpredictable, risky, the kind of man who could disrupt her ordered world without even trying.
But he was also everything she hadn't known she wanted until she'd opened her door yesterday and felt the ground shift under her feet.
"Just don't make me regret it," she said, aiming for light but hearing the edge of real vulnerability in her voice.
"I'll do my best."
After she hung up, she spent the rest of the morning cleaning things that were already clean and rearranging furniture that didn't need rearranging. At two o'clock, she changed clothes twice before settling on jeans and a sweater that looked casual but not sloppy, approachable but not like she was trying too hard.
At two-thirty, she was standing at the front window, and she didn't even care that she was acting ridiculously. She wanted tosee him drive up. Wanted to watch him get out of his truck. Wanted every single second of this moment because it felt important in ways she was still trying to understand.
At exactly three o'clock, his truck pulled into her driveway, and her heart did something acrobatic.
She watched him get out, noting that he moved better than he had yesterday, that the crutches seemed more like a precaution than a necessity. He was wearing jeans and a gray t-shirt that showed off arms that came from actual physical work, and when he turned to grab a duffel bag from the truck bed, she got a clear view of how the denim hugged his ass.
Heat flooded through her body, settling low in her belly. This was a mistake. A huge, complicated, potentially heartbreaking mistake that was going to disrupt her life in ways she couldn't even imagine yet.
But she was going to make it anyway.
The doorbell rang, and she smoothed her sweater one more time before answering it, trying to look like she hadn't just been staring at him through the window.
"Right on time," she said, stepping back to let him in.
"I try to keep my word." He set the duffel bag down and pulled an envelope from his back pocket. "Here’s the rent money. All there."
She took the envelope without counting it, trusting that a man who'd gotten three glowing references wasn't going to shortchange her on day one. Their fingers brushed during the exchange, and the contact sent quivers through her. From the way his eyes met hers, quick and intense, she wasn't the only one who'd felt it.
"Do you need help getting your things?"
"Just the one bag for now. I'll bring the rest over gradually, if that's okay. Don't want to overwhelm you with all my worldly possessions at once."
Worldly possessions. She thought about her own accumulation of stuff. The furniture she'd selected, the dishes she never used, the books she meant to read, the clothes hanging in her closet with tags still attached. How much did you really need when your life fit in a truck?
How much would she be willing to give up if it meant having someone who looked at her the way Dustin was looking at her right now?
"The bedroom's ready for you," she said. "Clean sheets, towels in the bathroom. I put some basics in the kitchen. Coffee, milk, bread. Just until you get settled."
"That's thoughtful. Thank you."
He followed her down the hall, and she was acutely aware of his presence behind her, the way he moved through her space like he belonged there. Like he'd been meant to be here all along, and they'd just been waiting for the universe to line things up right.
The bedroom looked smaller with him in it. More intimate somehow. More like the kind of space where important things happened between two people who drew each other like magnets.
"Patio door locks from the inside," she said, demonstrating the mechanism with hands that shook slightly. "Your own entrance, like I mentioned. And the bathroom's through there."
"It's perfect." He set the duffel bag on the bed and turned to face her. "Better than perfect, actually. I can't remember the last time I had this much space to myself."
Space to himself. Right. Because this was a business arrangement, and she was his landlord, and she had no reason to be standing in his bedroom imagining what he'd look like sprawled across those sheets she'd just put on the bed.
No reason except the way he was looking at her. Like he was imagining the exact same thing.
"I'll let you get settled," she said, backing toward the door before she could do something embarrassing like close the distance between them and kiss him the way she'd been wanting to since yesterday.
"Vanessa?"
She turned back, and he was closer than she'd expected, close enough that she could smell soap and leather and something purely him. Close enough that if she leaned forward just a few inches, she could find out if his lips were as soft as they looked.
"I meant what I said earlier. I won't make you regret this."
