Page 23 of Coming Home

He pressed his lips together, fighting it, but his shoulders had already started to shake. I locked my jaw, staring him down, determined to maintain my fury. For two full seconds, we stood on a wet sidewalk in Silver Lake, two stubborn forces refusing to yield, and then a tiny, rusty sound escaped my throat.

Ralph let out a sudden, deep chuckle, and before I could stop myself, a laugh broke out of me so hard I almost choked.

He was grinning—that grin I hadn't seen in years, the one that crinkled the skin around his eyes—and I was laughing so hard my stomach muscles ached, a sound that felt foreign but light.

Then the laughter settled, but the warmth of it stayed.

I was smiling.

Ralph noticed the change in my eyes. He didn't call attention to it, but his grin softened, and he tilted the phone screen back into my line of sight.

"So," he murmured. "Option one or option two, cereal girl?"

I stared up at him. The morning light was catching the dark lines of his jaw, the breeze catching the front of his hair, and he was standing there with that phone raised, looking like a wall that had zero intention of moving for the rest of the day. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to bury my face in his chest.

"You're an absolute ass," I whispered.

The grin flared back, certain it had already won. "I'll take that as a yes."

CHAPTER 9

Emma

"I'm not living in your house for free."

I said it with all the formal spine I could muster, standing there in the Silver Lake humidity.

"Who said it was free?" A slow, dangerous smirk tugged at his mouth.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

He didn't answer. He simply locked his phone with a clean click, slid it into his pocket, and dug into his denim. A second later, a silver key fob came flying through the air between us.

I caught it on pure reflex, my fingers snapping shut around the metal before my brain could even process the weight. I stared down at the leather-bound fob in my palm like he'd just handed me a live grenade with the pin humming somewhere in the grass.

"What is this, Ralph?"

"That," he said, already pivoting on his heel and strolling toward the passenger side of the massive SUV, "is your new employment contract. Congratulations, Carrow. You've just been hired as my personal driver."

"Your what?"

"My driver. Desmond's taking emergency leave because his daughter's having some surgery, and I need an operator behind the wheel who doesn't panic on the freeway. You need a reason to feel like you're earning your bread. Problem solved. Everybody wins." He turned just enough to flash me a devastating, infuriating wink over the rim of his aviators. "You're welcome."

"I didn't agree to this!"

He pulled the heavy passenger door open, his voice drifting back over his shoulder without a single shred of remorse. "If you don't love the corporate benefits, Theo's number is still loaded on my screen and my thumb is feeling exceptionally motivated today."

I stood frozen on the concrete, clutching a set of keys to his vehicle. I hated him. I hated how neatly he'd outmaneuvered my pride. He'd found the one loophole in my defenses and driven straight through it. I couldn't stay as a charity case. James had made sure of that. Three years of learning that kindness always came with a bill. But work? Work was a language I understood. Work meant I was an asset, not a burden.

The absolute bastard had weaponized my own survival instinct against me.

I marched to the driver's side, threw the door open, and climbed into the leather vault.

He looked violently, annoyingly comfortable in the passenger seat. His massive legs were stretched into the footwell, his dark blond head tilted back against the leather headrest. His sunglasses stayed firmly on, a faint, maddening tilt playing at the corner of his mouth.

"This is temporary," I snapped, my fingers viciously tugging at the electronic seat adjustments because his limbs were apparently nine feet long and the cockpit was currently arranged for a giant.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, Em."