Page 40 of Lease to Love

His eyes came to mine.

I held the phone up so the camera could see him and took hold of his forearm with my free hand and pulled and I said, with the energy of a woman who had fully committed to a decision she was definitely going to have to live with:

"Say hi, babe."

Chapter Six

Roman

Three things.

My mind gave me three things before the door was fully open, because that's how long it took me to read a room.

One: what the entire fuck had I just walked into.

Two: why was Summer Proctor calling me babe.

Three: where the hell were her pants.

I'd come for a cashier's check.

A cashier's check, on a Sunday, because Summer had specifically, deliberately, with full knowledge of what she was doing, requested to pay in a way that served zero purpose other than making me deal with DC traffic on my day off. I'd seen the move for exactly what it was the second Erik mentioned the request.

I'd thought about sending Erik.

I'd come anyway, because I didn't let moves work on me, and I'd had something ready—something short and aimed that would've made those freckles bunch up in that infuriating way—and it died on my tongue the second the door opened.

I processed what was happening.

Phone. Camera. Some nigga’s live stream, viewer count at ten thousand and climbing like it had a destination.

Summer Proctor pressed into my side with the focused, committed energy of a woman who had made a bad decision in the last three seconds and was not entertaining alternatives. Her curves warm against my arm. Her thick, bare thighs brushing my slacks like they hadn't received the memo that this was supposed to be a rent collection.

The dude on the screen interrupted that inventory.

"Oh shit, she actually pulled up with a nigga!" He grinned with the practiced ease of someone who'd been performing for cameras long enough to make even his surprise look curated. "My bad bro, I was unaware."

I looked at Summer.

No pants. Confirmed.

The full situation — the hips and thighs I'd only ever been able to register through the deliberate, structured armor of House of Autumn's skirts and wide-legs — was right there, bare all the way down to toes painted a deep burgundy, looking soft in a way that my brain catalogued before I could intercept the cataloguing. I dragged my eyes back up to her face with the discipline of a man who had a legitimate business reason to be in this apartment.

The barely-there camisole. Something orange on the front. The curls piled on top of her head in the specific arrangement of someone who had not been expecting company. The bare face I had never seen in any of our interactions — not the polished, buttoned-up Summer who ran the shop, but this.

A woman in her own apartment on her own Sunday, unguarded and unperforming and entirely real.

I'd always known she was fine when the armor was on.

Damn.

She was something else when it wasn't.

Her eyes were screaming at me in a language I had absolutely no business being fluent in.

Please.

I was about to look back at the screen. I had every intention of looking back at the screen.