Page 44 of Lease to Love

I tried not to think too hard about how much I liked that.

I held her gaze.

"Do you know how this neighborhood sees me?"

She didn’t hesitate. “You know Mr. Burns from The Simpsons? Him, but black.”

I rolled my eyes. "Cute." I took a step closer. "And do you know how they see you?"

That landed.

I watched it land—the slight pause, the recalibration, the fact that she genuinely hadn't considered it from that direction.

"Three years I've been trying to get this initiative moving," I said, holding up three fingers. "Three years of proposals and presentations and showing up to meetings where they'd already decided what I was before I opened my mouth."

I let my hand drop.

"And every time—every single time—I'm near you, I feel the temperature change the moment they look from me to you."

She didn't say anything.

"You're not working against me deliberately. You don't have to. You just have to be there."

She studied me.

Then looked me up and down with those focused, calculating eyes that lived underneath all the sunshine, the ones she broke out when she was doing real math.

"You need me to fix your crusty reputation."

I rolled my eyes. "I need a reason for the block association to stop assuming I'm another developer who wants to turn their homes into high-rises."

"Aren't you?"

"No." I pushed off the doorframe, "And whether you or anyone else believes it or not, I'm trying to do some damn good in this community."

Something in her expression shifted. The sharp edges softened a fraction.

Not much—Summer didn't give ground easily, and I'd stopped expecting her to—but enough.

"We use each other until we don't need to anymore," I continued. "Clean. Simple."

"And when it's over?"

"It's over. Business as usual. We both act like adults."

I held out my hand.

She looked at it. Then at me.

Then she said, "Hold on."

I lowered my hand. "What?"

"I don't think I'm getting enough out of this arrangement."

I stared at her. "We only need this arrangement because you let an intrusive thought win on a livestream in front of twelve thousand people."

"Beside the point." She waved me off with the easy confidence of a woman who had made her decision and wasn't revisiting it.