Page 48 of Lease to Love

And I closed the door before she could get to the words.

Her voice came through anyway, muffled by the door but unmistakable in its intent.

I walked down the stairs chuckling like the asshole I was.

Maybe Erik had a point.

Maybe I did like making her mad. It was cute as hell.

I made it outside, unlocked the Bentley, and opened the door.

Then I looked up at Summer's window.

Stopped.

Made myself stop looking at Summer's window.

Got in.

Here's what I knew: the arrangement was clean. Time-limited. Mutually beneficial in ways I could defend under any reasonable scrutiny. I'd built a company on making sound, unsentimental decisions and not revisiting them once they'd been made.

This was a sound decision.

Here's what I also knew: I had pressed my mouth to Summer Proctor's knuckles and I hadn't rushed it. The warmth of her skin was still registered somewhere behind my sternum like a notification I couldn't clear. I'd called her Sunshine twice without deciding to either time. She'd shivered when I did, and I'd filed it in a drawer that was getting uncomfortably full.

She was a strategic asset.

She was a key.

She was my tenant for at least another year.

She was not a complication.

I didn’t do things that turned into complications.

And whatever was happening in the back of my brain regarding her freckles, her maple leaf tattoo, and that apple-vanilla-brown-sugar smell that had followed me down the stairs was not something I was going to examine.

I had a block association event in two weeks.

I had an initiative that needed a vote.

I had a neighborhood to protect and a room full of people I needed to convince, and everything I'd been working toward for three years was on the line.

Summer Proctor was a key to a door I’d been banging on for three years.

That was the whole thing.

That was all it was.

I pulled off.

Almost convinced myself I believed it by the time I got home.

Almost.

Chapter Seven

Summer