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“You’re kidding, right?”
“Why? It’s empty, and you need a place to crash.”
He wasn’t wrong, but staying at his place, even in a separate dwelling?
She’d be absolutely out of her mind to say yes.
Then again, what were her options? Staying on Marley’s couch while Luke and her did it in the next room?
Rylie made a face. “How much is rent?”
“I don’t need your money,” Dustin said firmly.
“Then no way.”
He cocked his head, and shot her a bemused look. “Did it ever occur to you that I’m just a good guy trying to do the right thing?”
He must have inferred by her expression that she did not.
“Fair enough, but the offer still stands.”
Dustin headed toward the back of the house while Rylie was still mulling things over, but when he disappeared into her bedroom, she shouted, “What are you doing?”
“Helping you pack.”
The image of Dustin rummaging through her underwear drawer sent her rushing after him.
* * * *
Dustin hadn’t planned on spending the rest of the afternoon taping boxes and loading a moving truck, but by the time they finished, he was the one relieved. Relieved that Rylie was getting out of there and didn’t have to see Asher again.
Unlike his mother, who spent thirty years with a man who had used her as a physical and verbal punching bag.
Dustin clenched his fist around the handle of the moving van’s door, and slammed it shut. Once it was locked in place, he turned to face Rylie, who was being hugged hard by a distraught Marley. Marley was a tall, leggy blond with expressive green eyes that normally shot daggers his way. He’d never been interested in her, anyway.
Unlike Rylie. When Marley finally released her, Dustin studied Rylie’s sweaty, red face, with a stripe of dust across the bridge of her nose.
It made her look young and adorable, but Dustin couldn’t think like that anymore. Rylie was no longer someone to be flirted with and tormented.
She needed to be protected.
It was why he’d offered her his pool house. It was the one thing he could do for her that he wished someone had done for his mother. A safe place to get back on her feet.
“You call me if you need anything. Are you sure you have a place to go?” Marley asked.
“Yes, I’m fine, really.”
Marley seemed resigned. He wasn’t surprised that she couldn’t even spare a greeting in his direction. It wasn’t as though he’d always been the most charming fellow to her.
Once Marley was in her car and driving away, Dustin finally spoke.
“What now?” he asked.
“I just have to leave Asher a check.”
“A check for what?”
Rylie leveled him with those dark eyes and his mind automatically compared them to hot, chocolate fudge.
