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“Well.” She blew out her breath. “We have three showings this afternoon, and then I guess we’ll see after that.” She gave him a smile, but Blake wanted something more concrete.

He did spend a lot of his day entrenched in “strategy.” Meetings, phone calls, portfolios. He knew how to take a new client with no savings and no retirement fund and strategize with them for what they should invest in first. Where to put their money, depending on their age, their occupation, the risk factors involved.

Blake knew all about financial strategy and risk strategy, but his knowledge of Lauren Keller’s strategy still eluded him. He knew he didn’t want her to leave Hilton Head for any length of time, and he’d communicated that much to her previously.

He would not have looked at real estate here first. It would’ve been something he’d have done almost near the end of the strategy, and it sounded like Lauren hadn’t even decided on tacticsuntilshe saw the housing market here.

“You know Ty, right?” Lauren asked.

“Yes,” Blake said absently. “He comes to barbecues and beach bashes with Harry and Grant sometimes. He’s a great agent.”

“He just texted to say the first house we were going to look at is now pending.” She tapped on her phone, her eyebrows drawn down. “Someone else put in an offer.” She sighed and looked out the window, tucking her phone under her leg as she did.

“So I’m not going to Penchance Lane?” he asked.

“No,” she murmured, but she didn’t give him another address.

Blake felt her melancholy rising through the car, and he wished he could take it and bottle it for her so she didn’t have to feel that way. “Hey,” he said gently. He reached over and took her hand in his, and she looked at him like she was just now realizing that he was a human being and not a robot.

“I need to know where we’re going next.”

She retrieved her phone and said, “Uh, let’s see. O’Hare Road.”

Blake eased off the accelerator. “Really?”

“Yes,” she said. “Why?”

Blake tried not to make a face, but he obviously had. “What’s that look for?” she asked.

“It’s just…I can’t believe Ty is showing you something on O’Hare Road.” He turned off the main road and came to a stop on the side street.

“Is it trashy?”

“It’s…not nice,” he said. “It’s on the east side of the island, where the big bridge is. Lots of traffic, on and off the island, all the time. It’s nothing like where you live now.”

“I can’t afford to live where I live now,” she pointed out.

“You sure? Harrison got an amazing deal on his house, I heard.”

Lauren cocked her head, and Blake spoke enough Female to know she didn’t enjoy being challenged. “Where do you live, Mister Williams?”

“Do we have time to drive by?” he asked.

“Ty said we can go by O’Hare Road anytime,” she said. “The house is vacant.”

“Probably for good reason,” Blake muttered, and Lauren gave him a withering look. “I’ll show you where I live. It’s not beachfront like Cass and Harry, but it’s nice.”

“I don’t need beachfront,” she said.

“That’s not part of your strategy?” he asked.

“Affordable is part of my strategy,” she said.

Blake got the car moving again. “Do you always have a strategy, Lauren?”

“Usually,” she said.

“For everything? Like, when you’re getting ready for church, is there a strategy to that?”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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