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“Let’s head into town, I’ll get us a room,” I say, gripping her ass with the hand farthest from the street. There isn’t much traffic, but I don’t want to share my ass appreciation with the community. My affection for this ass is between Kay and me and those snow bunny pants.
She pulls back, blinking. “You want to get a room for…” She glances over her shoulder at the clock on her dashboard before turning back to me with a stunned expression. “Fifteen minutes? I wasn’t really serious about going behind the shop, by the way, for multiple reasons. I was just flirting.”
“We could stay there tonight,” I say, thinking fast. I don’t make weird billionaire mistakes very often—I’m highly conscious of the fact that most people don’t have an endless budget for hotel rooms—but I’m off my game. One kiss and Kay has me flustered enough to buy the entire damned town if it means I get to be inside her in the next five seconds.
But I haven’t disclosed the fact that I’m obscenely rich just yet and I’d rather keep that close to my tweed vest for the time being. I’m enjoying getting to know her without the Ratcliffe name and all its associated baggage in the way.
“That way we could have drinks with dinner and not have to worry about driving home.”
“You’re adorably horny,” she says.
“Back at ya. It’s one of your most adorable traits, in fact.”
She laughs. “Thanks, but I can’t have a quickie in a Manchester hotel. I know almost everyone who works in the industry around here and I’d never live down the shame of a ten-minute stand.” She presses on tiptoe, kissing my cheek before she whispers in my ear, “But I can get us a comped room at The Stone Mallard Inn for after dinner. I have connections.”
Connections…
The word bounces around in my head after Kay and I say goodbye and agree to touch base later this afternoon. We didn’t do much shop talk last night—we were too busy making out and swapping “Strangest Jingle Bell Junction” stories—but I assumed she runs a restaurant. At least that’s what her exchange with Leonard and Nevil led me to believe. But I don’t know many restauranteurs who can get a comped room at one of the top hotels in Manchester on a whim.
Kay/Kayley is more mysterious than her easygoing nature and open smile would lead one to believe and…I love it.
I can’t wait to unravel all her mysteries.
I’m hoping she wasn’t kidding about that tweed miniskirt—I have a few Scottish-themed fantasies of my own—when I swing into the lawyer’s office and there she is. Kay. Kayley. Ski bunny extraordinaire and mysterious temptress. She’s sitting on the leather couch outside the main conference room and spots me at the same time I see her.
We both laugh, but before we can speak, Amanda, Chase’s head paralegal sticks her head out of the conference room. She lifts a hand in greeting, but her pale blue eyes look troubled, and her smile is strained.
“Good morning,” she says, glancing between Kay and I as she opens the door wider. “And good to see you both. I just wish it was under better circumstances.”
I frown and Kay says, “Excuse me?”
But Amanda only circles her arm and eases back inside the conference space. “Come in, we’ll explain everything. As best as we can, anyway. It’s…an unusual situation. But then everything about Mr. Shinglepuss is a little unusual.”
Uh-oh. Shinglepuss is the cranky old goat who finally sold me the mountain I intend to use for the community rec park. But what on earth does that have to do with Kay?
And how has my straightforward, all-cash offer suddenly become “complicated?”
I have no idea, but I have a feeling I’m not going to like the answer.
Not one little bit.
ChapterFour
KAYLEY
What is happening?
Why is Bran at my closing?
What’s so “complicated” about the all-cash offer I mortgaged my gram’s cottage to provide?
And why does Bran have to look so delicious in tweed and smell like a sexy evergreen forest with top notes of ocean mist? It’s distracting, so distracting that my lawyer Chase’s hand hovers in front of my face for several seconds before I realize what’s happening and perform my half of the shaking ritual.
As I settle into the chair he pulls out, I force a tight smile and ask, “Can we do the quick explanation of whatever’s going on instead of the lawyer explanation, please? The suspense is already killing me.”
Bran nods from across the table. “Same. What’s this all about? I thought this meeting would be a quick in-and-out thing.”
Unlike last night. My cheeks heat with pleasure at the memory of my sexy times with Bran. I’d anticipated enjoying a triumphant “Kayley got laid” kind of day today, starting with closing on my deal to buy the mountain, and ending it with dinner with Bran and a repeat of the Night My Legs Never Closed.
