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“Come to my apartment when you can. I’ll feed you. Dinner and dessert.”
I heard the double entendre in his words, and I played dumb. “Hummingbird cake?”
Another laugh rumbled from his chest as he leaned to me and pressed a too-short kiss to my lips. “Hummingbird cake and me. Come when you can.”
Again with the double meaning. I laughed too and said, “Best offer I’ve had yet today.”
He hopped up and took my hand to help me. We walked back to the inn together, then he went on his way, starting down the lane in a jog toward his apartment.
Not gonna lie, I watched him go until I couldn’t see him anymore, appreciating his strong body, looking forward to seeing it naked again. When I headed back inside, I spotted the box of delectable donuts and his handwritten sign on the front desk, and it made me smile wider. His heart was as irresistible as his body.
There was that damn warning bell in my head regarding my heart being in danger no matter what we agreed to, but while I could admit it might be valid, I ignored it. Because trepidation or not, it turned out I couldn’t resist spending more time with Cash. With or without clothes. Come what may.
Chapter17
Ava
By Tuesday evening, I’d accomplished a lot, and yet there was still so much to figure out, put in place, make decisions about before I could go back to my life in LA.
I’d seen Knox head out the deck doors a few minutes ago, so as soon as Magnolia arrived for her desk shift, I went out after him. He was sitting on one of the loungers down by the shore.
“I haven’t seen you for a couple days,” I said as I went down the slight hill.
“Hey, Ava, my pool-shark partner.”
“Ha. Five turns, Breckenridge. That’s all it took to defeat us. If that’s a shark…”
He laughed. “Someone had to lose it all, right?”
“We did it with bells on. So where’ve you been? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you checked out in the middle of the night.”
“I just bought a house,” he said, his excitement written all over his handsome face. “I heard my offer was accepted less than an hour ago.”
“Oh! Congratulations!” I sat on the lounger next to his, stretched my legs out, and leaned back. “I want to know all about it.”
“It’s an older lakefront four-bedroom. Just down the way from Henry’s if you know where that is.”
“Of course.” Everyone knew where Henry’s was, even people who hadn’t had the pleasure of sleeping with the head chef for the past few nights.
“The owners were an elderly couple. The man passed away last year and the woman, a Dorothy Sanderson, is moving into assisted living. They never had kids, so she had to sell. I’ve had a real estate agent keeping his eyes open for me for the past month. He called me Sunday night. I saw it yesterday morning, before it was officially on the market, and put a preemptive offer on it immediately.”
“That’s so awesome! So you’re really not going back to Texas, huh?”
“There’s nothing there for me anymore. My biggest tech client is in Dallas, but we communicate online mostly now, and I can fly down if I need to. I mean, look at this.” He waved a hand at the lake in front of us. “Why wouldn’t you want to wake up to this every day? Well, unless you could have a TV writing job in LA, of course,” he added with a laugh. “You ready for your big meeting Thursday?”
I exhaled as I gazed out at the water, sparkling in the early-evening sunshine. A turtle popped its head up beyond the dock, making me smile. I’d always considered it a sign of good luck to catch sight of a turtle right when they popped their head up. “Honestly, I’ve been so consumed by everything here that I’ve hardly had time to think about it. Which is messed up, for sure.”
“That’s part of why you’re working so hard while you’re here, right? So you cannotworry about the inn when you’re back in California?”
“It is.” It bothered me anyway. The most important meeting of my life was in two days, and I kept forgetting about it because I was so caught up in inn details and resumes and…Cash. “Sort of related, I can’t decide if I should thank you or be mad at you.”
“Thank me, I’m sure. But what’d I do?”
“I was supposed to fill out a loan application for the bank and price out some of the major expenses and replacements and pick out paint colors and about a thousand other things last night. Instead, I got carried away reading your manuscript. Knox, it’s really good.”
“Oh.” He leaned forward and looked pleased but shy. “Thank you. I’d like to tell you I’m sorry but I’d be lying.”
I laughed because I knew exactly what he meant.
