AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She knew exactly where Robbie wanted to stuff his wood.
Worse, it wasn’t even because he liked her. She was just the chick he’d need to bang to get into her house.
Living so isolated, she didn’t dare tell him to screw off. He knew where to find her. He also knew she lived alone. She couldn’t even rely on her dog to scare him off—Tika was too fond of his dog.
The month after Robbie moved into the neighborhood, Daphne installed a security system. She hated that. It was bad enough that she felt unsafe in her own home. So much worse that she knew who made her feel unsafe and could do nothing except refuse his advances politely for fear of setting him off.
It rankled so much. And now Chris had witnessed her humiliation, watching her be all sugar-sweet to such an asshole.
“Do you want to drive?” Chris asked, holding up the keys.
Yep, compared to Robbie, Chris was a sweetheart.
Daphne took the keys and whistled for Tika. The dog eyed Chris, and for a moment, Daphne thought she wasn’t going to get into the car. But after giving him a careful once-over, the dog hopped in, as if maybe the guy wasn’t so bad after all.
You and me both, pup. You and me both.
As Chris walked to the passenger door, her brain pulled up a snapshot from five minutes ago, when she’d rounded the corner to see him lounging on the hood of the car, in his expensive loafers and pressed jeans and button-down shirt rolled up to his elbows. He’d looked like one of those intentionally incongruous advertisements that strode the line between quirky and stylish. An ad for that scotch she’d bought him.
Why, yes, my clothing and my vehicle are completely unsuited to this environment, but a man who looks like me is at home wherever he goes.
And this was the guy who’d be lounging around her home for three days.
CHAPTER FIVE
CHRIS
Holy shit, this place was amazing.
The line stuck on repeat in his mind as Daphne drove down the wooded drive. Then the drive opened to the house and the lake and…
Holy shit.
This was Daphne’s house. She woke up to a view straight out of a wilderness resort brochure.
He had to stop gawking like an idiot. Chris Ainsworth would not gawk. Ainsworth was “something of an outdoorsman,” he’d told Daphne in that tone that said he was being modest. Like Zane, Ainsworth fancied himself a man of the natural world, as at home chopping wood as mixing dirty martinis for two. He was not going to get out of his vehicle gushing and gaping like a city mouse who rarely set foot outside Vancouver.
So Chris swung open his door and—keeping his gaze away from the vista—he got his luggage and followed Daphne inside.
As she explained, the second floor was actually the main level, to take full advantage of the view. Perhaps, but the view that knocked the mountains from his mind was the one provided while she led him up the stairs, Chris’s gaze on level with her ass.
“I didn’t show you the door code,” she said, stopping abruptly. “Do you want to do that now?”
He tried to get his brain to catch up with her words, but he could only make some incoherent noise she obviously took as no. She continued up the steps. He let her get two above him, just to give her space, not at all because he was a lech who wanted that view of her ass again.
“That’ll be your room,” she said, pointing once they reached the top of the stairs. “You can put your stuff in there.”
He walked into the room, and his gaze immediately fell on a king-size bed, the covers pulled so tight he couldn’t help imagining pulling her onto them, bouncing down onto the cool sheets as the midday sun shone in—
“This is your room,” he said.
“I’m taking the guest room downstairs.”
“What? No. I’m the guest. Just show me where—”
“You’re the homeowner, remember? This is the main bedroom.”
His mouth worked for a moment. “The film crew isn’t going to come in here.”
