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I slipped under the surface of the water and wiped at my chin. Air bubbles burst out of my mouth as I shrieked. My chest burned. My stomach clenched. My ears pounded, and I felt my heartbeat in every finger and every toe. The anger that detonated inside me was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, turning my body into a radioactive wasteland.
Gripping the rolled edges of the tub, I pulled myself up like some sort of undead monster clawing itself out of its own grave. My hair plastered itself to my forehead, my cheeks, my shoulders. I pulled in a hard breath, staring at the gently angled ceiling directly in front of me.
This man would not kick me out of my own home. He wouldn’t get to destroy the Monticello, and he sure as hell wouldn’t get to rip down the only real home I’d ever had.
No way. No how. Application denied, asshole.
This house was one of the oldest in New Elwood and retained most of its historic charm. There was no way I was approving anything that didn’t involve delicate restorations. A full-scale demolition? No. Absolutely not.
I stood. Water ran down my body in rivulets as bubbles slid from my skin to the surface of the water. Scarlet ink floated on top of the bathwater, staining the bubbles bloodred. My breaths were loud in the empty space of my apartment. My beautiful apartment. My home.
This gorgeous Second Empire house was three stories tall, each level a self-contained apartment. Mine was at the top, a converted attic that I’d called home since I graduated from law school a decade earlier. The mansard roof meant my tiny, one-bedroom apartment felt roomier than a normal attic, with full-sized windows and a ton of natural light. Being at the edge of town, my bedroom window looked out onto the neat rows of a local vineyard. Sure, that vineyard was owned by an unsavory capitalist pig who cared more about money than he did about this town—much like another man of my acquaintance—but I couldn’t deny the view was great.
The tub was located in one of the dormer windows, a few feet away from the bed. The bathroom, containing a toilet, sink, and tiny shower, was shoved under the angled ceiling to the right, and a thin wall separated me from the kitchen/living room that I’d decorated with splashes of color and antiques I’d collected over the years.
The place was cramped, the fixtures were old, and the floor creaked and buckled so much I was pretty sure a building inspector would shudder if he ever made it up here, but it was mine.
It. Was. Mine.
No mustache-twirling psychopath would take it from me. I wouldn’t let it happen.
Stepping out of the bath, I grabbed the fluffy blue towel I’d folded over a chair and used it to wipe my face and chest. Smears of red ink marred my skin and the towel. That was Sebastian Anderson’s fault too. He owed me a new bath sheet as well as an apology.
Wrapping the soiled towel around myself, I headed for the laptop waiting on my bed. I wouldn’t waste time on professionalism. I would tell this cartoon villain exactly what I thought of him, and I’d tell him to take his slick development plans and ram them where they belonged.
I made it one single step before the world gave way beneath my feet.
Well. Not the entire world. Just that creaky, buckling floor. It happened so quickly I didn’t realize what was going on until I felt the scrape of hundred-year-old wood against my bare legs and butt. My fluffy towel caught on one of the jagged edges of the floorboards and was ripped from my body.
With a scream, I fell through a hole in the floor and landed?—
Landed on something soft. Breaths gasped out of me as I clawed at the soft sheets beneath me. My heart raced. I stared up at the ceiling above, a Charlie-sized hole showing a clear view to that beautiful mansard roof I loved so much. My red-stained towel dangled from a snapped floorboard, one corner swinging gently back and forth where it poked through the hole.
Naked, wet from my bath, covered in streaks of red ink, in shock, and gasping for air, I tried to make sense of this new position.
I was in a bed. A bed in the apartment directly below mine. I’d fallen through the rotten floor and landed on someone’s bed.
Relief swept through me. I could have broken my neck, but I was fine. Body trembling, I took another breath and praised my downstairs neighbor for choosing this particular location for their furniture.
But when the mattress shifted, I realized I wasn’t alone in it.
TWO
CHARLIE
My head turned so fast I cranked my neck. Through the haze of pain and shock, I noticed my new companion was a man. A man with a bare chest sprinkled with dark chest hair and a sheet pooled around his hips. A man who was staring at me with an unruffled expression on his face, his brow arched ever so slightly, as if naked, wet women dropped from the sky and into his bed on a regular basis.
With one hand pressing at the pain in my neck, I sucked in a deep breath and tried to make sense of the situation.
I had dropped through the ceiling and was in bed with a man. And someone was trying to destroy my home as well as my town. And my entire body was beginning to ache something fierce, especially the very sharp pains on my legs and butt.
Blinking, I attempted to rally my thoughts and failed. Instead, I stared.
His chest was very interesting, in a manly, muscular kind of way. That little trail of hair that ran from his navel to disappear beneath the white sheet was quite, quite fascinating. The shoulders and arms probably deserved extensive study, but from the quick glance I gave them, they were just as muscular and cut as the rest of him. Hairy but not too hairy. Broad hands with long fingers. A corded neck. A razor-sharp jaw.
That is to say, his body was a work of art.
His face didn’t disappoint either, with straight slashes for brows and pale green eyes with a ring of darker hazel near the iris. Stubble. Full lips. Cheekbones. Dark hair tousled oh-so-effortlessly.
