Page 10 of The Rebel Billionaire

Unfortunately, sex was out of the question. She'd had way too much to drink. Charlotte Winters could hold her whiskey, but the slight slur in her words and glaze to her blue eyes told me she was more drunk than sheseemed.

That was a damnshame.

Maybe another time. Normally, I'd close the door on any possibility of sex with a neighbor, but that kiss had been something else. If she wanted another shot at me when she was thinking straight, I wasn't going to turn her down. Then again, I'd had a few drinksmyself.

Maybe the memory of her mouth on mine wouldn't seem so magnetic by thenextday.

Finally, she answered my question, speaking in the slow, deliberate cadence of someone who knew they'd had too much todrink.

"I'm going to finish that whiskey. Then I'm going to walk—or crawl—into the back room and pass out in my sleeping bag. That'smyplan."

"What about food? It's almost dinner time," I said. Charlotte shook her head, the loose strands of shiny auburn hair tangling in her eyelashes. She pushed them back with the heel ofherhand.

"Not hungry,"shesaid.

"When was the last time you ate?" Iasked.

She peered into the air over my head as if her day's schedule was written in the blue sky. "Breakfast, I think. I had a conference call through lunch. I was going to get something after I met with Aiden. Then I forgot I washungry."

"Fine, stay there." I stood, grabbing the decanter of whiskey, now considerably lighter than it had been when I'd hopped the fence. "Cold, leftover spaghetti it is. You're going to feel like shit tomorrow no matter what, but a little food will help. I'll berightback."

I was down the steps and headed to the fence when she yelled, "You can't leave with mywhiskey."

I didn't look back when I said, "Sit your ass down. I'll berightback."

I heard the thump of that sweet rounded ass hitting the decrepit boards of her porch. I hopped the fence with her whiskey and headed for myfridge.

She'd drained her glass by the time I made my way back, still holding the whiskey, a plastic storage container filled with cold spaghetti, and two forks undermyarm.

Typical of anyone at her stage of intoxication, drunk but not so drunk she was sick with it, at the first taste of the spaghetti, Charlotte discovered she was starving. We didn't talk much as wedugin.

Unlike her, I'd eaten lunch, but I'd spent the afternoon hauling brick pavers and wood around my yard and I'd worked up an appetite. Cold spaghetti for dinner was goodenough.

She packed away more food than I would've expected. Charlotte wasn't a tiny thing. She was at least 5' 8" with a solid, medium-size frame. Her body, in my opinion, was just aboutperfect.

A nice, round ass and tits big enough to fill my hands. She looked like a girl who knew how to eat, but I was too used to women pretending they lived on lettuce anddietsoda.

When she was sober, Charlotte might do the same, but when she had a little whiskey in her, she had an appetite and wasn't picky enough to turn down my leftoverspaghetti.

It only took one more drink after that before Charlotte passed out. One second she was lying on her back on her porch, her eyes fixed on the peeling paint of the overhang and rambling about her plans for her derelict house, and the next, her eyes were closed, soft snores drifting from her half-openmouth.

Feeling like a saint, I carried her in the back door, through her kitchen, down the hall, and into the back of the house to the room where she'dcampedout.

I lay her on top of an unrolled sleeping bag. She'd be stiff and uncomfortable when she woke up. And hung overashell.

Not myproblem.

Still, I filled the crystal whiskey glass with water and placed it a few feet away so she'd see it as soon as she opened her eyes. She was on her stomach, curled around her pillow when I left. I found an extra key to the back door on the ring beside her purse and locked up before Iwenthome.

I wasn't leaving her in an unsecured house. And returning her key would give me an excuse to check out my new neighbor when she wassober.

CHAPTERTHREE

CHARLIE

There wassomething dead underneath my tongue. Gross, but there was no other explanation for the fuzzy, sour taste in my mouth. Also, I was pretty sure someone had beaten the hell out of me before I went tosleep.

I cracked one eye to see shiny navy blue fabric and a scarred wooden floor. Those weren't my Egyptian cotton sheets. And this was not mybedroom.