Page 12 of Lease to Love

But I still had fifteen minutes til close, so I shook it off and walked to the back office.

My office was small—more like a closet, honestly. I only had a little desk I'd found at a thrift store in Hyattsville and a filing cabinet that hated you unless you pulled it exactly right. A rainbow of fabric swatches covered one wall like a mosaic. A mood board leaned against the back of the door because I never got around to hanging it.

It was colorful.

Creative.

Chaotic.

It was me.

The laptop on my desk was open to a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet was open to a column of red numbers I'd been avoiding since Monday.

August rent.

Twenty-two days late.

Nine days to get it together.

And that was if old Scrooge was feeling generous.

I’d have it. I always had it.

I just didn’t have it yet.

At 5:59 PM exactly, the bell chimed again, and I let out a heavy sigh.

I was happy for the business.

I was.

And even though last-minute shoppers made my ass itch—they always spent too much time and not enough money—a customer was a customer.

I stepped out of the office and fixed my face into my best customer service smile.

“Welcome to House of Autumn! How can I help—”

I froze mid-sentence… And my eyes landed on the man I'd spent the last three years cursing every time his funky ass emails landed in my inbox.

Because Roman Sterling—my goddamn landlord—was standing in my boutique.

Chapter Two

Summer

All traces of the customer service smile drained from my face.

Roman Sterling hadn’t been in my shop in three months. Not since the parking-space dispute that ended with me threatening to call the city, him threatening to raise my rent, and neither of us following through on either threat because we both knew damn well the city wasn’t going to do shit about it anyway.

Three months of blissful Roman Sterling-free existence.

And here he was.

He stood just inside my boutique in a charcoal suit that fit his oversized frame entirely too well for a Friday evening, his posture stiff enough to suggest he’d rather be anywhere else.

That made two of us.

In addition to my shop and the apartment above it, Roman owned the building next door and half the commercial real estate within a five-block radius. He had plenty of properties to manage, tenants to bother, and probably some giant evil-businessman boardroom somewhere he could be sitting in while counting his money.