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I’d shown Matthew a total of ten houses, not counting the three times we’d visited this one alone—this would be visit number four—and he’d managed to find nitpicky little things about each one of them. That was annoying enough, but it was made even worse by the fact that I was pretty sure the guy was into me, and that was why he was dragging out this process. He wasn’t exactly being discreet about it.

Any other time, I might have been flattered.

Okay, that was a lie. Truth was all my headspace had been filled with a man I was pretty sure didn’t know I existed. Pathetic as that was to admit, even to myself.

Matthew was a good-looking dude, but it wasn’t just my humiliating crush on North Hastings that kept me from welcoming his blatant advances. I also lived by the rule that I never, but never dated clients. That was all kinds of messy I did not need to deal with. It was more than that, though. There was something about the guy that unsettled me. If I wasn’t so desperate for the commission, I would have bailed on him weeks ago. But given my current financial situation, pawning him off on one of the other agents I worked with only because he skeeved me out a little bit wasn’t a good enough reason.

I couldn’t put my finger on what it was about him that bothered me, I just knew it was something. Though it was probably due more to the fact that he came off kind of cocky and entitled, sounding almost braggy about all he’d accomplished at “such a young age” and how that made it possible to buy a house with cash . . .

Not that he’d made a single freaking offer.

“I still can’t get over all this natural light,” Matthew said for probably the millionth time over his four visits to this house. I offered him a wan smile, trying valiantly not to roll my eyes at his redundant observation. “But maybe . . . too much light?”

I wasn’t sure it was possible to get too much natural light in a house, but hey, what did I know. I was only the freaking realtor.

I lifted a single shoulder in a shrug and faked a smile, hoping it didn’t look as brittle as it felt. “Most people love natural light, but if you don’t like it (weirdo), there are plenty of options. You could install screens on the outside or put up blinds.”

Matthew turned back to me, one side of his mouth hooking up into a tiny smile. “What do you think about the natural light?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter what I think. You should⁠—”

He moved then, closing the distance between the two of us. He didn’t quite encroach on my personal space but got close enough to put my guard up. “Forget about the light then. Tell me, Iris. How do you take your coffee in the morning?”

Blech. It was like the dude listened to way too many of those loser, red-pill manosphere podcasts. “Mr. Wilkes, I don’t think⁠—”

“I’ve told you, you can call me Matthew.”

“Mr. Wilkes,” I stressed to try and get my point across. “How I take my coffee isn’t relevant to the house you plan to buy.”

That smile grew even wider, like he thought he could charm his way into my panties. The dude was seriously barking up the wrong tree. “Maybe not. But it may be relevant to . . . other things.”

My smile fell and my expression went blank. Screw the commission, I thought to myself. As badly as I needed the money, I refused to let some asshole with too much money on his hands and too little sense belittle and harass me. I’d gone down that road once before, and when I finally got out of that mess, I promised myself I would never let it happen again. “I can assure you, it’s not. But if you really want to know, I like to take my morning coffee alone. In peace and quiet.”

The way his face changed, from charming to pinched with anger, in a single second nearly had me stepping back, but I managed to hold my ground, reminding myself of the pepper spray I always carried with me, discreetly tucked into the inner pocket of my suit jacket. As a realtor (and more importantly, a woman) I never went anywhere without it. Especially to the houses I showed. The stories that spread around my office were warning enough, but it was my own past experience that made me that much more careful.

He crossed his arms over his chest and hiked his chin in the air to stare down his nose at me. “In that case, I think we’re done here. And maybe I should take my business to another firm.”

It would have been a lie to claim that threat hadn’t hit its mark. My mind immediately went to what my boss’s reaction to losing this supposed whale might be. But where I might have caved in the past, I wasn’t that same scared woman I had once been. Life had taken that part of me and toughened it up. My pride wouldn’t let me bend to this asshole.

“Hey. You do what you gotta do, Matty Boy,” I said, giving his shoulder a condescending pat. “Guess that concludes our business here. See you around.” I threw a salute in for good measure, then waved a hand toward the front door. My polite way of kicking his ass out. The sellers could get pissed and take the listing away from us for all I cared, but I would never again be an arrogant man’s doormat.

I let out a tired breath as I stood in the driveway and watched Matthew Wilkes peel out in his Porche (clearly his way of compensating for having a micro penis) before climbing behind the wheel of my own much more respectable car. I was ready for this day to be over.

The first thing I did the moment I walked through my front door was kick off those death traps called high heels. I let out a sigh of relief as soon as my feet were free from their stilted prisons.

“Mom? I’m home.”

“Back here, Rissy.”

I smiled at her use of my childhood nickname. Hearing it meant today had been a good day and her mood was high. I moved through the entryway and down the hall to the sunroom at the back of the house. The screen door out to the backyard was open, but it did little to clear out the smell.

I coughed, only needing to exaggerate a little. “God, woman. It stinks in here,” I teased, waving a hand in front of my face to clear away the pot smoke.

My mother quickly snuffed out the joint she’d been smoking and gave me a glassy-eyed smile. “Sorry, honey bear.” She exhaled the rest of the hit she’d just taken and quickly tried to wave it away. “Didn’t realize you’d be home so soon.”

It wasn’t the most pleasant-smelling stuff, in fact, it was downright foul, but I wasn’t about to complain when it was the only thing helping her since she got sick. Her stage four breast cancer diagnosis the year before came with an incredibly aggressive chemotherapy regimen that knocked my once-full-of-life mom out for the count. She’d barely been able to stand on her own, the sickness was so bad. She’d lost too much weight, couldn’t keep anything down, and her body was fighting the treatment so hard it didn’t have the energy to battle the cancer as well.

It had gotten so bad at one point that, despite her protests, I’d insisted on giving up my apartment in town and moving back into my childhood home so I could take care of her. Thanks to the weed, my mother’s appetite was back and she was putting on some much-needed weight, giving her body the strength to fight the real threat. There was still a lengthy war to fight, but after many months, if felt like we were finally on the winning side.