Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73174 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73174 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Anger had stirred up inside my chest, but I was glad to have a reason to put Mr. Fucking Fancy Pants in his place.
“Holy shit,” Shawn said quietly from beside us. “I’d seen those headlines, but I had no idea, either.”
Emmett was silent.
Finally I’d gotten the pretty-boy prince to shut up.
“I didn’t expect him to slip and break a wrist, of course, but I wasn’t going to let him come in and hurt Sarah. Not for anything.”
“It was a bad joke to make,” Emmett said, pulling in a breath and smoothing out his suit. “I apologize. And sure, let’s take the house tour now. See if it could potentially be a fit for the Fixer Brothers show.”
Man, this guy was going to get under my skin.
My house could “potentially” be a fit? What the hell?
My spidey-senses were tingling, and I puzzled out the stick up Emmett’s ass from a mile away.
He was a marketing guy.
A rich, greedy, marketing guy, who saw nothing but dollar signs with the Fixer Brothers—and nothing but trouble with me. It clicked inside me like stadium lights turning on all at once, pouring light out onto a field.
Emmett didn’t want me to be the next client on the Fixer Brothers’ TV show.
And that was exactly why I was going to make sure I was.
3
EMMETT
As we walked through the house, I couldn’t take my eyes away from Storm.
I’d been an asshole to him outside. I knew I had been, and it was uncomfortably different from how I usually treated anyone.
But from the moment I locked eyes with him, all I could sense was one giant, billowing red flag—like he had alarm bells, warning sirens, and do not pass go written all over him.
Because Storm Rosling was clearly born to be a superstar.
He was one of the most attractive people I’d ever met in real life—the “Stormy Eyes” nickname lived up to the reality of him perfectly, and was ten times more arresting in real life than in pictures and videos. Gorgeous grey-blue eyes, glossy dark hair, a perfect body, and a look that could rip right through anybody in two seconds flat.
So I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the Fixer Brothers were going to fight tooth and nail to have him on their show.
“This is one of my favorite parts of the house, and it really needs work,” Storm said now, showing us the big, recessed window in his dining room. It was cut out like an alcove, with a wooden bench seat cut right into the window that jutted out over the back yard. “A little breakfast nook. The bench is wobbly as hell, and there’s water damage on the floor below. But it can be great.”
“We can fix it up beautifully,” Nathan assured him. “I love this nook, too.”
“I love traveling for football games, but coming home is always my favorite thing,” Storm said, looking over his kitchen. “I want it to be cozy and inviting and real. Not too perfect and pristine like a museum.”
“My dad used to say, the best part of a vacation is coming home,” I said. “It’s always lucky if you feel that way.”
“Your dad must have been a good guy,” Storm said.
“He was.”
As we continued the tour, I knew that if Storm ended up on the TV show, he was probably going to be the most popular client they’d ever had.
…And then, inevitably, he was going to say or do one of his public bad-boy things again, ending up ruining the Fixer Brothers’ squeaky-clean reputation in the process. I could see the look in my boss’ eyes already, the inevitable disappointment if I lost the deal with Racks superstores because of some hotshot football player.
Cutmore wasn’t exactly a boss from hell, but he definitely didn’t like me. In fact, it seemed like Walter Cutmore was dead set on disliking me, ever since my dad had died.
But I was so goddamn close to making partner at the firm.
I knew I could do it, if everything just went right.
“I want to turn this into a banger forest party pad wonderland,” Storm was saying now, as he led us out into his backyard. “Pool with a swim-up bar. Built-in hot tub. Grill area. Some sort of nice gazebo that my friends can drink in, dance in, fuck in, hell, whatever they want.”
My skin prickled. He was planning on having these banger parties right next door to me?
The tour of his house only felt like a death sentence for my career. Storm was all charisma and charm to Shawn and Nathan. His house was the perfect fixer-upper mansion, ripe and ready to be renovated on TV.
When the meeting was over and the Fixer Brothers left a half hour later, I walked back over to my home feeling like a deflated balloon. Panic gnawed at my insides. What was I supposed to do? It was like I’d been given a complex calculus problem that I had no idea how to solve.