Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Now, they were out on the back porch in her loveseat with the last of the wine, sitting close, both their feet up on the coffee table, and Riggs was studying that view. Her legs shorter than his, and they had a shine to them, showing she’d shaved and recently. Her toes were painted a creamy, pale yellow that he found somehow more feminine and sexier than red. This juxtaposed against his faded jeans and scuffed, brown, lace-up boots.
Straight up, it was a fucking turn on, one of the biggest ones he’d ever experienced, seeing their legs like that, entirely indicative of all that was him, all that was her, and hinting at what it would feel like if his legs were tangled with hers, or hers were wrapped around his ass.
It didn’t help he could feel the soft flesh of her hip against his and smell the flowery, powdery, supremely female scent of her perfume.
But that wasn’t where this could go.
He’d fucked his way through half the attractive women in this county, so it wasn’t like he was above shitting where he lived.
But she was there to escape something brutal and tragic, and she didn’t need her neighbor making moves on her.
It was more than that, though.
There was something about her that told him he couldn’t take it there. She’d let down her shield that night, the ice queen was gone, and the sometimes shy, all the time sweet, definitely vulnerable woman who had pain shadowing her eyes, was not someone he was the man to wade into.
He was a good-time guy.
He could take her for a ride on his bike so she could feel the wind in her hair. He could cook her an excellent brat, not on his grill, in a skillet filled with brown ale. He could get her drunk and make her laugh hard, then later, make her come harder.
But he’d learned along the way he wasn’t the other kind of man for a woman.
You wanted to get loose or get high or get off, Riggs was the guy for you.
You wanted more, he wanted no part of it.
She moved her foot and the side of it skimmed the leg of his jeans.
He didn’t feel it, but he felt it.
Jesus, he had to get out of there.
“So, um…I take it your other neighbors were less, we’ll say, dedicated to their sleep than me.”
He turned his attention from their legs to her face at this comment.
“Sorry?”
“Whoever rented this cabin before me,” she explained.
“No one’s been in this cabin before you. At least not while I’ve been in my house.”
She was fucking with his head so much, the words were out before he realized he shouldn’t have said them.
But it hit him when her expression turned instantly confused, as it would. “How long have you lived in your house?”
Fuck.
“Three years.”
Her chin shot into her neck. “No one’s been in this cabin for that long? How long did it take to renovate?”
Fuck.
“Six weeks.”
“But…I mean, when did you renovate it?”
Fuck!
“Before I moved into my house. Renovating here, I saw my place was on the market. I bought it while I was doing up this pad.”
Sluggishly, her head turned to look at the back door, and he knew why, because he’d done the work, and he prided himself on doing solid work. The best. One of the reasons why he was so busy, because that was his reputation.
Brenda’s décor might alienate half the population, but it was still nice, and the reno was fantastic, and because it was hard to rent—or hard to keep rented—the rental fees were rock bottom. The same could be said for his house, though he didn’t tell her that. But he’d gotten it for a song.
Which would of course make Nadia confused.
When she came back around, she put her wineglass to her lips, but she didn’t take a sip.
She spoke into it while staring at the moonlight on the lake. “I haven’t spent much time in town, but it looks like a cute place. My understanding is, it’s pretty touristy. I don’t get it.”
Riggs shifted uneasily.
Her gaze went from the lake to him, and she surmised, “There’s a reason.”
“Nadia—”
Her brows drew down and pinched at the bridge of her nose, “Please tell me you didn’t run off all of Dave and Brenda’s tenants so you could throw wild parties.”
He busted out laughing.
“I’ll take that as a no,” she said through his laughter.
“I like my lake, Nadia, but I like Dave and Brenda too, and I’m not that much of a dick.”
“Well, I should say at this juncture, even though it behooves me to do so…”
Fuck.
She said behooves.
He fought busting out laughing again.
She kept speaking.
“But perhaps I was in a wee bit of a bad mood when I forbade you to run through my yard. And Dave left me your phone number. I could have called and told you how I felt about your party and not, erm…woken you post-in flagrante delicto.”