Billionaire's Touch(36)

Pissed off at her lack of response, he reached forward and grasped her upper arm and swung her around. “I’ve been trying to talk to you. Don’t ignore me. Are you fucking deaf?” He couldn’t figure out her intentions, but they couldn’t be good.

Strangely, he was disappointed when she stopped singing and started screaming, her eyes focused on his mouth.

“Stop it. I’m not hurting you. You broke into my home.”

She stopped shrieking after the initial shock of seeing him wore off and stared at him from the top of his head to his toes, her eyes growing wide as she perused his nude body thoroughly.

Having no problem with being naked, he let her look her fill before he wrapped the bath towel around his waist. “What in the fuck are you doing here? What do you want?” Women always wanted something from him.

She looked at him for a moment before speaking carefully. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am fucking deaf.” She signed to him as she spoke, probably out of habit. “I didn’t know you were here. I couldn’t hear you.”

Micah looked at the smoked glass of the shower and realized that she hadn’t been able to detect his presence. Looking at her directly so she could read his lips, feeling like a dick, he answered, “I’m sorry I scared you. Why are you here?” He signed the words as well as spoke them aloud.

One of his best friends was hearing impaired, and although he was a little bit rusty, Micah knew sign language fairly well.

“I clean here. Jared pays me to keep up all of the homes on the Peninsula when they aren’t occupied. My brother and I own a restaurant in town, but it’s slow in the winter. I do this on the side.” She removed her rubber gloves and placed them in a bucket on the floor, and then held out her hand. “I’m Tessa Sullivan.”

Micah took her offered hand and held on to it a little longer than he should have, his eyes trained on her delicate features and beautiful, curly hair. God, she was gorgeous, now that he could see her clearly. “Micah Sinclair. Jared’s cousin.”

For some reason, now that he could see her face, she looked familiar, yet he knew they’d never met. He wouldn’t have forgotten her if they’d met before.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had made it in before the storm. I usually clean the bathrooms first, or I probably would have seen your belongings. Are you the daredevil or the famous movie actor?” She pulled her hand away and smiled at him, a genuine grin that didn’t have a trace of deception or pretense. “I haven’t seen the movie that made one of Hope’s cousins a star yet.”

For once in his life, Micah found himself dumbfounded. Her unguarded smile made his cock spring to attention, and he had a sudden urge to take off her clothes and bend her over the bathroom vanity to relieve the throbbing his dick was experiencing at the moment. He wanted to absorb all of the warmth he could sense in her smile.

He felt like a complete jerk for having yelled at her. Of course, she hadn’t heard him—or his irritation at her presence. “Extreme sports,” Micah corrected, getting more turned on as she stared innocently at his mouth.

Of course she’s looking at my lips. It’s her only way of understanding me.

Micah didn’t consider himself a daredevil anymore at all. In truth, he never had. He still took some risks, but his main focus now was on business. Extreme sports were lucrative, and his business provided the best equipment for people in their fields. He took pride in the fact that he made some dangerous sports safer.

She nodded to acknowledge his correction. “You’re the thrill seeker. I’ve heard a lot about you and your brothers from Mara.”

“It’s a profession that’s made me very rich,” Micah answered brusquely, annoyed that he was actually defending his business.

Why do I care?

He didn’t. Not really. He’d been called worse for some of the things he’d done in the past, and her expression wasn’t making a mockery of his company. Still, having her dismiss what he did was pissing him off. He wasn’t sure why . . . but it did.

“Is there a Sinclair who isn’t rich?” she asked, a twinkle in her eyes.

“There’s probably plenty of them, but none with our DNA,” Micah admitted, still staring at her like a horny teenager.

She snorted, a sound that was probably actually a laugh. Micah smiled because, coming from her, the noise was enchanting.

“How did you get here?” The weather was horrible, and he didn’t like the idea of her on the road when it was so brutal outside.

“I drove. I’m deaf, not stupid or incapable of performing simple tasks.” Propping her hands on her hips, she stared at him stubbornly.