A coyote howls in the distance, and I open my mouth to reassure her, but the words stick in my throat for a moment before I can. I’m struck, wondering what her shivering body might look like if she got warm by the fire and let that gauzy tunic drop away from her shoulders. Would the skin of her body be as soft as I think it might be? Would that spark of mischief bloom into lust if took those full breasts into my hands… my mouth to her—
Goddamn, I bet that lust would bloom like a goddamn desert flower in the rain. And that mouth—
Inappropriately, ridiculously, my cock stirs and threatens to rise at the thought. I shake the thought away. I need to remain professional if I’m going to have this woman in my house.
But I know full well the damage is done.
That woman is as full and rich as a fine whiskey. And when I get thirsty, I’m bound to take a drink.
CHAPTER THREE
My brain is a muddle when I step out of the limo. I’ve never been in a limo besides that one night at prom, and I’d had several shots of vodka, so the memory of the limo is pretty damn fuzzy. This one was nice, with smooth leather seats and a tinted window so I could close my eyes and speak neither to the driver nor to the confused porter who couldn’t manage to carry my suitcase properly.
This must be some kind of mistake. My brain keeps repeating it, and the words get stuck on a loop inside my head. None of this is what I pictured. None if it fits with my sense of what the world should look like, or what this adventure should be.
None of this is right. The house is too beautiful, too well-crafted. It’s not an aging farm house or one of those stucco ranch things I’ve seen in California. It looks like something out of Architectural Digest, with a polished exterior of stone and dark, smooth wood. I was told their would be horses, but this doesn’t look like the home of a rancher or anyone who’s ever dealt with livestock. It’s big, but there’s something deeply inviting about it too, something warm. Far warmer than I ever would have expected. Warmer than my brain knows what to do with.
And the air, it’s cold. Too cold for New Mexico.
The fields, the mountain peaks... everything is empty around us. I was hoping to convince the man that I could stay in a hotel in town, but there’s no town. And the stars, they’re far to bright to be real. There’s no smog blocking them out, no light pouring into the sky from skyscrapers and apartment buildings, no noise to detract from their presence and light.
But I come to from my haze and I take the heavy suitcase away from the porter again, dragging it up the deep gray marble steps. Cold sweat starts to form on my body, and I shiver before looking up at the stars. It looks like there’s a swath of white gauze in the sky, pulsing and twinkling and shifting all at once.
I wonder if this is the Milky Way.
The thought sticks with me for a moment and then I look at the door, and I spot him. Regan? Ronan? Something like that. In my haste to get out of town, I didn’t check him out, and I slept on the plane the whole way here. I didn’t even bother to see what he wanted for his mural. When it comes to my life, everything is fucked up. When it comes to art, I can always think of something to paint. So that part isn’t important. But the man standing in front of me is a giant red flag, one I should figure out how to avoid. He’s rugged and beautiful, in a gray flannel shirt and jeans. His jawline is firm and long, accented by a shadow of dark stubble. On another man, it might look dingy, but on him, it just looks delicious.
Like something I want to lick.
I don’t know his name, but here I am standing on his porch, the cold, dry wind whipping around me. He’s tall, six feet or more, and through the contours of his gray shirt, it looks like his muscles are made of steel. My mouth goes dry and I swallow. If I’m not mistaken, my heart is beating fast too, and oh God, his eyes are deep, dark blue like sapphires. His hair is in need of a cut, the shaggy dark pieces of it falling over his ears and over his forehead. When he smiles at me, and he does, broad and full of fire, I nearly melt and topple down the steps.
Even before he tells me his name, I know I’m screwed. I can’t be in a house with this man, not over the holidays, not while I’m recovering from all the shit that’s gone wrong in my life.
He says his name, and it takes me a minute to process it, because I’m still staring at his eyes, studying the long contour of his nose, the regal strength of his jawline.
“Cadence,” I say. “Is there a place for me to stay?” After that, nothing much makes sense because I’m still in a daze. The porter grabs my bag again and lugs it into the house before I can think about taking it in, and I watch as the man—the billionaire—walks down the steps and takes my bags of clothes and my laptop from the trunk of the limousine. I stay standing, looking off into the night, down the long stone driveway that leads out into the wooded wilderness of New Mexico. In the distance there’s a coyote howling—or at least I think that’s a coyote—and I suppress a deep shiver.