Page 10 of Mortgage of Convenience

“With writing a book?”

She’s still not meeting my gaze. Instead, her eyes are trained somewhere around my collar. “Sort of.” Her lips twitch, forming the start of a sentence that never comes. “Please” is all that comes, pained and quiet. It makes me want to rip the arms off any asshole who had the audacity to judge her and find her wanting, because seriously, what the fuck?

But a favor doesn’t come anywhere close to being an even trade for a house. “Bee, of course I’ll help, but that’s no reason to?—”

“It is. Trust me.” She twists her hands in her lap, and I realize she’s shaking.

Fuck.

I reach out and cup her hands in mine, and she stops, blinking up at me in surprise. Everything in her eyes is pleading. I don’t know how we got here, how this moment turned from her saving my dream to her begging me for help with hers, but there’s no way I’m turning her down. I know that. Even though it’s not a fair trade, I’ll become every inch the asshole my father is if I say no. And it’s been my life’s mission to avoid repeating that history.

I can make this work. I’ll owe her for the rest of my life,but I’ll use every single second to repay her. And I can start with this.

“Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be.”

Bee might be the quiet, unassuming side to Aiden’s boisterous, exuberant coin, but damn, when a Montgomery gets an idea, they really know how to sweep a person up in it.

“We’ll need an agreement. Something in writing to protect us.”

“Are you saying yes?”

“Yes, Bee. Let’s buy a house.”

From the moment her eyes light up, I know I’ve just signed, sealed, and delivered myself into a world of trouble.

3

BEE

Three weeks is allit takes to get the i’s dotted and the keys in our hands.

I’ve left laundry longer than that.

Three weeks of combing through my financial history, of baring enough detail to the bank that I half expected them to tell me which vitamins I’m deficient in. Three long weeks of rolling out of a dinky air mattress in the mornings and shooting off texts to Sebastian in response to the things the realtor needs that day.

But finally,finally,it’s done.

We own a house.

It doesn’t feel real.

Sebastian’s made sure we both have copies of the paperwork, and every time I catch our names next to each other—Bee Montgomery and Sebastian Wolfe—my mind sort of stalls and reboots.

Aiden walks past me, his arms full of a box markedextra books.

“I can carry that, you know,” I remind him.

“Uh-huh.”

I roll my eyes behind his back.

With eight years between us, our friendship bloomed late. It was always “Bee, let your brother do that” and “Help your sister, Aiden.” My whole life, he’s played caretaker, looking down on me, never equal.

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