Page 24 of Lemon Crush

“We don’t tell her.”

“You’re going to keep this from Morganandher husband, who spends all his free time with you, working on his cars?” She frowned to herself for a second. “You work on his racecars for Lemons.”

“Nearly every weekend for years. And I can keep it from them because it’s none of their business. I need a place and you’ve got one. As far as I’m concerned, those two favors cancel each other out. As far as they’re concerned? I’m staying with you because you’re a kind and generous woman taking pity on an old man’s back.”

I needed her to say yes. “I’ll fill out the paperwork today and move in after work tonight. Check in hand or electronic payment in your account. Whatever you prefer.”

“That’s so fast. I mean, the place is ready but…just like that?”

“Just like that. And if you’re worried about the bill for Myrtle, skip the apartment deposit on the lease and we’ll call it even.”

“It’s only available for a few months,” she reminded me, obviously weakening.

I managed to keep from pumping my fist in the air, but it was a near thing. “Four or five max.” I’d take every bit of timeshe’d allotted on that website. “I’ll be in a house of my own by then, and in the meantime, you’ll barely notice I’m here.”

Her “Hah!” made my smile widen. Yeah. That was another lie. I planned to become impossible for her to ignore.

“It feels like a trap,” she said under her breath. Because she had good instincts.

“It feels like escaping one to me.” I moved in as close as I dared, until I could see those thick lashes framing her uncertain eyes. “Say yes, Gus.”

I wanted her to say yes to more than a lease, but this was a start.

“You don’t need to do a walkthrough first?”

“I’ve seen it before. It has everything I need,” I murmured, staring at her mouth.

“It comes furnished and the bed is only a queen. You won’t fit.”

There was no way that wouldn’t suck, but I wasn’t going to haggle for my bed yet. I didn’t want to chance her changing her mind. “Still better than Bernie’s couch.”

“We can try a month-to-month lease,” she finally said, putting me out of my misery. “That way if you throw wild keggers and leave blow-up sex dolls in the pool, I can kick you out.”

“Month-to-month and no sex dolls,” I repeated dutifully, reluctantly following her as she started toward the front door in an obvious bid to send me on my way. “You won’t be sorry.”

Wade-ing around.That was the phrase my sister always used to describe my style of taking too long to go after what I wanted.

I was done with that now. I knew in my gut this was the last chance I’d ever get with August Retta. I needed to take it before it, and she, disappeared on me. I needed to give both of us a chance to finally find out what we’d been missing all these years we’d spent dancing around each other.

I needed a plan.

6

AUGUST

Five days later…

I wasbreathless as my fingers flew over the keys of my laptop, and not only because I was excited to be writing again. The story unfolding on my screen was affecting me physically. It was actually making me blush, andIwas the one writing it.

This wasnotmy usual fantasy saga. Not even close.

A lusty short-term lodger. A sexually repressed landlady. An ice storm that forced them into comic but sizzling-hot proximity. And foreshadowing about a secret that would eventually, but hopefully only temporarily, force them apart.

I bit my lip and pressed my thighs together, flushed with arousal as I read over the scene where my hero backed the heroine into a corner she really didn’t want to get out of, seducing her with his talented hands and hungry lips. It wasn’t porn, exactly—it had a compelling external plot and there were no tentacles in sight—but the heat level was beyond anything I’d written in any of my previous books.

This hero wasn’t simply like Wade, the way all my otherheroes had been. CadewasWade. Since there was no denying it, I’d barely bothered changing his name. And the heroine was me. A more confident, capable and sexually open-minded me, who could apparently get her freak on at the drop of a hat without worrying things to death or getting anxiety sweats.

Wade’s rental application had landed in my in-box five minutes after he left my house last week, and since then my imagination had been racing full, horny steam ahead, my fingers itching to get to the nearest keyboard. He was to blame for this onslaught of fevered creativity, so why not give credit where it was due? It wasn’t like he—or anyone else besides Chick—was ever going to read it.

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