Page 3 of Four Dates and A Forever
It offered a warm contemporary lifestyle, showcasing comfort and beauty with timeless materials, and it wasn’t quite finished. She still had a few renovations to tie up—renovations that sheneededto finish. It was as if something inside her had been broken and through the process of transforming the house she’d transform herself and be able to fully walk away and start anew.
God, she didn’t want to sell her dream. She’d put her heart into every corner of that house, and Axel had sold it right out from under her. Yes, she was flat broke, but the thought of someone coming in with their own furniture, their own little touches, and their own style was like a punch to the gut.
Would they expect her to finish? God, she hoped so. Or what if they decided to go with a different designer? What if they didn’t like her idea to blow out the wall between the office and the guest room or reframe the music room? What if they hired someone else to finish what was supposed to be her mark on the world?
Her heart sank and her eyes began to fill again when she heard a noise coming from upstairs. It sounded like water draining. Knowing her luck, it was probably a cracked pipe in her walls.
Elsie wiped her eyes and headed for the staircase. She reached the landing when the water abruptly stopped and the sound of wet feet hitting tile whispered past.
She froze. A tiny trill of terror tiptoed down her spine. She heard the footsteps again, coming from the master bathroom, and panic wove its way up her throat and wrapped itself around tightly. She hit 9-1-1 on her cell, her finger hovering over the green call button as she crept down the hallway and into the bathroom to peek around the corner. Steam filled every corner of the room like a scene from some horror flick.
Her first thought was that it was an ax murderer. Her second thought, and this was what had rage boiling up, was that Axel had flown all the way from LA to Portland to see the look on Elsie’s face when she opened that letter. Only when she entered the bathroom, it wasn’t Axel’s ass staring back at her. It was the most spectacular ax-murderer ass she’d ever seen.
She grabbed the first thing she found—a hair dryer—then stuck it to the intruder’s very muscular back. “Put your hands up and don’t move.”
There was a long, terrifying pause. “Which one is it? Hands up or don’t move.”
Elsie heard the amusement in his tone and knew exactly whose unwanted and uninvited ass was on display in her bathroom.
It was Rhett Easton, her ex’s buddy, and the guy who hadn’t even bothered to check in on her after an incredibly horrible year. In fact, Rhett, former playboy and total pain in her ass, was the one person she had hoped to hear from but never did.
Not that she should be surprised. He’d ghosted her before.
Long before Elsie had met her ex, she and Rhett had a one-night stand. Rhett was a nobody solo artist who played dive bars and college parties. It was at one of these parties that they met, flirted, and eventually wound up in bed together—spending the entire weekend making love and sharing dreams. The connection was unlike anything she’d ever felt, which was why when the sun came up, Elsie wasn’t so sure that she wanted things to end. Rhett assured her that he felt the same, which was why she’d given him her number. But he’d never called.
It wasn’t until a year later, when her then boyfriend, Axel, introduced her to the band’s new singer, that their paths crossed again. There was an awkward and sexually charged moment, then they’d both laughed it off as a long-ago weekend and agreed to be friends. And they had been. At least she thought they had.
She’d never been naive to the fact that Rhett was Axel’s friend and that she was the third wheel in their bromance, but she’d thought that Rhett had considered her a good enough friend to at least see how she was handling everything—which, for a period, was terribly.
She was mad at her mom for practically siding with Axel, her LA friends had told her to look past the infidelities—plural—whiletheirfriends had stuck with the more famous of the two, and her lawyer was a joke, leaving Elsie with just Grandma Harriet. Who was enough, but that didn’t mean Elsie hadn’t been alone and terrified throughout the whole ordeal.
Rhett started to turn and Elsie slammed her eyes shut. “Ohmygod!What are you doing? I said don’t move.”
“I was reaching for a towel.”
“Okay, fine, turn around and cover yourself.” She shielded her eyes because closing them wasn’t enough when he was the full monty. “You said you were grabbing a towel.”
“You didn’t specify the order. Shall I grab the towel?” When she didn’t answer—because her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth, he chuckled. A moment later he said, “You can open your eyes. I’m decent.”
She split her fingers and peeked through the crack and then snapped it back together. “Thatis not decent.”
He was in faded blue jeans, which hung low on his hips, no shirt, no shoes, glistening abs. The man was built like Thor—and that was just his upper portion. The accidental glimpse of his other portion, and the memory of that long ago weekend, reminded her that his top and bottom matched.
“Is that a blow dryer or are you just happy to see me?”
Telling herself that she was an adult and she’d seen it all before—she opened her eyes. “I could say the same.”
They both look down at the bulge behind the zipper and without an ounce of embarrassment he said, “Hey, it’s morning.”
It had been a while since they’d seen each other—even longer since they’d seen each other naked—and he stilled look great. Big and built, with the sexiest, stare-into-them-too-long-and-you’ll-be-mesmerized blue eyes.
She, on the other hand, came from good, solid peasant stock and her metabolism was saving itself for the zombie apocalypse. No matter how hard she sucked in her belly, it was impossible to fit into her pre-divorce jeans, while this guy effortlessly looked like a magazine cover. Then again, he’d graced the cover of about every magazine in the world. Not that she’d paid attention. Much.
“It’s two in the afternoon,” she pointed out.
“Since I got in at six a.m., it’s my morning.”
She gasped. “You slept here? Where?”
