Read Suddenly in Love (Lake Haven#1) for Free Online

complained as they’d moved into that room. “It’s so old . I had a state-of-the-art kitchen in the house where I lived before this. It practically cooked for you.”
    Another weird thing about the house was that it was sparsely furnished. Mia’s boots echoed on the marble tiles as she walked through a foyer devoid of any furnishing or accessory except a single mirror in a gilded frame that looked permanently attached to the wall. Not even a rug to warm up the cold floor.
    The kitchen had the most furnishings of any rooms, but not the sort one would expect. The kitchen table and cane-back chairs looked as if Nancy had purchased them off Craigslist. The surface of the table was strewn with papers and envelopes, and a laptop stood open, a coffee mug next to it.
    Mia put her bag down on one of the chairs and looked around at the dated kitchen with the faint smell of fish lingering in the wallpaper and the drapes. For two days now, she’d been rattling around this enormous and strangely decorated house like a nurse on night watch, poking her head in this room and that. It was hard to imagine that only two months ago, she’d had visions of being New York’s celebrated new artist.
    Boy, when some dreams died, it was like letting the dogs go in for the kill.
    She was still shaky from her encounter with the crazy ass, and decided she’d have a cup of coffee and calm down a little before working. She walked to the Keurig coffeemaker and powered it up as Nancy had invited her to do on her first day.
    She wanted cream with her coffee. She glanced around, bending backward to see down the hallway to the front door. No one here but her, so Mia opened the fridge.
    Whoa .
    The fridge was stuffed completely full. There wasn’t even a tiny bit of space left. Leaves of raw vegetables stuck out between dishes. Fruit was piled up in a drawer. Beer, wine, milk, and coconut water were crammed into the door caddies. In the event of a major catastrophe, Nancy could feed half of East Beach.
    It was a wonder Mia was able to spot the cream at all, given the competition for her focus. She made her coffee, added the cream, then returned it to the fridge. Wedging it back in the door took a bit of effort, and in the course of doing so, Mia spotted a plate of cookies.
    It would be wrong to take a cookie from Nancy’s fridge.
    Good thing Mia had never claimed to be perfect, and hooray, there were so many cookies that Nancy would never notice one missing—she didn’t strike Mia as the cookie counting type. She held the fridge open with her elbow, and worked the corner of the plastic wrap up off the plate, slipped a cookie off of the pile, held it between her teeth while she returned the plastic wrap to its full upright and locked position, and shut the door.
    And then promptly dropped her cookie with a shriek of fright.
    The man from the bluff was standing on the other side of the door in his bare feet. His hands were on his waist and he was glaring at her. “What the fuck ?”
    Her heart began to race painfully, making it difficult to catch her breath. Mia liked to think she was fairly street smart. That if she was ever confronted by a criminal, a terrorist, or a guy like this, she’d think quickly and act smartly. She did neither of those things.
    If she’d thought a moment before she reacted, she might have questioned just how dangerous a barefoot man with a glassy look could truly be. But in that moment, Mia knew only that she was alone in Nancy Yates’s house, and she hadn’t let him in.
    She whirled around and grabbed the first thing she could lay her hands on—a frying pan. She swung it out in his general direction but didn’t come remotely close to him, but somehow managed to hit one of the pendant lights hanging over the kitchen island.
    “Hey!” the man said. He lunged forward, grabbed the frying pan from her in one easy yank, and set it down on the counter. “Be careful with that thing before you break something.”
    “Okay,