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

those incongruently gorgeous eyes and said, “What do you want, baby? If you want to play, go ahead. I’m game.”
    “You cannot be serious ,” she said, her voice full of amazement. Maybe he was handsome beneath this outer layer of hobo, and maybe he didn’t always smell like a sock forgotten in the bottom of a gym bag, but he had to be kidding. She leaned away from him. As far back as she could. “This may come as a shock to your seriously fat ego, but you are absolutely the last person I’d want to play with.” She put her hand up between them to stop him from leaning any closer.
    He smirked a little, and his gaze settled on her mouth. “You sure about that?”
    Mia snorted. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Now would you please step back?” she asked, gesturing for him to move. He didn’t move immediately, and Mia couldn’t help wrinkling her nose and turning her head. Her gaze fell to his arm; he had the dark stain of a tattoo that went around his pronounced bicep. It looked like Sanskrit.
    Nancy’s son chuckled low at her obvious disgust, and Mia could feel it reverberate in her. But he pushed away from her and turned back to his coffee. “How’d you get in here, anyway?”
    “ How? The door!” she said, wondering now if he was slow.
    “Just walked right through it, huh?”
    “No, I cartwheeled through it, I was so happy to be here.”
    He glanced up, looking almost as if he believed it. Oh, for the love of Pete . “Look,” Mia said, “there’s obviously been some misunderstanding here.”
    “Fantastic,” he said, and opened up a sugar bowl and turned it practically upside down into his coffee, adding enough to trigger an instant diabetic coma. “Go ahead, clue me in.”
    “I’m supposed to be here. I’m working for your mom.” She grabbed up a brochure from John Beverly Home Interiors and Landscape Design on the kitchen counter and held it up to him.
    Something changed in his expression. He closed his eyes. “Shit,” he said. “The decorator .”
    He might as well have said the grim reaper . A bit of heat rose up in Mia’s cheeks. He made no move to take the brochure she was holding out, so she laid it back on the counter. “I’m not the designer. My Aunt Bev is.”
    His gaze flicked over her again, assessing her, lingering a little on her tights and boots. “Okay.”
    “O- kay, ” she shot back. Okay, okay —what did okay mean?
    “So what are you if you’re not the designer?”
    “Her . . . her helper,” Mia said with a shrug.
    “Ah, so you’re the decorator’s helper. Well then,” he said, and swept his arm toward the rest of the house. “Knock yourself out.” He picked up his coffee and slurped loudly.
    “Are you high?” she demanded.
    “Nope. But I’ve had a couple of drinks.” He paused and squinted at the window a moment. “More than a couple if we’re going to add them up.”
    Well that certainly explained it. It was hardly past noon. Summer people .
    He put the coffee down, and opened the fridge. “Are the cookies any good?”
    Mia’s face flushed with embarrassment. She abruptly moved around the kitchen island and reached for her messenger bag, preparing to make a quick exit, maybe even walk down the road with the hope of meeting Wallace when he came to pick her up. Go anywhere but here with this weird guy with the blue eyes.
    He was still studying the contents of the fridge. Now that she knew who he was, she was revising her assessment of him. She could see that he actually looked unsettlingly hip in a very dirty way. His clothes were expensive. But he looked like he’d stepped off the plane from the West Coast and then gotten roughed up in a dark alley. Maybe that was where he’d had his few drinks. She wondered what kind of girl he went for. Stripper?
    “What happened, Chatty Cathy, cat got your tongue now?” he asked, and looked over his shoulder at her. “I asked about the cookies.”
    Mia snapped out of her rumination.