Page 13 of Taming Scarlet

I couldn’t believe just how wrong I would turn out to be on that, though.

CHAPTER THREE

Julian

She surprised me in one way only.

She was unexpectedly… quiet.

Maybe that was because she lived alone, but some part of me had been expecting her to talk my damn ear off about frivolous shit endlessly.

But she hardly even spoke to me.

Hell, she almost never even looked at me.

Sure, that was rude in its own way. But I definitely preferred the silence to her pestering me nonstop.

I also noticed that she was a different person in her home than on the street. At home, she was a little scattered, always having to backtrack and double-check things. On the street, she was cool, calm, and collected. An heiress, through and through.

I guess when you had a public persona, you needed to have that air about you.

I wondered if she even noticed the little trio of young women who’d gaped at her and tried to snap quick pictures when she was waiting for her dog to eat its whipped cream.

As for the flower thing, well, I thought it was maybe from an ex trying to win her back. She hadn’t even read the card, which made me think she already knew who it was from, and wanted nothing to do with them.

When the buzzer rang that evening, it turned out to be a massive chopped salad and three different kinds of wraps.

I had no idea if she ordered so much to feed me, or if she was simply that indecisive. But she really only picked at the food as she walked around the apartment with these fucking gold stickers under her eyes and her freshly washed and dried hair in big ass curlers on top of her head.

She did this, I might add, in nothing but a t-shirt and panties.

I get that she was likely used to having people around the house, invading her privacy, so she started to almost see all of us as furniture, but I wasn’t exactly immune to the sight of her long legs and half her fucking ass exposed in her cheeky panties when she reached up above her head for something in a cabinet.

I wasn’t made of stone.

And she was drop-dead motherfucking gorgeous.

I honestly hadn’t been prepared for all that pretty when I made my way into her penthouse and found her standing there looking like she’d just gotten up, despite it being past ten in the morning.

Sure, her makeup was smeared, and she looked bleary-eyed and dehydrated, but, fuck, pretty.

That gangly kid in the picture Marcus had on his desk had curved out in all my favorite ways. Long, soft thighs, flare of hip, high ass, and a great rack.

Then that face.

Christ, that face.

She had somewhat square features with a very defined jaw, pillowy pink lips, and those ice-blue eyes surrounded by dark lashes.

Then all that long, silky hair that I couldn’t help picturing wrapping around my fist and pulling.

“Fuck,” I hissed, raking a hand down my face as I made my way down the hall toward my room, wanting to put some of my shit away now that I was reasonably sure she wasn’t going to rush out without me.

But to get to my room, I first had to pass hers.

Her door was wide open.

And there she was with her back to me, pulling off the shirt she’d been wearing all day. It was a task that took longer than usual since she was trying not to dislodge her curlers.

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