Page 54 of Irresistibly Dangerous

She curls up in her seat and places her elbows on the console and her chin on her fists. “Enlighten me. You know I’ve been waiting for this.”

I rub at the threatening grin on my lips. “We’re going to drive to my shop first. We need to switch cars before we pick up Alice at the shop where Brooklynn is meeting me with her.”

She blinks at me. “Alice? Brooklynn?”

“Alice is my dog, and she has been staying with Brooklynn, who is my shop assistant and piercer. The shop is closed on Mondays, but she’s waiting for us there.”

“Your dog is named Alice?”

“I didn’t name her that. She was abandoned, her tracking chip cut out of her leg, but she still had a tag on her neck that said Alice. I found her digging through the dumpster near the shop.”

A slow, easy, sexy-as-all-sin smile spreads across her face making her green eyes sparkle against the sunlight filtering in through the windshield. “You really have a thing for helping bitches in distress.”

I let out a soft chuckle, yanking on a piece of her crimson hair. You are deserving, Lenox Moore. Every bit as much as Zax was, if not more. If you love Georgia, which I suspect you do since you look at her like she’s your universe, then don’t let that go simply because you didn’t do right by her once. Don’t stand in your own way when you can have everything.

The way Aurelia’s words are drilling holes through me and filling up the emptiness with hope and possibility is killing me.

“I can’t tell you how excited I am to see your world and you in it, Lenox. It’s like getting unfettered access to Batman’s cave. A perfect example is I didn’t know you had a dog or an assistant named Brooklynn. I still can’t wrap my head around how you’re a mild-mannered business owner by day and a dangerous vigilante by night.”

“You’re mixing comic book heroes.”

She shakes her head. “It’s all part of your mystique, and I get a front-row view. Has any woman other than Suzie ever had this privilege?” Her hand quickly shoots up. “Wait. Never mind. Don’t answer that. I definitely don’t want to know.”

“No,” I answer anyway. “There hasn’t been.”

“Phew!” She wipes the nonexistent sweat from her forehead. “Thank God, right? I may still want to run your balls through the food processor, but I don’t want to hate on a woman I’ve never met before. It’s bad form.”

“And what about for me? I’ve had to hear about your past lovers and am dealing with your most recent ex.”

“Yes, but you don’t possess the weird jealous streak I clearly do.”

If only she knew.

“Go on. Tell me more.”

“Take out your phone and Google Lavender Lake Town Forest.”

She arches a graceful brow at me but immediately picks up her phone and Googles it. “It says it’s a state preserve, swamp, and wetlands and that hiking, camping, fishing, swimming, or boating aren’t permitted in that area.”

“That’s my house.”

“Huh?”

“I own roughly fifteen hundred acres, including seventy percent of Lavender Lake. There is a small public beach with access from closer to town, but there is a divider in the lake and the part I own isn’t accessible. Considering how close we are to the ocean, no one really cares.”

“I’m… confused.”

“The town of Lavender Lake sits between the mountains and the ocean. When I bought the land and built my house, I removed any information about myself from any searchable database. I pay taxes, but the government has no real record of my home or my owning the land.”

“That’s why the paparazzi, Alfie, and Ezra won’t be able to find us there.”

I nod. “Now you’ve got a better understanding of why we pressed for this.” Though there is more I haven’t discussed with her yet. A lot more. “The townspeople more or less know that I live somewhere in there, but none of them bother me and never cross over the divider line in the lake, which would be the only accessible way to get to my house.”

She tilts her head, studying me, curiosity dancing across her features. “Why? I mean, most people seem anxious to exploit in the name of a buck.”

I don’t answer her. Instead, I take a left and drive down Main Street toward the shop. “We’re here. Welcome to Lavender Lake.”

Chapter Sixteen

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