Page 5 of Off-Limits Mate

“We’re not selling!” I hear someone yell from behind the door. “Go away.”

Then there’s silence.

I frown. I knock again.

“I said go away!”

I knock a third time.

There’s an angry noise, and I hear the door click, then it creaks open. I’m pretty confused, and I’m sure it’s written across my face. I open my mouth to speak. Then, I close it.

The woman standing behind the open door is fucking stunning. She’s tall, wearing some kind of loose t-shirt and matching pants that look comfortable. It’s not scandalous or anything, and I’ve seen women wear far less, but it drapes over her beautiful curves, leaving me with absolutely no doubt that this woman’s body is fucking incredible. Way too late, I realize that I should be looking at her face.

She’s looking at my truck. “Look, this is my brother’s place, and realtors like you are always here to try and…”

She narrows her hazel eyes at me. Hazel like Nolan’s.

Again, way too late, I realize that this isn’t some random woman staying at Nolan’s house. Not a supermodel that he fished out of the streets, or that he just fucking found in the forest.

The muscles in my throat work as I swallow around the lump in it. I feel like I’m sweating. Finally, I look at her, and I say the word that’s been sticking in my throat.

“Amara?”

Chapter 3

Amara

The truck threw me.

That’s what I keep telling myself as I nervously try to pour out a glass of lemonade for Jasper and myself, my hands practically shaking as I do. The window closest to the front of the house doesn’t see who’s at the door, but it can see the cars in the driveway, and when I saw a brand-new truck that costs at least a cool eighty grand, I assumed that it was one of the stupid realtors again.

Then I opened the door. And it was him.

Last night, I thought that I had to be making it up. That there was absolutely no way Jasper could be as handsome as I remembered him, since everyone has a crush on their brother’s best friend at some point.

Proximity. Hormones. Sorrow, stemming from the loss of my parents, that made me cling to anyone I saw as a protector in my life. You know. Classic reasons that any kid would have been mostly in love with her older brother’s best friend.

All of those things were the reasons, I thought, that I had to have completely made up how attractive Jasper was.

I could have googled him. He played in a band for a while, and then his job in New York was with a record label, so I’m sure he had some kind of public presence. But I was so certain that he physically could not look as good as in my memory, that I didn’t bother.

Now, I wish that I had. The man that I opened the door to looked… good. Damn good. The man sitting on the couch, waiting for me to bring back this stupid lemonade, looks impossibly good. Like, it’s not fair how amazing Jasper looks.

He’s always been attractive, clearly. I’m not the only one who thinks so. He was in a band when he and Nolan were in high school, playing guitar, and that brought girls to our house like you would not believe when they were hanging out together.

I loved to play pranks on them. It was delightful. But if I think about how he looked then, it was… cute. Like, a boy band member that you’d put a poster up in your room, but cute.

Jasper isn’t cute anymore. He’s fucking devastating. The too-long hair that always looks like someone just ran their nails through it. The way his jaw has evolved, the line of it going from handsome to just straight up cut and sexy. He’s not wearing anything revealing; a plain black t-shirt and black jeans that are very New York of him. But it’s the way his shirt hangs on his frame. It’s the way he moves, and you can see the lean twist of his biceps. It’s the way he moves his throat when he speaks…

Snap out of it, Amara.

I take a deep, steadying breath. So what if Jasper is the most attractive person I’ve ever seen in my entire life? He’s just Jasper. He’s Nolan’s friend, and I owe him some damn lemonade.

My hands aren’t even shaking by the time I grab the two glasses, which I’m more than a little proud of. I saunter back into the living room, a fake smile plastered on my face.

“Sorry about that,” I say, handing him a glass before I move as far away as possible on the couch. “The truck made me think you were one of the slimy realtors that keep coming up from Denver to try to get Nolan to sell this place.”

Jasper sips the lemonade. His steel-gray eyes never leave my face, and it’s enough to make me sweat, despite the cool of the air around us. “Realtors?”

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