Page 9 of Home Game

“Yes,” I said pointedly glancing over his stupid fancy suit again. “I’m aware of that. That’s why I’m enlisting the help of the Fixer Brothers.”

“I’ll be damned,” Nathan interjected, grinning wide as he stepped up beside us. “You two areneighbors!Well, this will be fun.”

“Ifyou end up taking on Storm’s house as a renovation project,” Emmett clarified.

Nathan threw out his arms, looking back at my house. “I don’t see why we wouldn’t. This place is going to shine up beautifully with some TLC and a few sledgehammers.”

I cut a glance at Emmett, wondering what the hell his deal was.

He was already acting like he was somehow better than me, in that classic rich-prickish way, and I’d barely met the guy.

“Well, should we head in?” Shawn said, clapping his hands together.

“So long as Storm doesn’t push us out through his front door,” Emmett said, smiling slightly as he looked at me.

A flash of anger flared through me.

He was referencing a time when I’d pushed someone out of my front door, and the media had gone wild covering the story.

Okay.

So hedidhave a sense of humor—just an undeniably prickish one.

And it was clear he had seen some of my less-flattering news headlines from last year.

“Hey, Fancy Pants,” I said to him, “when I pushed that guy out of my house, I wasn’t trying to hurt him. And you don’t have the whole story. Nobody in the media did.”

Emmett’s jade-green eyes landed on me. “I read that he broke a wrist trying to break his fall.”

I set my jaw. “Well, what youdidn’tget to read is the whole story. And that the reason he was in my apartment is because he entered uninvited,” I said. “And that he was drunk, belligerent, and was the abusive ex-husband of my friend Sarah. She was at my house looking for a place to escape him, so yeah, I fucking tossed him out the front door.”

Anger had stirred up inside my chest, but I was glad to have a reason to put Mr. Fucking Fancy Pants in his place.

“Holy shit,” Shawn said quietly from beside us. “I’d seen those headlines, but I had no idea, either.”

Emmett was silent.

Finally I’d gotten the pretty-boy prince to shut up.

“I didn’t expect him to slip and break a wrist, of course, but I wasn’t going to let him come in and hurt Sarah. Not for anything.”

“It was a bad joke to make,” Emmett said, pulling in a breath and smoothing out his suit. “I apologize. And sure, let’s take the house tour now. See if it could potentially be a fit for the Fixer Brothers show.”

Man,this guy was going to get under my skin.

My house could “potentially” be a fit? What the hell?

My spidey-senses were tingling, and I puzzled out the stick up Emmett’s ass from a mile away.

He was a marketing guy.

A rich, greedy, marketing guy, who saw nothing but dollar signs with the Fixer Brothers—and nothing buttroublewith me. It clicked inside me like stadium lights turning on all at once, pouring light out onto a field.

Emmett didn’t want me to be the next client on the Fixer Brothers’ TV show.

And that was exactly why I was going to make sure Iwas.

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