Page 86 of He's The Reason Why

He glanced at Piper.

“Venti Pumpkin Spice Latte.”

He repeated her request. “Make it two of those, and can you stop by Tasty Pastry and get some of those quiches? Get some for the crew too. Thanks.”

She folded her bra up and stuffed it into her purse. “He showed his butt inDream Bigtoo. Della made me watch that scene on repeat, and there wasn’t anything wrong with it.”

Blake started to collect all of the fallen sticky notes. “That wasn’t his butt. It was one of the stunt guy’s.”

She snorted a laugh. “He had a butt double?”

“Always.”

“Why?” She found her shirt and leggings and put them on, leaving the blanket neatly folded on the back of the chair.

Blake’s expression turned secretive. “I can’t tell you. Trust me, the only reason he made this deal in the first place was because he thought I’d cave, not because he thoughthewould.”

“Come on. Spill.” She was dying of curiosity. “Why would the great Marshall Weston, the man who appeared to have no shame and no boundaries, be afraid of showing his backside?”

Blake shook his head, and his chin tilted a little in stubborn refusal. “Can’t. Sorry.”

They spent the next thirty minutes cleaning up the mess in the office. When they were done, the piles of paper were stacked neatly on the table by topic, the sticky notes were in the trash, and the room felt less like the aftermath of a storm.

The whiteboard, though, looked like someone had dragged a giant eraser across the middle of it. She supposed that was where her butt had been.

They shifted to the kitchen when breakfast arrived. Piper walked around the kitchen, stunned by the size of it, while Blake set up the quiche and coffee on one of the islands. “I think your kitchen is bigger than the one at the Belhurst. Are you a chef or something?”

Blake snorted. “I don’t cook. My housekeeper loves it though.”

The exposed beams from the living room continued into the kitchen to blend with the rich, dark wood of the cabinets. White stucco walls and arched doors leading out onto the patio made the space bright and comfortable, but what caught her attention was the two eight-foot-long kitchen islands in the center of the room.

“Carrie would bust something if she saw this setup.” Piper walked down the space between the islands with her arms outstretched. “You basically have a runway.”

“Is Carrie your housekeeper?”

“Lord, no. Carrie’s the chef at my sister’s inn. My place isn’t big enough to need a housekeeper. I like it, though. It’s cozy. Yours feels like a resort.” She ran her hand along one of the cabinets. “Is it just you and the housekeeper here?”

“Full time, yes. But she brings in a crew to help clean sometimes, and Marshall stays here a lot.”

“It’s a lot of space for one guy and his housekeeper to rattlearound in. Seems like it would be lonely. Why didn’t you go for something smaller?”

Blake busied himself with heating up the quiche. “The director who owned the place used to have a lot of dinner parties, and my mom would bring me with her sometimes. When he died, some meth heads bought it and by the time it was repossessed it needed too much work to resell, especially because there’s rules when it comes to renovating something historic. It sat abandoned for almost a decade, until I came along. I just didn’t want to see it fall apart.”

He put two plates and the Starbucks elixir on one of the islands. “Breakfast is served.”

She climbed onto a barstool and spent the next few minutes in pumpkin-flavored caffeine bliss while Blake eyed his with suspicion.

She pointed at his coffee. “You going to drink that or not?”

Blake took a tentative sip of his coffee.

She waited for his reaction.

He licked his lips and gave a grudging nod. “Not horrible.”

“Not horrible? It’s Nirvana in a cup.” She took another sip and gave a happy sigh. “This is my bliss.”

He took another cautious sip and smacked his lips. “It tastes like pie.”

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