Page 30 of So Close

Smart girl.

15

She needed to stress bake.

After her visit with her brother, she’d sat down with Chiara and set up a Bootstrapper page, then trudged into town to visit all four banks and credit unions. Two had said no outright.

It wasn’t that they were unfriendly. They were eager to do business with her, in the form of a twenty percent-down mortgage, which—they explained hastily—was already generous—hotel loans usually had down payments of twenty to fifty percent. But since they knew her family, and her brother had a proven track record, and she herself had so much hotel experience …ifshe could raise the money for a twenty percent down payment some other way, they’d be overjoyed to loan her the rest.

The third and fourth lenders …

Keegan Horan, an old friend of her father’s, and Diane Cooper, who’d worked with Levi on the Cape House loans, had both said they’d see what they could do. They’d asked her to send them all her financial information and they’d assess the possibility of extending her a low- or no-down-payment loan. They’d promised to get her an answer, one way or the other, by Friday, the day after the July 4th holiday. Keegan had been his usual gruff but reasonable self, and Diane had been gentle and sweet, but Auburn wouldn’t exactly characterize either of them as brimming with optimism. More like—not wanting to burst her tiny little bubble.

Still—it wassomething.

Of course, before the money could matter, she still had to win over Trey. And he obviously didn’t want to be won—every time she thought she’d begun to see a glimmer of his sympathetic side, he hid it away beneath that icy exterior. Could you make someone fall in love with something if he was determined not to? The romance writers clearly thought so, and they’d assured her they knew their stuff. Auburn wasn’t so sure. Trey didn’t seem like a guy who’d just … slip-slide his way into anything.

And there was always the chance that he’d just flat out lie, even if shedidwin his sympathies. Say she hadn’t.

Except the one thing she sensed from Trey was that he was honest. To the point of bluntness, in fact. She couldn’t imagine himlying.

But she really didn’t know him at all, did she? She’d thought Patrick was a decent guy, too, until it had been impossible not to see the truth.

Oh, bloody hell, this was such a mess.

Making cookie dough always calmed her down and cleared her head.

Auburn made loads of dough at a time, then froze it so she could bake a batch of assorted cookies fresh each afternoon—chocolate chip, ginger molasses, peanut butter, snickerdoodle. Prepping new batches of dough couldn’t help but restore her equanimity.

Only, when she made her way back to the kitchen, there was a man on her floor with his head under her sink.

Trey.

Wearing jeans and a soft gray t-shirt. The first time she’d seen him in anything other than businesswear.

The t-shirt had ridden up and the jeans had ridden down—just a little—showing a narrow band of golden ridged stomach and just the very top edge of the place where his skin turned white and his hip muscle dove—er, south.

That little bit of pale, bare skin did something weird to her insides. It was like a visual reminder that Trey had an underbelly, a vulnerable side. That he was a mere mortal like the rest of them.

She was afraid that if she startled him, he’d hit his head on something, so she held very still and watched, probably for longer than was appropriate. The jeans were well-worn and clung to his thighs, and when he wiggled to adjust his position, all the muscles she could see bunched and flexed and—

Her mouth was dry, which seemed to be because all the liquid in her body had pooled, like hot gold, between her legs.

She turned, tiptoed out of the kitchen and stood outside it contemplating her next move. She tried very hardnotto think about the thigh muscles she’d seen under his jeans. Or any of the other contours his jeans had made, hugging his body…

She needed a clear head to do this. She could not, couldnotafford to be attracted to Trey Xavier. If she lost her head, she had no doubt he would rampage over her like … well, like a construction vehicle clearing ground for a new development.

She re-entered the kitchen, making as much noise as humanly possible. It worked. He slid himself out from under the sink. His t-shirt rode up even further, but he yanked it down when he saw her. “Oh. Hey.”

“Hey,” she said. “What are you doing under my sink?”

“I had to fix that leak.”

His phrasing struck her oddly. “Youhadto?”

For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he sighed and sat up. His eyes were troubled, the sky over the Pacific before a storm.

“I hate anything that’s broken or ugly. I have a—I guess you’d call it a compulsion—to fix it. Comes from growing up in a shithole.”

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