Page 22 of Square Deal

But it was nice. I’d give her that.

I slung my arm around her shoulders and tipped my bottle of sparkling water toward hers. “Cheers to a temporary hurricane truce.”

7

HANNAH JANE

“What hurricane truce?” I laughed, clinking the neck of my bottle against his. “Last time I checked, I was the only thing standing between you and a trespassing charge. You’re welcome, by the way. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be stuck in a seedy motel next to the Marine base in Havelock, listening to jarheads have weird sex through paper-thin walls.”

He chuckled and it made his muscular chest jiggle. I needed to stop looking at his pecs.Pull it together, Han.

“Then I guess I owe you a thank you,” he said, tilting his head to look down at me. “Your house is great, by the way.”

I blushed. It was stupid to be intimidated by him, but Isaac was about as rich as they came.

Maddie had told me stories about what he and Luca used to do before Luca settled down and put a ring on her finger.

I wasn’t a stranger to money—Lord knows my family had more than they needed. But there was a difference between old, southern money and “fuck up your mortal enemies for fun” money. He waswell past the latter. I didn’t even want to think about the opulence his house was filled with.

“It’s a work in progress,” I said.

“I’m serious—I’d hire you in a heartbeat to stage properties,” he commented, looking around the room. “You’ve got a good eye for design. I mean, I guess you have to, you know—with the whole wedding planning thing. But for real. There are no tacky signs that sayLive, Laugh, Love.There’s nothing needlessly labeled in your kitchen. I mean, what is this state’s obsession with putting the boujee version of Comic Sans on every fucking thing? Maddie has a bowl in her house that saysbowl.Like, no shit—we all know what a fucking bowl is.”

I laughed so hard I thought for sure I was going to pee myself. Wiping the tears away from my eyes, I quieted down and said, “It’s just what’s trendy these days, I guess.”

“You do have an entire bowl of lemons in your kitchen,” he muttered. “That’s weird.”

“Why is that weird? You’re the one just raving about my design prowess. It adds a pop of color and looks fresh.”

Isaac raised an eyebrow. “You have twenty lemons in a bowl. Who needs that many lemons?”

“At least the bowl isn’t labeled.”

“True.”

I hid my smile behind a handful of popcorn and turned my attention back to Jim and Pam slowly falling in love from behind their desks at Dunder Mifflin.Soulmates.

Apparently, Isaac wasn’t feeling the friends-to-lovers workplace romance because he said, “Kinda surprised you live in a big house when it’s just you. No roommates. No pets…”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “And?”

He shrugged. “Just making an observation.”

“Sounded more like you were leading the witness.”

“Maybe I’m just curious.” He gave me a casual drop of hisshoulders and a look that begged me to humor him. So, I did.

I washed down the popcorn with a sip of water. “I guess I just want to be ready for whenever I meet my soulmate. I want my house to feel like a home so that when things fall into place, there’s no waiting or getting settled—it’s just right, and life can be good.”

Isaac sat quietly for a moment. He swirled around what was left in his bottle before tipping the mouth toward me and finally adding, “Most guys would be scared off by a woman like you.”

It wasn’t the first time I had been told that, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

“I will not water myself down to be more palatable for others. They can just choke on how awesome I am.”

He threw his head back and let out a startling laugh. “You’re something else. You know that?”

I snickered and snatched a kernel of popcorn, tossing it in the air and catching it in my mouth. I gave it two satisfied chomps and grinned. “Don’t act all surprised. I’m a fucking party.”

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