Page 14 of Charlie Takes a Chance

Max turns sideways to scoot past me, careful not to brush against me in the narrow hallway. “If they ever try to come up and sleep with you, you can tell them ‘mud room.’ They’re supposed to sleep in there anyway.”

He heads toward the living room to deal with the filthy dogs, and I wonder how I landed in such a situation.

I find this man attractive. It’s completely unfair when he’s an absolute pain in the butt, while looking like that.

CHAPTER 6

Max

Check on Charlie.It’s the one thing left on my list for today. One thing to do before I drive into town for dinner. Because I, for sure, am not going to go sit at the house with Charlie there.

Last night was a disaster. From her just being in the house, her teasing, then when she clung to me when she ran from the dogs? Yeah, no. Too much togetherness already. This is why I know this is a bad idea. I’m not immune to Charlie. Because if I’m not careful, I’ll start thinking about the fact that she’s gorgeous. Or the fact that it felt nice to have her arms wrapped around me.

Nope. This is a well-traveled road that is shut down for repairs until I find my forever.

Charlie is only here for a few weeks. And we definitely are not off to a good start together. Even if I did want to ask her out—and I definitely don’t—she would laugh in my face. Or maybe ask for a restraining order.

I open the lodge’s front door and follow the thumping sounds. I find her in the downstairs bathroom just off of the kitchen. There’s a pile of Sheetrock on the ground in the hallway,and Charlie is in there, standing on the toilet, using a crowbar to pull at the shower walls.

One whole wall is pulled down to the studs. The floor is ripped out, and only the subfloor is left. The insulation is in a pile on top of the Sheetrock.

“Did you use gloves to handle that?” The question slips out before I have the chance to think that through. She’s definitely not going to like the way that sounds. Like I don’t think she would know what insulation is.

To her credit, she doesn’t jump or yell at my sudden arrival. Instead, she moves the crowbar in a slow, deliberate stabbing motion as she peels the shower siding off the walls.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” She drops the crowbar and begins pulling on it with both hands. The whole panel starts to pull away from the wall, and she steps off the toilet, letting her weight pull the rest of the panel off.

“Not really.” Because this is entertaining.

She lifts the panel over the edge of the tub and sets it on the pile next to me.

“I’m a little busy,” she says as she returns to rip off another panel.

“Why exactly are you tearing the shower out?”

“Mold.”

“There was either water left on in here, or the pipes froze and started leaking,” I try to give her an explanation, but the truth is, I don’t really know what happened. This is the most amount of time I’ve spent in this house. I’m not a caretaker; I’m a ranch manager. My job is the cattle. Whatever goes on with this lodge has nothing to do with me or my job description.

“Yeah, whoever was in here almost seemed hell-bent on messing some stuff up.”

“It was the Whitlock’s nephew.” I probably shouldn’t have said that, but I was distracted by how quickly she loosened the tub and was sliding it out.

Charlie pauses and looks over my shoulder. “Wait, the family did this? Nash didn’t say anything about that.”

“They had a little bit of a falling out, I guess. You know. One where the nephew tries to get rid of a family member and keep the inheritance for himself.”

Charlie’s eyes bulge. “It sounds like I should talk to Magnolia more. It’s been a busy year. When she was dating Nash, she said there were some weird family dynamics. I knew it was bad, just not this bad.”

I shrug. “I don’t interact with the extended Whitlocks. I mainly talk to Nash and Alexander Whitlock, his grandpa. But if the rest of the family is like the nephew…” I shake my head. “I’d run.”

Charlie smirks at that. “I’ve heard some stories. What do you think of Magnolia?”

I study Charlie’s face. It feels like I’m walking a fine line of her judging me and deciding if I’m a decent person or not…but I don’t feel like lying just to spite her. “She’s only been out here a couple of times, but I liked her. She was nice. Didn’t invade my space. Was polite. Didn’t try and steal my dogs or sleep on my couch.”

Charlie’s expression gradually grows darker as my words sink in. “It’s probably because she didn’t have thepleasureof enjoying you in your natural state. She probably didn’t get physically dragged out of the house by you.”

I lean a shoulder against the door frame and watch as she pulls the bathtub away from the wall.

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