Page 4 of Can't Take Moore

To: Dean Moore

What do you need from me to make an offer for the house? I’d be buying it with cash and would like to start at fifty thousand under its list price. I’m okay going up to what they’re asking for if needed.

Since I can’t make it down there to see the house myself right now, I would like a home inspection. Could you set that up for me?

I looked over the comparable properties and feel as though it’s safe to skip the appraisal since I don’t need to worry about a mortgage lender. Do you agree?

If they accept, how quickly could we close?

Please reach out to the inspector about the rink. I’d like to get the ball rolling on the installation as soon as possible.

Thanks,

Vienna

An all-cash offer with very few contingencies coming in from a cold contact through my website on a house the buyer had never seen was unheard of. I had put so little effort into this deal that I might’ve even felt guilty if the commission was coming out of Vienna’s pocket instead of the seller’s. This was a heck of a great way to start the day.

I fired back a quick email listing out everything I was going to need from her to move forward with the deal and requesting her phone number in case anything time-sensitive came up during the negotiation with the seller. I also recommended that she still get an appraisal and an inspection, for her own peace of mind and offered to set both of them up for her. With the all-cash offer she was making, my hope was that we’d be able to close in less than two weeks. But I needed to get moving to make that happen.

I rubbed my hands together with a grin before rolling out of bed. When I got out of the shower, another message from Vienna was already waiting for me, letting me know she’d get me everything I needed by tonight.

I didn’t know much about my client except that she liked to ice-skate and apparently had enough money in the bank to buy an expensive property sight unseen. As I added her contact information to my phone and sent a quick text so she’d have mine, I found myself wondering about the woman who would become the newest addition to Mooreville if this deal went through.

As I went through my day, different scenarios popped into my head. The one I thought was most likely was that she was a high-powered executive who’d gotten tired of the rat race and wanted a change of pace. But that possibility was blown out of the water after she replied to my text that night.

Vienna:Everything you need should be on the drive. Let me know if I missed anything.

Me:I’ll go check now.

Me:Did you get my email with the written offer? Once you sign it, I’ll add the proof of funds and send it to the listing agent.

Vienna:It’s already signed and uploaded.

Me:Great! You’re making my job easy.

Vienna:You didn’t ask for much, and I really want this deal to go through.

“So do I,”I murmured to myself as I pulled up the folder with her information. As expected, the balance on her checking account statements was more than sufficient to cover the offer she was making. Many times over.

She had sent three months’ worth of statements, and although the electronic deposits varied by amount and date, they were all substantial. My Fortune 500 CEO theory would’ve held except for one small fact that I discovered when I saw her driver’s license. Vienna Frost was only twenty-two years old.

With long, straight brown hair, wide brown eyes, high cheekbones, and pouty lips that would look fantastic wrapped around my dick, she was also drop-dead gorgeous. BMV photos were notoriously bad, so I could only imagine how much prettier she’d be in person.

I opened another tab on my web browser and started to type her name into the search engine before shoving away from my desk. It didn’t matter how attractive she was because Vienna was a client.

I never mixed business with pleasure.

This was a rule I’d never had a problem with in the past, but I had to remind myself of it many times over the next few weeks.

1

Vienna

Upset that my mom had grounded me, I ran away from home when I was ten. I had wanted to go see my dad, but he lived in another state, and I only made it three streets down before my mom found me. Although I was twelve years older now, I felt much the same as I did back then. Only this time, I actually had a way to get where I was going…the house I’d bought in a town I’d never been to before.

I had timed my escape with the start of my morning workout, which gave me a good eight hours before anyone would think to look for me since today was an off-ice training day. I’d made it all the way to Mooreville without my cell phone ringing once.

As the door to Leaves & Pages shut behind me, my lips curved into a smug grin over how smoothly my day was going. I had spotted the adorable tea room and bookshop on the main drag through town as I followed the GPS directions to my new home. Since the furniture store wasn’t due to deliver all the stuff I had ordered for another thirty minutes, I pulled my Porsche Taycan in a spot right in front of the store.

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