Page 13 of How To Tempt The Off-Limits Billionaire

“The bathroom is through there,” Muzi said, gesturing her to a wooden sliding door next to the couch. “There’s a robe behind the door and use whatever toiletries you need. I’ll go and get your bags and Greta, my housekeeper, can unpack if you need her to.”

“No need,” Ro hastily assured him. “I’m only staying for a night, maybe two. And only until I can book into a hotel in town.”

Muzi leaned one shoulder into the wooden door frame. He stared at her, his expression now impassive. “So, are you going to sell St. Urban to me today?”

Beneath his offhand comment was a serious note, a hint of desperation she couldn’t easily dismiss. “I could, I suppose.”

“But that’s not going to happen, is it?”

Ro shook her head. “Sensible me thinks that’s a fine plan, but I feel like I want to go back, that Ineedto go back. The house is a mess, but I want to see more of it. I feel like...” Oh, this was going to sound oh-so-stupid. But she’d had a strange feeling from the moment she stepped foot into the house, and it had just increased in intensity since then.

Muzi tipped his head to the side, his expression encouraging her to finish her sentence. “I feel like the house has been waiting for me,” Ro told him.

There, she’d said it, and Ro waited for scoffing laughter or a dismissive comment. She got neither and he just kept looking at her with those intense black eyes.

Man, she was still so tempted to step out of her dusty dress and to dirty that all-white bed linen with him. Ro rubbed a hand over her face and stared at the reclaimed wooden planks beneath her feet. She barely recognized who she was around Muzi. She felt like a walking, talking—babbling!—mess of hormones. With Kelvin, sex had been fun, mostly, but not something she thought about that often. They slept together once a week, sometimes twice and it was nice. Mundane. Satisfactory.

She’d never wanted to climb her ex-fiancé and gobble him up like she did Muzi. He made her feel alive, tuned in and turned on and...uncomfortable. Out of control. She had far too much to deal with, to work through. She did not need her inconvenient attraction to a hot, intelligent, sexy African man to complicate her life.

Too late, cupcake.

“Spend some time at the vineyard, but get the power and water connected at the house first. When you are ready to sell, can you give me the first option to buy?”

It took Ro a few seconds to pull her mind out of fantasyland and back onto the subject. She nodded. “Deal. I’ll also get a contractor out there to give me a proper idea of what needs to be done, what state the house is really in. Obviously, nobody has visited the property for a long, long time,” Ro continued.

“It boggles the mind.”

“It sure does. Why didn’t she just sell it instead of letting it deteriorate?” Ro demanded.

“Maybe your brothers can answer that question,” Muzi said, “but I wouldn’t hold your breath. Radd and Digby didn’t have that much more contact with Gil and Zia than you did.

“People should have to take a test to procreate,” he added.

“Amen to that,” Ro replied. As a teacher who’d encountered far too many less than wonderful parents, she’d campaign for that to happen.

Ro pushed a hand through her hair and dislodged a cloud of dust. Right, priorities, O’Keefe—and hers should be to get clean. While washing the dust off her body, maybe she could flush Muzi from her mind. It was worth a try, she thought.

“I’ll meet you on the veranda in thirty minutes,” Muzi told her, his intense eyes clashing with hers.

“Are you sure it’s okay for me to stay? I don’t want to intrude on your solitude or impose on you in any way.”

Maybe she was hoping that he’d say that she was, that he’d take her back to Cape Town. Her mind knew they needed distance, emotional as well as physical. Still, she didn’t want to be anywhere but here with him.

And that was dangerous.

Muzi took a step, then another to reach her and his knuckles skimmed up and down her bare arm. She sucked in a breath, felt her stomach contract, and that special space between her legs pulsed with want and need. So, that was new...

“If I didn’t want you here, I would’ve driven back to the city. You can trust what I say, Ro.”

She managed a small smile and it took all her willpower to step away instead of stepping into his arms. “Thank you.” She gestured to the door leading to the en suite bathroom. “I’m going to shower.”

Muzi walked away from her and she fought the urge to call him back, to offer him her body. What was it about this man who tempted her to step into his arms, what was with her need to get closer, to discover the secrets lurking in those black, black eyes? She’d better get a grip, Ro told herself, because there was no way she was walking down that road. It was littered with land mines. Her attraction to him was too intense, out of control. Maybe she was overreacting to him because Kelvin cheated on her and she was looking to get her sexual mojo back.

Whatever the reason, it was imperative to get her attraction to Muzi under control.

Ro walked into the bathroom, thinking that, had she been asked a year or two ago, she would never have imagined that she’d be single as she approached her thirties and that Kelvin would cheat on her.

She would’ve scoffed at the suggestion of her birth parents leaving her a king’s ransom and she would’ve protested the idea of her parents divorcing.

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