Page 37 of Beautiful Beast

This is fine. Even her grandmother had my phone number. It doesn’t mean a thing. I’m just beingneighborly.

“I won’t,” she assures me. “I don’t like to share.”

Buster comes to sit in front of me, waiting expectantly for me to pet him. I drop down to my haunches, my fingers grazing the smooth scar on his side. It’s big and misshaped, something I’ve been wondering about since I first noticed it.

But I don’t like being asked about mine, so I won’t ask about his either.

“I came to talk to you,” I repeat.

“So, you said.”

I rise to my feet and take a cursory glance around. I’ve been inside Annie’s apartment several times to help her move furniture and change lightbulbs, and Belle has already left her mark on the place.

There are books on every available surface, clothes discarded on the floor and hanging on random pieces of furniture, and dog toys all over the floor.

It reminds me of a college dorm room and reinforces the point that this girl is way too young for me.

“I’m happy to continue being neighborly with you,” I start, using my new favorite word. “But I think–”

“Do you kiss all your neighbors?” she interrupts with a sweet-as-pie smile.

I glare at her. “You basically forced me.”

“Sure.”

“Anyway,” I continue. “I’m not looking for a girlfriend, and–”

“Oh, cut the shit, Adam,” she interjects. “When a guy says that to a girl, all he means is that the girl he’s talking to isn’t the one he’s looking for. If a woman you thought was perfect for you appeared, you’d suddenly be ‘looking for a girlfriend.’ So just shut up.”

She isn’t wrong.

Not that my perfect girlfriend would even want to look at me right now.

“It’s not personal, okay?” I reply, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Believe me, it’s not that I don’t find you sexy, funny, smart, and all of those good things.”

Understatements of the century.

Belle is by far the sexiest woman I’ve ever been fortunate enough to look at, and she’s such a special person that she has already started breaking down my reinforced walls.

“I’m a decade older than you, I’m currently taking over my family business and have zero spare time, and it would just never work between us,” I continue, trying to convince both of us. “Dating is a horrible idea.”

If she was closer to my age, I’d say fuck it and overlook the other things.

But she is way too innocent and naïve to belong to someone like me.

She starts ticking rebuttals off on her fingers. “You’re old, I agree. But you’re not like geriatric old. You clearly have spare time because you’re here listing all the reasons you don’t have spare time. And nothing will work if you don’t put the effort in. If you don’t want to date me, why don’t you at least want to fuck me?”

Christ.

She never stops surprising me.

“Of course, I want to fuck you,” I return. “But you’re not the casual sex type.”

“How would you know?”

I’m surprised she isn’t sticking her tongue out.

“Okay, I’ll play. How many one-night stands have you had?”

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