Page 39 of Head Over Heels

“I believe so.”

“What are you going to do with that?” he asked.

“Nothing. Have it moved to a storage unit and I’ll sell it as a lot, or have someone hold an estate sale as soon as I’m done. All I need to know is that it’s on the market and I can get back to my life,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few hours to meet with a local real estate agent, so just leave the key inside. I trust the residents of Sisters won’t gut the place in such a short window of time.”

“Doubt it,” he said easily. “We really like to take our time with looting abandoned properties.”

“Funny.”

“Don’t worry, Ivy. All you’ll find here is friendly curiosity and more offers to help than you’ll know what to do with. Give it a couple of weeks, and I bet you won’t want to leave.”

I snorted. My dad would stroke out.

Wouldn’t that be a fitting end to this entire inane banishment?

This test. That was all it was. A fucking test.

My skin crawled whenever I thought of my dad’s coldly delivered directive.

I’d never felt like I had to earn his love before. But I did now. And the road to get there looked like a dusty old house covered in profit potential.

Everything in me—my bones and my heart and my freaking sanity—creaked ominously, like one stiff push would send me scattering into a million pieces.

Cameron studying me like a puzzle sure as hell didn’t help.

I didn’t need him trying to figure me out.

Not now.

Not ever.

He was a blip. Who I was with him was even less than a blip.

“So that’s it?” he said.

I sighed, giving him an arched look. “Isn’t that enough? Unless you can’t handle the idea of working for me. Tell me now, because I’ll call someone else.”

Please. It was a pointless bluff that he had every right to call me on. There was no one else for me to call. They were the only company able to take me on immediately, and based on the knowing glint in his eyes, he knew it too.

And good Lord why did he have such nice, long eyelashes?

Ridiculous.

“Oh I can handle it,” he said smoothly. “Once you meet Greer, you’ll understand just how comfortable I am with a confident woman running things. My sister would kick my ass with a smile on her face, and I’ve been running a business with her for ten years. I wouldn’t know what to do with any female who was too sweet and accommodating.”

Cameron didn’t say it to be cute or clever.

He meant it, and somehow, that was so much worse. Made him even more dangerous.

Naturally, I decided to ignore that too, even though he dangled the statement over me like it was bait on a hook, and he knew it would get a reaction out of me.

“Will you have an estimate ready tomorrow?” I asked.

“I’ll get right on it, boss.” Then he grinned. “And just think, now I have all this time to get to know the real you.”

I clenched my jaw, and somehow, I just knew it didn’t have the same effect on him as when he did it to me.

Fucking sexist, that jaw was.

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