Wrong For You (Before You Series Book 3) (5 page)

He smiled, but it was laced with regret or maybe that was just her imagination and she read emotions into a situation where there were none. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t get the opportunity to cook very often anymore. I like it.”

She nodded. “All right, then. See you tomorrow.” She turned and left before the heavy air of awkwardness caused her to say or do anything else she’d regret when she saw him tomorrow in the real world, where men like him didn’t hang out with women like her.

Chapter Seven

Violet held a pillow over her head to block out the noise of her alarm as it streamed loud music into her room. She didn’t finish working at the Foundation last night until almost midnight and it seemed as if she had crawled into bed less than twenty minutes ago, not five hours ago.

At least she didn’t have any meetings with potential donors today, so she could throw her hair into a ponytail and wear one of her many cotton athletic skirts and a t-shirt. Changing light bulbs and cleaning out old storage rooms was really difficult in a suit and heels. She learned that lesson a week and a half ago. She should have gone home and changed at some point, but after her latest potential benefactor for the Foundation turned her down, she was too angry to care and she threw herself into getting work done.

Initially, she didn’t like the idea of handing the fundraising portion of her job to Alec Reed, but after six months of barely raising three thousand dollars, she needed a break and he couldn’t do any worse than she had. She’d been failing miserably for months.

The world had conspired against her and the Foundation from the minute the new owners of the Foundation’s building took control. Almost immediately, charitable donations to the Foundation dried up and she’d only managed to squeeze money out of her parents and one of her friends, Annette. Out of all her high school and college friends, Annette was the only one she kept in touch with. Annette was a bulldog about their friendship, refusing to let more than a week or two pass without doing something together.

Unable to stand the sound of her alarm for one more second, she rolled out of bed, mentally preparing herself for another day at the Foundation. Funny, she used to love her work, but these days no matter how many hours she invested there, she was always behind, struggling to keep in front of the next problem that dropped in her lap, because for the last six months or so there was always another bigger problem right around the corner for each one she solved.

Just as she finished brushing her hair and teeth, her doorbell rang. With the rent money she received from Alec, she paid her car payment and the utility bills, so at least it wasn’t someone coming to repossess her car.

Without looking through the peephole, she flung the door open.

“Alec?” She had only seen him a handful of times in the last five days since their hike and the muffin incident—when he arrived at the Foundation around nine in the morning and when he left at three forty-five every day. He never stayed until the Foundation closed and he pretty much kept to himself in the office that used to be hers, not even leaving to eat lunch. Instead, he had lunch delivered for both of them. For the most part, he was like a ghost working behind the scenes, but she had caught him watching her… and the kids from the hall outside the gym on a couple occasions. She never acknowledged his presence. It didn’t seem as though he wanted to be seen, but for some reason she felt it in her bones any time he came within twenty feet of her.

“So I have some good news for you,” Alec said, holding two bags of groceries.

“Uh huh,” she said absently, trying to ignore the small part of her that had secretly hoped to see much more of Alec during his month living in her basement. Unlike her last few tenants, she hadn’t heard any noise invading her house from his apartment, not even music. He was the perfect tenant. She couldn’t invent a single complaint. He paid his rent. He never took her driveway parking spot. He didn’t have guests. He didn’t leave a trace of anything, but something about him drew her in and the more secretive he acted, the more she wanted to know about him.

He was one of those dark, brooding, mysterious types that women lost their minds over. She’d never been one of those women. Open, carefree men captured her attention, or at least she thought so until she met Alec. Maybe that was because no man, in her limited experience, had ever done the brooding, dark, and sexy thing as well as him. He mastered it with his dark blue, heavily lidded eyes that spoke of sin, sex, and a whole lot of wickedness she couldn’t even imagine.

“Am I that boring?” he asked, cocking his head, a full-blown smirk on his face.

Oh crap
. He asked her a question and she’d been…daydreaming about him. “Uh, I’m sorry. I was…thinking about eyes.” No, her mind screamed, knowing she sounded like a total idiot. “They’re the windows to the soul,” she added, horrified at the words falling out of her mouth. Good god, she needed a piece of duct tape to slap over her mouth before she started telling him even more embarrassing things like how sexy he looked on her front porch and how she wanted to lick his tattoos.

He raised one dark eyebrow ever so slightly. “Can I come in?”

“Sure.” She opened the door wide, pressing her body flat against the door as he came in.

“Purple, huh?” he said, pausing as he took in the color scheme of her house.

“Lavender,” she corrected.

“What?” He turned to look at her.

“My walls are lavender.”

He chuckled. “Right.”

She needed to stop being an idiot around him.

“Do you live her alone?” he asked, taking in the sparsely furnished living room. Besides, a white slipcovered sofa and a cluster of three end tables, pushed together to give the illusion of a coffee table, the room was more or less empty.

“My brother lives here on occasion.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ryder thrives extreme sports, so he only stays here as long as it takes to save enough money for his next adventure.”

“Does he pay rent?”

“My parents inherited the house from my grandmother. They let us live here as long as we do the maintenance.”

“Does your brother help?”

“When he’s in town.” She cleared her throat, trying to change the subject. “How’s fundraising going?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Her stomach sunk. “Giving up already?” She walked toward the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. She needed caffeine for this conversation.

Dropping two bags of groceries on her kitchen counter, he pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to her.

“What’s this?” she asked as she scanned the numbers detailed in the spreadsheet.

“One hundred thousand dollars in donations. How’s that for a couple weeks of work?”

She blinked. She couldn’t have heard him correctly. “Did you say one hundred thousand dollars, as in US dollars?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I said. I’m glad I was able to say something to get your attention.”

Her mouth dropped open and she shook her head. “No way. How’d you do it?”

“I told you. I have lots of contacts and they were more than happy to donate to the Foundation.”

She dropped her coffee mug on the counter and flung herself toward him, wrapping her arms around his waist before kissing him on each cheek. “Please tell me you know more people,” she said, smiling up at him.

His body stiffened under her hands and his eyes darkened, the dark blue of his irises nearly merging with his swollen pupils. Then it hit her. She practically wrapped her braless, pajama-clad body around this man she knew next to nothing about except that he can raise money like it’s falling out of the sky.

“Plenty,” he answered, his voice thick like velvet.

As she stepped back, his hand moved to her lower back, pulling her forward again, his body pressing into hers, his heat seeping through the thin cotton of her white tank top, his spicy citrus scent filling her lungs. It was way too personal and intimate and that thought alone caused her heart to drum against her ribs.

She should step away, but his fathomless eyes held her captive and she couldn’t do anything but stare back at him, taking in every detail of his face—his slightly crooked angular nose, the light scar that ran through his left eyebrow, his full lips that begged to be touched. No part of him was perfect, but taken as a whole, he was the epitome of perfection, and as much as she tried to convince herself otherwise, she liked the feel of his hard body next her, his big, warm hand pressing into her back sheltering her from God knows what, but damn it felt amazing.

For long, combustible seconds, neither of them moved, the sound of their breathing echoing in the sudden silence of the room. His fingertips whispered along her jaw line, more of a suggestion than a real touch, and even with that little contact, her skin was on fire wanting more of Alec than any woman with half a brain should.

“Sorry,” she finally said, dropping her hands from his waist as her eyes bounced around the room, trying to find safety from his soul-searching gaze. “I don’t know. I got a little excited and I just—”

“Threw yourself at me,” he finished for her, a mocking smile tainting the beauty of his lips.

“Something like that,” she mumbled as she closed her eyes in horror, certain that thirty shades of pink colored her hopelessly pale skin.

He dropped his hand from her back and took a couple steps away from her. She immediately missed his touch. “Don’t worry about it. I’m used to it.”

She believed him. Everything about Alec Reed, from his walk to his velvet voice and his angry tattoos, screamed of sex and sin, and there was no doubt in her mind that most women would die to give him anything and everything he wanted. She couldn’t let herself be one of them. She turned her back to him, adding a teaspoon or two of sugar to her black coffee, stirring it, tasting it, trying to ignore Alec because she felt like a fool, no—an unoriginal fool.

“Violet?” His voice was soft and barely audible. Her name would have gone undetected if the room weren’t incredibly silent, every sound echoing and amplifying unnaturally.

“Uh huh,” she answered without turning around. She couldn’t look at him yet and then he placed his hands on her shoulders, massaging the tension that had become a permanent fixture over the last year and she couldn’t stop herself. She leaned into his heat again, soaking up every ounce of attention he’d give her.

“I’m just fucking with you,” he whispered next to her ear, his warm breath and darkly sensual voice causing all kinds of turmoil in her mind and maybe an unexpected shiver or two that she’d never admit to. He kissed the top of her head before turning around to face him, his face only inches from her, his dark magnetic eyes sucking her in like nothing she’d ever felt before.

She stepped to the side. “What’s that?” she asked, waving her hand toward the bags on the table. She needed to change the subject fast. For her, a woman who’d only had a couple relationships in her life, this situation was dipping into dangerous territory.

He exhaled loudly before he walked to the table and pulled out all kinds of food, setting them on the counter. “Groceries.”

“Oh.” Her brow wrinkled in confusion. “Is the refrigerator in the basement broken?”

“Nope. I thought I’d make you dinner tonight to celebrate making the fundraising goal for the year.”

“What do you mean? I need two hundred and fifty thousand for the year.”

“Yep.” He placed a stick of butter and a bottle of wine in her refrigerator. “I’ll have it by the end of this weekend, if not today.”

“What are you going to do for the rest of the month?” Her stomach lurched at the thought of him walking out of her life so quickly. She didn’t want him to leave yet. Being the only remaining full-time employee at the Foundation bothered her. Sure, she had the kids, but they weren’t her peers, people she could confide in if needed.

“I’m going to raise money.” He grinned. “Unless you want me to stop, but judging from the condition of the building, overfunding the Foundation isn’t possible. The building needs a new paint job on the exterior and interior, the gym floors need to be refinished.” He shrugged. “The whole place needs to be updated.”

“I’d hate to invest all that money in the building when the lease is only for another year. I can’t count on the owners renewing the lease. I think they’d like to sell it.”

“They want to sell it?” His eyes narrowed.

“That’s what I’ve heard.” She took a sip of the coffee she’d abandoned on the counter. “The rumor is that a few developers are interested in demolishing the Foundation and building apartments for college kids.”

“How much?”

“How much what?”

“What do they want for the building?”

“I don’t know. It can’t be much. You’ve probably noticed that the building is in shambles.”

“I’ll find out.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going to find a way to buy it.”

She laughed. “You think?”

He smiled. It was only a small lopsided grin, but her heart may have skipped a beat or two. “I know so.” He folded up the paper grocery bags and stacked them next to the sink. “I have some stuff to take care of today so I won’t see you at the Foundation, but I’ll be here at six to make you dinner.”

“Oh.” She hesitated, not sure how to respond. Dinner sounded nice, but dinner with Alec probably wouldn’t be a good thing, at least for her. The tiny spark of interest she felt on the first day she met him was growing at an unsustainable pace. By this rate, she’d be professing her undying love for him in a week or two. Oh hell, who was she kidding, by the end of dinner she’d be at his mercy. “I’ll probably work late again. I can’t seem to finish everything that needs to be done.”