Second Chance Mess (Bad News Billionaires #1) - Lucia Jordan Page 0,20

left for the day. Brook and I were finishing up some work on the publicity ads that we were going to launch on the company’s website after the project was completed. “I was wondering if you’d like to come to see my house.”

She looked up at me with a suspicious stare.

“I’ve already been to your apartment, Tim. We used to date, remember?”

I knew she was sarcastic, but she still had no idea what I was actually referring to.

“That apartment isn’t my house,” I said. “It’s just my downtown apartment that I keep for late nights at work so that I don’t need to drive to the mountains every day during the week.”

“You have a home in the mountains?” she asked as she lifted her head to look at me fully.

“Yes, and it’s actually an amazingly designed building. It’s made out of four of our modular container homes. Max helped me to design it. I’d really like you to see it and get your opinion about the design conversion. There’s no other house like it, and I thought that maybe I would incorporate a few of the aspects of the build into the Spokane project.”

I could see that she was really interested and wanted to see the house. I also noticed that she was hesitant about coming home with me.

“Look, I promise that it’s just to come to see the house. I won’t try to kiss you or touch you, and we don’t have to talk about anything but the design elements. You can follow me there in your car and leave whenever you want.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about your house while we were dating?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I didn’t think about it.”

There were a lot of things I didn’t think about while we were dating. In fact, there were a lot of things that I’d never thought about before now. I didn’t know why I didn’t feel the desire to show Brooke my house in the mountains and why now I wanted so badly for her to see it. It was like my priorities had shifted at some point when I wasn’t paying attention. I waited for her to answer, expecting her to say no and prematurely feeling bummed that she wouldn’t get to see what a marvelous design feat it was.

“Okay,” she said as she picked up her purse and keys.

“You’ll come?” I asked in surprise.

“Yeah. But just to see the house.”

11

*** (Tim Continued)

I was half afraid that Brooke was going to chicken out and bail on the drive before we even got there. I kept obsessively checking the rearview mirror to make sure she was still behind me and kept waiting for my messages to ding with a text from her saying that she had changed her mind and was going home. But as I pulled up to the house, she was still behind me.

I got out of my car and walked over to her. There was no driveway since the entire structure was literally built into the side of the mountains and nestled between their shoulders. It was all wilderness aside from the one spot of modern innovation that I had built within the landscape. There was no light pollution, no noise from the city—nothing but sky and trees and grassy, wild mountains.

“Wow,” Brooke slowly said as she got out of her car and looked around in a complete circle. “This is incredible.”

“Yeah,” I smiled. “I thought you would like it.”

“Come on,” I said as I went to reach for her hand to bring her up to the house. I stopped myself as soon as I did it, remembering the promise I made to her to be professional and withdrew my hand.

I led the way up to the house, and we stood in front of it for a minute as she marveled at the construction.

“Unbelievable,” she said. “You and Max did this?”

“I mean, yeah. We designed it, and we did a lot of the building ourselves, but of course, I also had a contracted crew to help.”

“Whose idea was it to stack the modular containers off-center of each other like that?” she asked.

“Mine.”

“And who’s idea was it to build it jutting out of the mountainside?”

“That was Max.”

“Amazing,” she remarked almost in a whisper. “The two of you make a truly impressive team.”

I agreed. Max and I did make a great team. The nagging voice in my head told me that Brooke and I made a great team, too, but I kept