Bad Engagement (Billionaire's Club #10) - Elise Faber Page 0,12
but cozy microfiber couch. It was soft. It was fluffy. It was a deep, deep shade of violet, and she loved it most of all her belongings.
In fact, she loved it as much as she loved the back yard.
And that had taken blood, sweat, and tears to get to its current state. Though, she supposed, the couch had also taken blood and sweat to get it in through the narrow hall. But no tears. Plenty of cursing, especially from her brother and dad, who’d helped her move in, but no tears.
She’d smiled at the memory.
Her parents were so damned proud that she’d managed to scrimp and save enough to buy a house in the competitive Bay Area housing market, her mom only making one comment about how she could sell when she met her future husband because surely, he would want to be part of the house-buying-decision-making process that Kate had been able to easily ignore.
She loved her mom, but damn, could that woman be a dog to the bone.
Still, she had inherited her green thumb from her mom and grandma, her taste in clothing that had notes of trendy but had given her the skills to build a wardrobe with classic, tasteful pieces that had lasted years.
Like the dress Jaime hadn’t been able to tear his eyes off last night.
That was one of her favorites—sexy, flattered her curves, showed just the right amount of tits and ass to make her appetizing but not cross that line into nip slip.
Tits and ass?
Clearly, she’d been watching too much bad reality TV, because that particular vernacular had never been in her vocabulary until she’d begun watching a behind the scenes reality show of strippers and their personal lives.
Most of the time, reality TV was fascinating.
Sometimes her consumption habits reminded her that perhaps she needed to throw in a documentary every once in a while, in order to balance out the brain-melting. Still, it was a guilty pleasure, and one she couldn’t feel too guilty for, given that Kate was in advertising. She found people and their habits fascinating.
What she didn’t find fascinating was the amount of nerves currently swirling around her stomach.
She should call it off.
But then she’d miss out on spending the night with Jaime, miss out on his sweet, miss out on the way he’d held her hand, and how he’d kissed her until she thought that her clothes might just melt off into a puddle, not giving one damn that they were on a public street and anyone might see them.
Public indecency charge? Meh.
She’d had Jaime the Vet’s lips on hers, his body pressed against hers, his fingers on her jaw, his tongue in her mouth.
Yeah. Indecency charges would have been worth it.
But eventually he’d released her mouth, had cuddled her close to his side, and had walked her to her car. She’d been enshrouded in a haze of desire, one she’d wanted to hold on to tightly because it was so potent, but one she’d been forced to pull herself out of because she needed to identify her car.
He’d made it easier by telling her about Barry the Chicken.
Who was apparently a rooster, but his original owner hadn’t known that until she’d ended up with a series of very loud, very abrupt early mornings.
Barry had been rehomed and his current owner lived on a small patch of land with much more understanding neighbors and a love for being up when the sun rose. She’d trained Barry to walk on a leash, and her feisty, feathered companion had become a regular at the clinic.
A rooster named Barry who walked on a leash.
“The man is kryptonite.”
Shaking her head, she gave herself one final glance in the mirror she kept inside her hall closet for just this case—a last-minute outfit check—smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle out of her pretty emerald green fit-and-flare dress, slipped on her flats, and then slicked on one more coat of her Firecrotch.
Heh.
Never got old.
Eyes flicking to the clock and seeing it was a minute until six, she grabbed her coat but didn’t put it on because she wanted Jaime to see her in the dress. Smiling and hoping he’d like it as much as the black one from the night before, she closed the closet door.
Ding. Dong.
Her pulse skittered, speeding up, butterflies emerging from their cocoons to fly in circles in her stomach, her lips and fingertips tingling in anticipation.
“Okay,” she murmured. “It’ll be okay.”
She strode to the door and pulled it open.
Then blinked and felt her