Bittersweet (Redemption #3) - Jessica Prince Page 0,1
floor. She’d given me a list of things that needed to be completed before we could move on to the next house, so I quickly got to work.
Two hours in, I felt like I’d barely scratched the surface of everything there was to do. Already my back ached, some of my hair had fallen out of the knot on the top of my head and was matted to the thin film of sweat on my forehead and neck. My shirt was clinging to my chest and the small of my back, and I smelled like lemons and chemicals from polishing all the wood in the upstairs office—and there was a lot of it. An executive desk so damn big and imposing I couldn’t help but think that the man who sat behind it was overcompensating for something, three full walls of floor-to-ceiling bookcases in a deep, rich, cherry, and a wet bar.
Cleaning every nook and cranny of that room was a pain in the ass, and as I stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind me, I let out a sigh, thinking that the last room I had left couldn’t possibly be worse than that one. My stomach sank as soon as I twisted the knob on the door across from the upstairs office and pushed it open.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
The room was a pigsty. Clothes lay scattered everywhere, the dresser drawers hung open, their contents partially spilling out. The whole place stunk like dirty gym socks and . . . something else.
I stepped farther into the room, ignoring the discarded condom wrappers that littered the floor and nightstand beside the bed, and moved slowly toward the desk that rested against the far wall just below a diamond-paned window. I discovered what the other smell was when I spotted the ashtray with a half-smoked blunt resting lazily against the side.
It took all of five seconds to form an instant dislike for the kid who stayed in this room. “Rich, spoiled prick,” I muttered under my breath.
“Didn’t your parents teach you it’s not nice to judge a book by its cover?”
Sucking in a frightened gasp, I clutched the material of my shirt over my heart and whipped around. At the sight of a boy standing in the doorway—if boy was even the accurate term to describe him—all the air expelled from my lungs and my mouth grew as dry as a grassy field in the middle of a sweltering summer drought.
He looked to be around eighteen, but he was taller than all the boys I went to school with, standing at least an inch over six feet tall. He was all loose-limbed and casual as he leaned against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest, hiding the image on his tee, but I was still able to make out the design well enough to know it was a name brand that no one I hung out with could afford. The stance highlighted his swollen biceps and thick forearms. His artfully ripped jeans and expensive-as-hell sneakers probably cost what most people would pay for a month’s rent, and he let off an air of cocky entitlement. He was gorgeous and he knew it.
His eyes were surrounded by slashes of dark, naturally arched brows and long, thick lashes that made me envious. Those dark depths did a sweep of me from top to toe, the intensity in their depths making me shiver as I stood there, trapped in place by his gaze. I felt exposed, completely bare as he took his time and looked his fill.
“Sorry. I didn’t know . . . I was just—”
“Snooping through my shit?” he asked with an arrogant smirk, drawing my attention to his lips. They were full and plump, the bottom one a bit puffier than the top. They looked incredibly soft, like they were just made for kissing.
My back went straight. “I wasn’t snooping,” I shot back indignantly, squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin while ignoring the way his toothpaste-perfect grin made my heart speed up and my skin prickle. “And didn’t your parents ever teach you not to be a disgusting slob?”
My response made the corners of his mouth curl up even higher, turning his grin into a full-blown smile that ramped up his hotness even more. It was as if he liked me fighting back.
“You’re just a ray of sunshine, aren’t you? For your information, my parents didn’t really teach me shit. To them, that’s what boarding