Dropping The Ball - A New Year’s Billionaire Romance - Weston Parker Page 0,28

his sentence. “To my room. Not your room, obviously.”

“Of course.” I giggled.

Giggled. I didn’t giggle. I thought I’d outgrown giggling. But with him around? Jeez. I was turning into a habitual giggler.

We’d gone from comfortable chatting to awkwardness again in ten seconds flat. I swore I even saw the faintest streaks of red when I nearly bumped into him at the door.

“Good night, Rylee,” he said, suddenly seeming stiff again.

I sighed internally. Things had been going so well. I’d even really started believing that having him living with me wouldn’t be weird. If this kept happening though, it was going to be more than weird. It was going to be torture on my ovaries and my freaking battery expenses.

“Good night, Carter. I’ll see you in the morning. I hope you sleep well.” I already knew I wouldn’t be.

Maybe I should look into getting him that new lock installed on his door. We were only on day one, and I was already starting to wonder what he’d say if I climbed him like a jungle gym. What the hell would I be thinking about by day ten?

It probably wasn’t going to be pretty, and I was pretty sure it would be very, very much against the rules.

Chapter 11

CARTER

Living with Rylee was going to kill me. The weekend had been very low key, and we’d hardly left her penthouse.

I hadn’t even seen that much of her after Friday night, but I was already going out of my mind. Just knowing that she was around occupied my mind day and night, wondering what she was doing and whether she was avoiding me after the extreme fucking awkwardness between us my first night here.

When we’d run into each other after, our exchanges had been friendly but brief. Although it’d only been one full day, Sunday had been a welcome reprieve. I took Max for a long walk and went to fetch my bike.

Bart and I had met for a beer in my room when I got back to Rylee’s, and we discussed some of the other jobs he’d pulled me off of so I could be with her. She’d popped in to say goodbye, and when I’d gone down to the kitchen later, there was a plate of food waiting for me but no Rylee.

Since I hadn’t been on this assignment for very long, I didn’t know whether it was out of the ordinary for her to spend so much time on her own, but I had a feeling she was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that I was here. Her questions about whether it was weird for me clued me into the fact that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the arrangement—even if it’d happened at her request.

I’d decided to give her until this morning before I approached her about it. I didn’t want to put too much pressure on her, but since it was Monday, we needed to figure this shit out before we could get out there to do our jobs.

While I waited to see if she would come to me, I scoped out the house and finished setting up a few more cameras. The building security was good, but she had next to nothing in her home. The lock on her front door wouldn’t help very much if someone managed to make it into the building.

As I was wrapping up the installation in the TV room, Rylee finally made her appearance. She walked in wearing a winter get-up, looking like heaven in a powder-blue jacket, a scarf wrapped loosely around her neck, and her hair loose to frame her face.

I smiled. “Good morning. I’m almost done installing the cameras Bart told you about. Want me to walk you through where they are?”

“In a minute.” She shifted on her feet, her eyes intent on mine before she came all the way into the room. “I wanted to talk to you about how we’re going to do this.”

“Okay. Shoot. What’s on our agenda for the day?”

“A few things, but I wasn’t just talking about that.” She looked down at her hands before I saw her shoulders squaring as she lifted her ice-blue gaze back to mine. “How much have you been told about my comeback?”

“Not too much. All I know is that it’s happening and that you wanted to hire someone confidentially because the information isn’t public yet.”

She nodded slowly, some of her discomfort visibly melting away. “One of things that’s been worrying me about having you around is