B00Z637D2Y (R) (7 page)

“When you do, let me know, Mia mine.”

Chapter Five

Two o’clock in the fucking morning. Nobody walks a dog at two in the morning.
Michael had a board meeting at nine and he’d be useless if he didn’t get some sleep. His body was used to a schedule—one that didn’t include taking a dog out to piss in the middle of the night.

Half asleep, he stumbled into the hallway wearing a bathrobe and dress shoes with no socks. He couldn’t find his slippers because the dog had hidden them somewhere, along with his socks and his favorite Hermes tie. He was going to start a tally. By the time he added up the destruction wreaked by this nightmare creature, Dr. Whittelsey would be paying
him.

Too tired to even bother locking his door, he shuffled down the hall toward the elevator. The dog pranced in front of him as if it were leading a parade.

Behind him, a door closed. Mia, wearing gray warm-up pants speckled with paint splatters, a bulky sweater, and no makeup stopped in her tracks when she saw him and leaned a large canvas against the wall.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked. A backpack with paintbrushes sticking out of the pockets was slung over one shoulder and she clutched the handle of an overstuffed rolling suitcase.

Something was wrong. She looked hollow and pale—as if the life had been sucked right out of her. “I might ask you the same thing.”

Giving a one-shouldered shrug, she sighed. “Someone called security and reported that Jason had yelled and banged on the door. It was one call too many. Ms. Braxton told me to be out by morning.”

It was probably the old guy down the hall. It wasn’t Mia’s fault her ex was a rude bastard. Rather than pretending to be this woman’s boyfriend, he should have beaten the shit out of Jason. No. That was only his exhaustion talking. There had to be a solution to this.

Clancy whined and tugged toward the elevator.
“One call too many,”
she’d said. Michael had been responsible for lots of calls. Hell, it was probably his fault this had happened. And he’d thought his night couldn’t get worse. “Where will you go?”

She slumped to sit on her suitcase. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be fine. I always am.”

He had an uncharacteristic and powerful urge to take her in his arms, but he remained still instead. “You don’t have a place to go, do you?”

Tears welled in her eyes and he fought the urge to comfort her again.
Shit.
He could give her some money to rent a place. The dog whined.

Standing, she slipped the backpack over her other arm, grabbed the canvas by the frame with one hand, and clutched the suitcase with the other. “You need to take Clancy out. Seriously. I’ll be fine. I only have to find a place to camp for a couple of weeks before my next housesitting job starts. I can go crash where I work for tonight. I’ll figure it out.”

Michael pulled his phone from his robe pocket and called down to the doorman and offered him a hundred bucks to come walk the dog.

“I thought you had to take care of him yourself. You gave your word.”

“This is more important.”

For a brief moment, her lower lip quivered and his chest ached.

“You’re a nice guy, Michael Anderson.”

Being a nice guy was not something he’d ever put much thought to. Being nice didn’t make a successful company. Looking at her so vulnerable caused something in his chest to constrict to the point it was painful.

No. He didn’t have time for emotions now. He needed to think.
Think. There has to be a solution. She only needs a place for two weeks…
There were too many unknowns here
.
“Where is the rest of your luggage?”

She gave a choked laugh. “This is it. All I own in the world. I’m kind of nomadic, moving housesitting job to housesitting job.”

The elevator dinged and the doorman relieved Michael of the dog. “You said you could go where you work for the night. Where is that?”

In the dim hallway lights, the circles under her eyes were pronounced. She ran her hands through her hair. “I do occupational therapy at Heart’s Home. It’s a retirement community two stops south. I teach art.”

“Family?”

She shook her head. “They travel around even more than I do. None I can stay with.”

Clicking through options in his head, Michael searched for the most appropriate solution to this woman’s temporary homelessness. Ordinarily, he would have simply let her go her way and stayed out of it. There was something about her that intrigued him. Something more than just setting him on fire when he kissed her. This was different than anything he’d ever encountered and he really wanted to figure out what it was before she moved on.

“You look terrible,” she remarked.

He felt terrible. This dog wasn’t rejuvenating his drive, it was wearing him down and negatively impacting his business. If only it responded to him the way it did to Mia.

He almost laughed out loud. Whittelsey told him to be more spontaneous and step out of his routine. Well, this was way off the agenda. “Okay,” he said, delighted by the simplicity of the solution. “I’m going to throw something out here that I think might work out to be advantageous for both of us.”

…

Douches. All men were douches. No matter how successful, educated, handsome, or smart they were, they were all the same. And here, she’d thought he might have cared about her just a little. Stupid thought on her part. She knew better.

It was his line, “This is more important,” that had fooled her. Well, that and the kiss from earlier. Not that she’d expected him to like her in any way other than as a friend, but hell, this was nothing but a business transaction. Cold, calculated, and anything but friendly—just like the man.

Leaning against the inside of his front door, she waited while he wrapped up the transaction. “So, we are agreed, then. No emotional attachment or friendship of any kind will be involved or expected. I will pose as your fiancé at the wedding, and in return, you will live here—”

“On the sofa,” she interjected.

“Yes, on the sofa. I’ll take the dog with me to work during the day, as I promised Dr. Whittelsey, and you will take care of it at night so that I can get some sleep and live a normal life again.”

His normal, ordered, scheduled-to-the-minute life. She rolled her eyes just thinking about it and took a seat on the sofa she would soon call home. “Normal doesn’t include my needing to drown you out with music, does it?”

Something—possibly irritation—flashed in his eyes for a fraction of a second before he resumed his characteristic calm. “Of course not. What do you take me for?”

Attempting to copy his air of control, she leaned back and crossed her legs. “A rich, opinionated, control-freakish, womanizing lothario who doesn’t like dogs and probably doesn’t like children.”

“Lothario? As an artist, I’m surprised you’d choose to paint me only with the widest possible brush.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you don’t know the first thing about me, but you’re judging me.”

She huffed and brushed her hair out of her face. “Okay, fine.”

“Why are you acting this way? I’ve offered a perfectly acceptable solution to both of our problems, and you behave as if I’ve insulted you somehow.”

She did feel a little insulted. From the moment she met him, she’d felt a connection. She had no romantic silly notions, but she thought they could at least be friends and his “solution” expressly precluded friendship of any kind. “You need me a lot more than I need you, Michael. I have a place to stay for tonight. I can camp out at Heart’s Home. You, on the other hand, have a situation that you can’t solve yourself. You need me, and that’s gotta bug the crap out of you.”

He opened his mouth as if to argue, but then closed it without a word. She was right and he knew it. But he was right, too. She
was
behaving badly. A guy like this only saw the end goal. And this probably was his way of being nice—well as nice as he knew how to be.

“It’s a good solution, Michael. It benefits both of us, and fortunately, it’s only for two weeks. I’ll stop being a jerk. I’m just tired. Seeing Jason threw me off and I’m upset at how this thing with Ms. Braxton ended.”

He gave her a nod in reply, but what she really wanted…no, what she
needed
was a hug. Just a simple human touch to let her know everything would be okay, but Michael Anderson was clearly not the touchy-feely type. Well, not without an audience. He’d been plenty touchy when Jason was watching.

“So, do you have any spare blankets?” she asked. “We should call it a night so you can get some sleep before the meeting you told me about.”

After providing her with bedding for the sofa, he paused in the doorway to his bedroom. “It’s going to work out, Mia. We’ll…
you’ll
get through this. I’ll make sure of it.” For a fleeting moment, his features softened.

And for just as fleeting a moment, she believed him.

Chapter Six

This was never going to work, not even for two weeks.

Michael was long gone when Mia woke up, but she could still smell him. Crisp laundered shirts and aftershave. Mesmerized, she stood in his huge closet and stared—no, gawked—no, more like marveled. It was the physical embodiment of how this guy’s mind worked. Everything was in its perfect place. Ties, suits, shirts, even his shoes were in color order. As she turned a full circle, she noticed that his business clothes way outnumbered his casual. It was as if he had no life outside of work at all. Not a single pair of blue jeans. The only casual shoes other than boat shoes and loafers were some serious looking running shoes.

She pulled her bathrobe tighter and shuffled barefooted into the bathroom. One by one, she opened his cabinets. She should have felt bad snooping, but she didn’t. He’d told her to make herself at home, and she
was
living there, after all. Again, everything was perfectly organized by type and then by size. Nothing unusual. Expensive cologne. Expensive nail tools… expensive everything.

His medicine cabinet was empty with the exception of multi-vitamins, one of those pencil things guys use when they cut themselves shaving, and a tiny tube of acne cream. A laugh more like a bark escaped her. Like a pimple would
dare
pop up on his perfect face.

The bedroom, though, was no laughing matter. Looking through his bathroom cabinets didn’t feel like snooping, but merely standing in his bedroom did.

Michael Anderson had the holy grail of bachelor beds. A huge, super-sleek thing that looked like it was floating above the floor. Her heart kicked up a beat as she moved further into the room. The black satin sheets lay twisted and heaped to one side, which surprised her. She figured his bed would be perfectly tidy, just like the rest of his life. She ran her fingers over the smooth, cool satin. Maybe his need for order didn’t extend to his bedroom. Perhaps this was the one place he could relax a little.

She eyed his nightstand and her fingers itched to open the drawers.
No.
That was too far. Too personal. Even with no impulse control to speak of, Mia had to draw a line somewhere. Rifling through a man’s bedroom was too much even for her and her kill-the-cat curiosity. Closing the door behind her, she returned to the living room to get to work on the last of her
Life in the Sun
series.

Dammit!
She’d forgotten her tarps she’d thrown in the storage closet next door and had no way to get them. She’d locked the keys inside Ms. Braxton’s apartment as instructed.

Oh, well. Improvisation was what she did best. Surely she could find something that would work around there. She only needed to finish this one canvas. No biggy.

…

Michael opened the door and then shut it immediately without entering. The dog whimpered and stared up at him.

Surely he’d imagined it. There was no way that woman had covered his floor in garbage bags and flung paint around. No fucking way.

After composing himself, he opened the door and entered, keeping the dog leashed so it wouldn’t walk through the mess and leave Technicolor paw prints on his polished marble and bamboo. Fortunately, there was no sign of his…guest anywhere. He was glad, because although she teased him for having no emotions, he was certainly experiencing a full range at that moment.

The entire space by his television was draped in black garbage bags duct taped together. And leaning against a similarly trash-bag draped Corbusier chair was a huge canvas splattered in vibrant colors. Were it not for the fact it was still wet and in his living room, he might have appreciated the surprising composition and evocative color choice—but it was, so he didn’t.

“Mia?” His voice was so controlled, it was hardly audible. He tended to get quiet when angered, rather than raise his voice. Shouting gave the other party an advantage, in that it was a window into one’s state of mind.

No answer. He couldn’t let the dog loose in there and he’d be damned if he was going to leave his own home because of a one-woman paintball war. “Mia?” he said again as he wandered to the kitchen. A box containing a pizza with a couple of pieces missing sat open on the counter, crumbs scattered nearby. Well, she’d certainly taken him at his word and made herself at home. At least she’d followed his orders and had not cooked. After clearing out some paint brushes she’d left in his designated key bowl on the kitchen counter, he placed his keys, wallet, and phone in their proper spot.

Shaking his head, he and the dog walked back to the trash bag-covered living room, careful to stay out of her workspace, and he poured himself a scotch at the bar, in keeping with his everyday routine. It was a good thing the woman was gone because maintaining his cool with her at this point would be impossible.

His attention gravitated to the painting she’d left to dry. It really
was
good. Not just splatters, now that he studied it more carefully. It had a trunk and branches. She had painted a tree that seemed to move as he watched it. The placement of the splatters were arranged such that it gave an optical illusion effect that wind caused the branches to move and flecks of light to shine through the vivid patches of color constituting leaves.
Fascinating.