“You’re charming, too?” she said, throwing up her hands in frustration. “You’re not supposed to be charming when you look like that.”

  “Sorry, honey,” I said with a laugh, catching her hands. I pulled them down and around to the base of her spine, holding them lightly. I wanted her to know that she could pull away if she wanted, but she didn’t.

  “I wanna be your friend,” I said, our noses just inches apart. “And I’ll be your roommate, help you save some more for the big purchase.”

  “Well, that’s kind of you, friend.”

  “But I want you in my bed,” I said, leaning closer.

  “Not a good idea.”

  “Maybe not, but I have a feelin’ it’ll happen.”

  “Then we’ll just make sure it doesn’t.”

  “Can’t promise that. Can you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I let go of her wrists and gripped her waist. She wasn’t skinny in the traditional sense, she had an ass on her that made my mouth water, and she was muscular in a way that you knew she worked at it.

  I slid my fingers just under her t-shirt.

  “Shit,” I muttered. “May as well know what we’ll be missing.”

  Charlie must’ve agreed with me because before my mouth hit hers, she’d wrapped her fingers around the back of my head and pulled me toward her. The kiss from earlier had been staggering, but this one was like lightning striking. We both went nuts.

  My hands roamed frantically, sliding up her sides and down her hips, tangling in her hair and wrapping around her throat. Hers were just as busy. She traced my arms from wrists to biceps, scratched her nails along the back of my neck, smoothed her palms down over my ass and over the fly of my jeans. Before long, my fingers were spread wide over her ass and I barely had to boost her up as she gave a little hop and wrapped her legs around my waist.

  I didn’t bother trying to get her on the bed, I couldn’t even think that far in the future. Protecting the back of her head with my hand, I braced her back against the wall for leverage as her hips rolled.

  Charlie tore her mouth from mine. “Holy hell,” she whispered with a groan. Her legs tightened as she jerked her hips harder against mine.

  “Jesus, you’re pretty,” I mumbled, watching as she tilted her face toward the ceiling. I put my mouth against her throat and sucked, making her gasp.

  “Please tell me you have a small dick,” she said, startling me.

  “Say what?” I asked, pulling back.

  “There has to be something wrong with you,” she said, tipping her head back down to look at me. She laughed. “A tail? Anything?”

  “Sorry, no tail,” I replied. “And you can feel me.” I pressed her harder against the wall. “That feel small to you?”

  “Well, shit,” she muttered, grinning.

  “You’re a fuckin’ trip,” I said, my mouth twitching.

  “And you, friend, are quite possibly the hottest man I’ve ever seen.” She sighed and dropped her head against my shoulder.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I replied. As her legs loosened around my waist, I knew the moment was over.

  “It’s not a bad thing,” she said, gently kissing my neck before shifting so I’d set her back on her feet. “It’s just going to make you hard to resist.”

  “Then why are you fightin’ it so hard?” I asked seriously as I dropped my arms to the sides and stepped back. “It’s not about the roommate thing. You’ve been keepin’ your distance for months.”

  She laughed a little and walked around me, reaching up to fix her hair. As I turned to watch her, she strode toward the middle of the room, first letting her long blonde hair fall in waves around her before pulling it up with both fists and wrapping it into a knot on top of her head.

  “You’re gonna be a problem,” she said to me easily, shrugging her shoulders. “And I knew it from the first time I saw you eye fucking me across the parking lot at the apartments.”

  “Eye fucking you?” I asked, remembering that first day when I’d come to find Draco and found her, too.

  “I was carrying a bag of garbage, for fuck’s sake,” she said with a huff, still smiling. “And you were still looking at me like you were starving.”

  “I’m not seein’ the problem.”

  “I’ve got plans,” she said almost apologetically. “Big ones.”

  “I’m not gonna stop you,” I replied, seriously. “Shit, Charlie. I want you to succeed. I wanna watch you succeed.”

  “I believe that,” she said, nodding. “But if I get all caught up in you, I’m going to lose focus.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Have you ever heard the saying, right person, wrong time?”

  I just looked at her.

  “You’re fantastic,” she said quietly.

  I wanted to walk out right then and there. I was all for knowing that we were trying to keep our hands to ourselves so things didn’t get awkward in the house, but this was different. This felt like she was trying to let me down easy or some shit and I didn’t want to hear it. It was a fucking break-up and we weren’t even together.

  “Message received,” I said. I moved over to the tools I’d set by the door.

  “Are you mad at me?” she asked in confusion.

  “Hell no,” I replied. “Just disappointed.”

  “Yeah, me too,” she said with a sigh.

  “I’m gonna head out. I gotta work tomorrow and I’m beat.” I lifted the tools and my boots and gave a little wave with my full hands.

  I was a few steps down the hallway when she called my name. When I turned to look at her, she was standing in the doorway of her room, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “You understand what I’m saying, right?” she called softly. “We’d be fantastic together. It’s just the wrong time.”

  I nodded and kept moving. She was right, we’d be fucking great together—but it didn’t really matter if she wasn’t willing to give it a chance.

  Chapter 3

  Charlie

  We’d been in our new place for two weeks and I’d slept like shit every single night. I couldn’t get the thermostat set to a comfortable degree, I didn’t have time to get blinds on the windows yet so the sun woke me up early as hell on the days I wasn’t working, and there were too many sounds all the time. Creaking and groaning happened all through the night as the stupid house settled. If I accidentally left the bathroom door open, it would swing open with the hinges squealing, startling the hell out of me right as I was about to fall asleep. Plus, I felt so fucking alone upstairs. After living in such close quarters with Kara, having her so far away was weird.

  Don’t get me wrong, I loved the extra space and privacy—most of the time. It was just late at night when I’d finally finished my schoolwork and was climbing into bed when shit started to feel dodgy. Even going out to my car in the dark on my random early days at work creeped me out.

  Thankfully, everything else in my life seemed to be going forward as planned. I was barreling toward graduation, getting shit done early so the last few weeks would be a breeze, and Mal had finally agreed to sell me the coffee shop. If I thought she’d give me some kind of a deal, I’d been sadly mistaken. She wasn’t stupid and it was making good money—but we’d finally come to an agreement and I was completely stoked. By the time I graduated, all the paperwork would be done and I’d be able to jump into my venture with both feet.

  Well, I could jump in with both feet once I got today’s conversation over with. What I really wanted to be doing was sleep all day, but instead, I was driving over to my parents’ property. They’d been living in a trailer since their house burned down in the wildfires we’d had last fall, but from what I could see when I turned into their long driveway—they wouldn’t have to be there much longer.

  “Look at my house!” my mom yelled, walking toward my car as I parked behind a white truck with some kind of logo on it. “It’s gorgeous!”

  “It is,” I agreed as I climbed out.

  Where once there had been a beautiful old two-story house there was now a brand spanking new ranch with workers doing their thing all around it. Smaller, but just as gorgeous in its own way. I had no doubt that they would’ve lived in the old place until they died, but fate had other plans and they’d decided if they were building something new they were going to have a new place that fit them as they got older. There were no stairs for them to climb, only two bedrooms since all their kids were out of the house, and eventually, my mom would have the wraparound porch she wanted.

  “Come see,” Mom said excitedly. “There’s still a lot to do—”

  “Really?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Yeah,” she said with a laugh. “It’s all framed in, though, so we can see where all the rooms are.”

  “Are you sure it’s cool that we go in there?” I asked as a man strode by carrying a window. “We won’t be in the way?”

  “We’re old friends by now,” she replied, waving me off. “I come in every day to see how far they’ve gotten.”

  “I’m sure they love that,” I muttered.

  “Please,” she said, scoffing. “Everyone digs me.”

  “Harry,” my mom called, waving at a guy in a hardhat a few feet away. “We’re gonna take a look around!”

  “Put a hard hat on,” he ordered, pointing at the floor near our feet. “You know the rules.”

  “I look like a goober with it on.”

  “You look gorgeous as ever and you know it,” he replied, still pointing. “Hardhats. Both of you.”

  “Oh, all right,” Mom said with a sigh.

  She handed me a hardhat and gave me a wink.

  “Dad know you’re in here flirting with the builders every day?” I asked dryly.

  “Ha!” She laughed. “Harry knows dad. No one in here would dare flirt with me.”

  “He just called you gorgeous,” I pointed out.

  “That’s just the truth,” my mom said simply. She reached out and grabbed my hand excitedly. “Come on.”

  She tugged me through the “rooms” one by one, pointing out where she was going to put her new furniture and where she wanted to hang pictures. Using her hands, she shaped where the counters would be and where she’d decided to put her appliances in the kitchen. The excitement was infectious, and by the time we’d reached the master bathroom, I was chattering as much as she was, discussing the claw foot tub she wanted and what kind of mirror she should hang.

  “Thought I’d find you two in here,” my dad said, stepping over a pile of lumber. Even he didn’t escape the hardhat rule and I looked at him dumbly for a moment. He looked completely home in the thing while me and my mom looked like a couple of dorks.

  “Just showing our baby around the new place,” my mom replied happily.

  “It’ll look better once there’s walls and shit,” my dad pointed out.

  “It looks glorious now,” my mom corrected. “I cannot wait to get out of that trailer.”

  “Gonna have to wait a bit longer,” a voice I recognized joked from somewhere behind me.

  I spun to face Bishop, the hardhat I was wearing sliding over my eyes and disorienting me for a minute.

  “Harry’s wonderin’ if he can have a word,” he said to my parents, leaning through a gap in the framing.

  “Sure!” My mom patted my back. “Stay right here. I want to tell you about the tile we’re putting in. The floor is going to be heated!”

  “Fancy,” I mumbled, nodding as she walked away.

  I hadn’t seen Bishop since he’d left my bedroom the night we’d moved in, and time seemed to have made things awkward between us. We stared at each other for a moment.

  “Your boss made me wear a hard hat,” I blurted eventually. It was the only thing that came to mind and I wanted to slap myself for calling attention to the stupid thing.

  “You look cute as a button,” Bishop replied, grinning.

  He didn’t. With a hard hat on, he looked exactly as I’d described before—like a stripper. Half of me was waiting for the music to start and his hips to begin undulating.

  My gaze traveled the length of him and I swallowed.

  “You’re wearing a tool belt,” I croaked.

  Bishop looked down. “You’ve seen my tool belt before,” he reminded me.

  “You weren’t wearing it,” I argued, my eyes glued to his hips. The belt hung heavy, pulling his jeans down slightly and framing the fly like a damn neon sign. God, my mouth was watering.

  “You keep lookin’ at me like that and I’m gonna be walkin’ around with somethin’ I can’t exactly hide,” he warned, making my eyes snap up to meet his. “Normally I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t wanna hear shit about it for the next five years.”

  “Sorry,” I stuttered. “I just—” My gaze wandered again.

  “Woman,” Bishop snapped. “My eyes are up here.”

  “Sorry,” I said again, laughing a little.

  “You really want your dad walkin’ back in here when my dick’s standin’ at attention?” he asked in exasperation. “Stop it.”

  “I won’t do it again,” I promised, raising my right hand like I was taking an oath. It took everything in me not to glance down again.

  “Jesus,” he muttered, reaching down to adjust himself. “Charlie!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, throwing up my hands. “You were calling attention to it!”

  “Just keep your eyes up here,” he grumbled, annoyed.

  “Hey, I thought you were moving in,” I said accusingly, eager to change the subject to anything other than how mouthwatering he looked in his work gear. “You haven’t even been to the house again.”

  “I’ve been there,” he replied gruffly. “You weren’t there.”

  “Oh,” I said, his words taking the wind out of my sails. “Are you avoiding me?”

  “Not at all,” he replied firmly. “I think you were workin’ last time I was there.”

  “Are you still moving in?” I asked, nervous about his answer.

  While I figured it would probably be torture having him right down the hall all the time, I also really wanted him there. I didn’t like having the upstairs to myself. Plus, I just genuinely liked him and even if we weren’t bumping uglies, I’d still like to see him more often.

  “Plannin’ on it, yeah,” he said, looking over his shoulder as my parents came back toward us. “Probably this weekend,” he told me before lifting his chin in goodbye and walking away.

  “Everything okay?” I asked my parents.

  “Yeah, just delays on some stuff,” my mom said with a frustrated sigh. “No big deal.”

  “All part of the process, Ladybug,” Dad said consolingly, patting her ass. “Things have been smooth sailin’ for too long, had to hit a snag at some point.”

  Mom smiled and nodded, then kicked a beam. “Okay, I feel better now.”

  Dad chuckled.

  “So, you said something about heated flooring?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  We spent almost an hour in the house, talking about every little detail, and by the time we walked back into the yard, I was practically bursting with the urge to bring up why I’d come.

  “Come have some coffee,” my dad said, throwing his arm around my shoulders as he led me to the trailer. “It’s not as fancy as that shit you make, but it’ll do.”

  “Put some hair on my chest?” I asked jokingly.

  “Shit, I hope not,” my dad replied in fake alarm, pulling out the neck of his t-shirt as if to check his own chest.

  “Funny you should bring up coffee,” I said, drawing out the words as we went inside. “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Are you leaving the coffee cart?” my mom asked in surprise. “Did you already get a new job? Don’t quit unless—”

  I cut her off by shaking my head. “Nope,” I said, sitting down at their little table. “Actually kind of the opposite.”

  “Clue us in, baby girl,” my dad said as he poured us all some coffee. “Ya got us on the edge of our seats.”

  Mom slid in across from me and waited.

  “Okay, so I like making coffee. I like the whole thing. And I know that you guys helped me with college and I’m so thankful. Like, I can’t ever repay everything you’ve done for me—”

  “Slow down,” my dad said calmly. “You’re ramblin’.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I’ve run the numbers.” I grinned. “That college education was good for something.”

  Mom laughed, but dad just watched me, waiting for me to get to the point.

  “I’d like to buy the coffee cart from Mal,” I said quickly. “And then, I’d like to grow the business and if I can do that, not even a lot, just like fifteen percent, I think I could open another cart.”

  “Really?” my mom said in surprise, sitting back in her seat.

  “Really,” I confirmed.

  I waited for my dad to say something. I wasn’t really worried that he’d think it was a bad idea, I was just trying to figure out if I had to gear up to convince him that it was a good one.

  He set the coffee cups down in front of us, poured one for himself, and sat down next to my mom.

  “Alright,” he said easily. “Tell me your plan.”

  I broke down everything, how much I was paying for the original cart, how much money it was currently bringing in and how much more I’d have to make in order to open a second location. I explained my ideas for promotion and marketing, how I’d bring more customers in, and why I thought we weren’t currently reaching as many people as we could be. By the time I was finished, my parents were nodding along, their excitement for me evident in every gesture and question they asked.

  “Okay then,” my dad said with a chuckle. “You’ve been workin’ on this a while.”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “I mean it started as just a vague idea, because I really like working there, you know? But I can’t be just a barista forever.”

  “Why not?” my mom asked, wrinkling her nose.

  “Okay, I could,” I amended. “But I don’t want to. I want to build something and I want to be in charge.”