Stripped Down

The screen door stays firmly closed.

Okay then.

I knock on the door harder than is strictly necessary. Rory flings the door open. He’s wearing a pair of partially buttoned Levis. This means that I now know his nipples are pierced, as are his ears. Even through the tattoos decorating his ribs and scrolling over his stomach, the muscles are clearly visible. The look on his face is decidedly unfriendly, making it obvious that, despite the pretty decorations, he’d be happy to kick my ass for me. That’s fan-fucking-tastic, because I’m not feeling civilized myself. I could get away with murder because out here I’m a fucking king. I own the land, I run the cattle. My boys will guard my back and cover my ass.

“Where’s Rose?”

“Out.” Rory scratches his belly with a self-satisfied smirk.

I slap a palm against the doorframe and lean in. “Be more specific.”

He flashes me his middle finger. “Guess who’s not the boss of me?”

He makes me fucking repeat myself. “Where’s Rose?”

Rory waits a beat before he gives it up, but guess he’s into self-preservation after all because he finally does give me the information I need. “Rose is cleaning out at Auntie Dee’s.”

Information appreciated. I nod toward my truck where Dare’s got his ass parked in my front seat. “I’ve got her a second opinion on potential repairs.”

A skeptical look crosses Rory’s face. “You want to help her?”

There’s all sorts of shit I’d like to do to Rose and that’s the truth. “She needs a second opinion on the repairs to that house,” I say instead.

“She’s at the house,” he repeats. “You want her, you’ll find her there.”

Good enough. I head toward the truck and slam the vehicle into drive.

Dare crosses his arms. “Rose is a good kid.”

Fuck. The whole world’s on her side. I don’t need the five-minute drive to Auntie Dee’s to figure that out. Not being a flowers and candy kind of guy, I’ve traded romance for practically. Dare rocks at construction and there’s nothing he can’t fix.

When Dare and I roll up, Rose is standing on the sagging porch, picking at the ribbons of paint curling from the railing. She’s got a stack of architectural drawings pinned to the floor with a pair of flip-flops, but she doesn’t look defeated. That’s my Rose.

The local inspector is just finishing up. The guy leans into her in a way that makes me want to growl, walking her through a list of a dozen-plus code violations she needs to remedy before he’ll even consider giving her a certificate of occupancy.

Rose’s get-up today is clearly designed to torture me. A pair of itty-bitty denim cut-offs cup her ass and stop just short of covering her cheeks. As if those shorts aren’t impractical enough, the four-inch wedge sandals give her legs that go on for miles. I should worry about her breaking an ankle—I doubt Rose has health insurance and there’s no resident doctor in Lonesome—but instead, I imagine her legs wrapped around my waist.

Just like the damned contractor is.

Making her vision a reality won’t be easy. Money aside, Lonesome lacks the contractors she needs. The house also requires more major repairs than I have fingers. And yet her passion for her dream is infectious. For no good, understandable reason, she’s decided to turn Auntie Dee’s house into a tattoo parlor with an apartment for her to live in. If I could, I’d make it happen for her.

She pops right over to me when my boots hit her front porch. “Getting the bad news?” I ask her.

The last time we saw each other, we were both naked and I was balls-deep inside her. You’d never know it to look at her, though. She levels an icy smile on me.

“You expect me to fail,” she says.

Pretty much, but this isn’t really about her succeeding or failing. This is about the house, the property, the water, and the sheer impossibility of her living here. I go with the safe answer.

“This house needs major repairs.”

“But it can be fixed,” she argues. Rose lives to argue with me. She plops down on the top step of the porch. Followed by Dare, the inspector disappears back inside to “check one more thing,” even though I can’t imagine what the man hasn’t investigated already.

“It should be bulldozed. You’d need thousands of dollars.” I lean back against the porch pillar, crossing one booted foot over the other. “Tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Do you have that kind of cash?”

“I could try for a mortgage,” she counters stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest. That defensive movement pushes her breasts up into luscious little mounds. Carrying her back to bed and making her forget all about this crazy dreams of hers shoots up my priority list. I can make the loss up to her. She’ll get over it.