As she'd hoped, he laughed. "Yes, but let's wait for a night when it's not past three in the morning. Right now, I just want to hold you."

Since she was perfectly fine with that plan, she didn't protest. But she also wasn't sleepy, and her mind was spinning.

"Why didn't you do the final season of Spencer's Place?" she asked, snuggled up close to him. "Was it because of Brian?"

"Mostly," he said. "My money was still tied up with him. So I'd be working, and he'd be stealing. Seemed like a bad deal all around for me."

"I'd say."

He stroked a lazy pattern on her arm, and she sighed with bliss.

"On top of that," he continued, "the bloom had worn off. Back when I pitched it, I'd wanted the show for the work."

"I remember. You wanted to show people how to make repairs on their own place and flip a few properties at the same time. Don't stop that," she added, when he started to move his hand away.

He chuckled, but complied. "It was all Hollywood bullshit. Or it felt like it. It just..." He trailed off with a shrug. "It wasn't fun."

She shifted out from under his touch, suddenly uncomfortable under the weight of a fresh guilt. "I'm sorry to pull you back into all that. I wouldn't have if--"

"No." He pressed a finger to her lips. "I didn't want to at first for a whole hell of a lot of reasons. But those reasons are gone. And now I'm having one of the best times of my life."

"Yeah?"

"Absolutely."

She snuggled close. "I'm glad."

"In fact, I was thinking that maybe we should try this again."

"This? You mean the show?"

"I've got another one waiting in the wings, remember? Would be a hell of a lot more fun fixing up the mansion with you."

"Oh." For a second, Brooke wasn't sure she could breathe. She told herself he wasn't proposing marriage. All he wanted was to work with her installing drywall, laying tile, fixing plumbing, and the other eight million things the Drysdale Mansion needed. But that didn't change the fact that it was their place. That they'd be doing it together.

"Brooke? If you don't want to, it's okay."

"No," she blurted. "I do. But are you sure? We'll be on television. That whole celebrity thing, only this time we'll be under the microscope as a couple. Won't that drive you crazy?"

He squeezed her hand. "Why should it?" he asked. "After all, isn't that what we are?"

Chapter Eighteen

Spencer learned two things during Monday's Happy Hour. First, that Brooke looked sexy even when she was wearing reading glasses and pouring over the notes she'd made in her tiny, cramped handwriting. And second, that Parker Manning was a pig.

To be fair, Spencer didn't even know Parker's name when he made that assessment. But Spencer's radar had started ticking when the guy had entered the bar, noticed Brooke at a table with her laptop and notebook, and made a beeline straight for her.

Not surprising, of course. Parker was a man. And Brooke had that ethereal beauty coupled with the kind of easy curves that make a man take notice.

All well and good, except that Spencer didn't like it when a man other than himself did the noticing. And he especially didn't like it when Brooke leaped out of her chair and threw her arms around any guy who took it upon himself to look at her that way.

"Who is that?" he'd asked Mina. They'd been in the process of making a list of all the things that had to get finished before the bar opened its doors on Wednesday. An essential task, no doubt about that. But at the moment, it paled in the face of Spencer's need to know the identity of the pretty boy macking on his girlfriend.

Mina lifted herself up out of her seat and craned her neck. "Oh, that's Parker Manning," she said, and Spencer decided that not only was Parker a pig, but he had a prissy-ass name, too.

"Who the fuck is Parker Manning, and why is he hugging my girl?"

For a second, Mina looked like she was going to make some speech about how Brooke was her own woman and she was allowed to have male friends and on and on and on. But she probably caught sight of Spencer's face, because all she said was. "You know. Parker Manning. His dad's Bertram Manning."

Tags: J. Kenner Man of the Month Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net