As he does, I can’t help feeling a little like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Not only did I just have oral sex with my first-ever real estate client, but now I’m swooning over him like Cinderella with her Prince Charming.
I’ve never been a Cinderella kind of girl. Never even wanted to be. But as Hunter climbs in the car, his hand comes to rest on my knee. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the sizzle—and the sweetness—all the way to my bones.
We spend the rest of the day looking at houses. I try to keep it strictly professional between us, but it’s hard to do that when Hunter keeps holding my hand during the walk-through, brushing his fingers against my lower back or breasts or ass and dragging me into corners for long, drugging kisses that curl my toes.
It’s so different than how I expected this day to go that I’m a little shell-shocked. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying it, because I am. There’s a reason Hunter Browning is one of the most sought after men in the world—he’s absolutely dazzling when he sets his mind to it. He knows how to treat a woman, how to make her feel beautiful and desirable and wanted.
Hunter likes three of the houses I picked out, two of which were also my first choices. But the closer it gets to seven o’clock—and our appointment at the house I found this morning—the more excited I get.
We pull up at five to seven, after I manage to pry him away from the last house, which he liked so much that I was afraid he was going to demand that I make an offer on the spot. Which I would normally be thrilled about—and I will be, I swear, if he still wants it after he sees the house on Marina Lane.
I know right away that it’s a hit—I’ve learned to read him over the last few hours, learned to recognize what look he gets when he finds something he likes and what look he has when he’s not interested. The moment I instruct him to pull the car over in front of the large bronze gates of 52 Marina Lane, I know he’s going to be as excited about the place as I am.
And he is, so excited that he forgets to come around the car and open the door for me. Not that I need him to do it or anything, but he’s made a point of it at every one of our ten previous stops. The fact that he forgets to do it now I take as a very, very good sign.
But he doesn’t go immediately to the house, as I’m hoping he will. Instead, he stands at the end of the driveway and looks out over the ocean. It’s getting late, so the beach is nearly empty, the after-work surf brigade clearing out even as we watch.
“It’s a beautiful view,” I tell him, because it is. The sun is going down, turning the sky—and the endless, rolling ocean beneath it—to crimson flames.
He nods even as he grabs my hand, and for a second my heart stops. It looks like he wants to bypass the house completely, like he wants to walk straight over the sand and into the rolling waves.
I’m so not down for that.
But in the end, he just smiles at me and says, “You think this is the one.”
“I—Umm—” I scramble for something to say—this is his house and the last thing I want to do is unduly bias him toward one property or another—but the truth is, yes. This property is the one for him. I feel it in my bones.
“It’s okay.” He drops a quick kiss on my lips. “I feel it, too.”
We walk up to the house, hand in hand. After I use the app to open the lockbox, I let us in, calling hello even though the place is supposed to be empty. It’s a big house—not an elaborate mansion with a hundred rooms by any means, but it is a little over six thousand square feet—and the last thing I want to do is surprise someone who forgot we were coming. This morning Alice told me about walking in on a couple having sex during one of her showings when the house was supposed to be empty. And the worst part was the guy half of the couple wasn’t the same man who was selling the house…
No one answers—which isn’t exactly a surprise—and we wind our way through the first level. The whole bottom floor is pretty much one huge open room, with only a few archways here and there to delineate where one room ends and the other begins. There’s two formal sitting areas, a large but not huge dining room, a nook for a grand piano, a state-of-the-art guest suite with floor and toilet seat warmers and a professional kitchen, bar area and breakfast nook that make me drool even though I’m a rudimentary cook at best.
Hunter looks right at home in the kitchen, though, enthusing over the pot-filler over the stove and commenting on the warming and cooling drawers, the wine refrigerator and the round, butcher block island.
The backyard is pretty plain, if you discount the incredible view. But if you go up one level, the patio-balcony extends almost to the property line. There’s a pool, plus two outdoor entertainment areas, including a bar. The second floor has a media room, a huge game room with poker and pool tables and four more bedroom suites.
The media room, with its three built-in TVs, is my favorite part, at least until I get to the third level which is all master retreat, complete with exercise room, library, and a small study that could also be changed into a nursery, if necessary. And when you step outside onto th
e curved balcony, there’s an intimate seating area and a built-in hot tub.
Hunter’s eyes go dark when he sees the hot tub, and I catch him looking back and forth between me and it several times. At three and a half feet it’s about the deepest water I’m willing to go in, so I can totally get behind the fantasy I can see brewing in his head. Once he buys the house, that is.
I mean, if he still wants me around.
It’s a sobering thought, one that has me pulling back just a little. Because he’s Hunter Browning and I’m…me. We’ve known each other two days and no matter what happened in that garden this afternoon, once he picks a house, there’s no reason for us to ever see each other again. No reason at all for me to ever be in that hot tub with him.
Which is fine. I’m just in this for the one and a half percent commission. Or at least that’s the story I’m telling myself.
“So, what do you think?” I ask when Hunter makes his way back to where I’m standing.
“It’s a lot of house.”
“It is,” I agree. I want to jump in, to tell him all the reasons this house is perfect for him, but it’s not my place to push. This is Hunter’s house, and even though I think he belongs here with every fiber of my being, he’s just a client.
“Wow. That’s about as noncommittal as it gets,” he teases as we slowly walk back down the first of the two circular, glass-enclosed staircases.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”