Not Husband Material (Billionaire's Contract Duet 1)

Kaitlyn

The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and I was adding, subtracting, and multiplying. After my offer to help Cole

with the business end of the Dune Scape, he had stuck me in the office with a box of receipts and a calculator.

I wanted to ask Cole about the phone call I overhead yesterday, but I didn’t want to embarrass him. Even though he had opened up a sliver of the bookkeeping to me, he was keeping the Dunes’s full financial situation guarded. I respected that. It couldn’t be easy to navigate this alone.

It didn’t take long for the tiny office to heat up. I walked over to the wall unit and cranked the air conditioner to the coldest setting. It was probably silly that I wanted to look cute for Cole this morning, but I had left my hair down.

He had seen me when I had braces. He had seen me when I scraped my knee playing soccer in high school. But I didn’t want those memories to stick. I wanted the grown-up version to be the Kaitlyn he remembered.

With the stickiness on my neck, I was regretting not pulling it up in a ponytail. Texas was hot. I searched the wooden desk for a rubber band. I gathered a handful of hair and twisted the rubber band around it. There.

It was almost lunchtime, and other than when he first set me up with the documents, I hadn’t seen Cole all morning. God, I hoped we didn’t have any more conversations about Ryan.

We had to keep this to ourselves. And we could. There was no reason for Ryan to know.

I turned back to the books. Cole’s grandfather hadn’t been much of a record-keeper. Now I knew why Cole always looked so frustrated and stressed. If I woke up to this financial confusion every morning, I wouldn’t be a happy person either. Even though the motel had been closed for a year, there were still bills that had to be paid and expenses that were due.

I was hungry. Cole had to be too. I decided to walk over to Peabody’s and pick up some sandwiches. My eyes could use a break from the number crunching. I tucked my phone in my back pocket and jogged across the street.

“Look who’s here.” Hank smiled at me from the bar.

“Hi, Hank. How are you?” I pushed my bangs out of my eyes.

“Good. Can’t complain. What can I get you today?” He opened the screen on the bar’s computer.

“Two turkey clubs with fries, to go, please.” My hands started tapping to the beat of a drinking song blasting from the jukebox. I hadn’t noticed it on my first trip to Peabody’s. The cowboy singer had played the entire night.

Hank looked at me. “Did you say two?”

“Yep. One for Cole and one for me.” I tried to sound matter of fact. It wasn’t my intention to garner questions, and I especially didn’t want to answer any.

The bartender chuckled as he typed the order into the computer. “You’re picking up lunch for Cole?”

“I thought I’d get him something since he’s working so hard to get the Dunes ready for the weekend crowd.” Bartenders were good at reading people—that I knew. I hoped Hank couldn’t see that I had a Cole crush written all over this lunch order.

“That’s mighty nice of you. He’s turned down everyone else’s offer to help him.” He punched in the last button and printed out a ticket.

“Really?”

Hank nodded. “Oh yeah, we’ve all tried to put in some hours to help him get that place ready. We know how much he wants to prove it can be done, but he’s a stubborn son of a bitch sometimes.”

I giggled. That sounded exactly like him.

“So, is this lunch strictly platonic?”

Hank was probably used to getting all of the good stories on the island, but I didn’t think he would be nosey. “Hank! You can’t ask me that. I’m helping him out a little at the office. That’s it.” I had probably just turned three shades of red.

He seemed unfazed by my protest. “Cole’s a good guy. A real good guy. And he’s been through a lot this year. He had to leave his grad school program when his grandfather got sick, and now he’s trying to turn that heap into something to be proud of. If anyone can do it, he can.”

“Did you say grad school?” My forehead scrunched into a confused expression.

“Oh yeah, Cole’s in an advanced engineering program at Texas State. Well, he used to be. I hope he gets to finish it one day, but as long as he’s working over there on the motel, he’s going to have to keep it on the back burner. Smart guy, that Cole.”

Cole hadn’t mentioned that part of the story when he told me he inherited the Dune Scape. It seemed like kind of an important detail. How did he manage that and being a single father?

“Hank, do you think he’ll sell it?” I thought about the possibility of Cole giving up on the motel.