Hot New Neighbor (Alphalicious Billionaires 11)

Wade is there, filling up the space, and I mean, filling it up. He looks incredible, and yes, even when he’s covered in something that looks like white powder, speckled with paint, and obviously very sweaty. The dusty-looking stuff is stuck to his face, and there’s a paint smear across his forehead. His shirt is a mess of paint and dust, and his jeans haven’t fared much better.

Still, when he smiles, it stabs me.

Right in the lady bits.

Flustered, I thrust out the pie. “I—er—I wanted to make you a pie. You know, to say thank you. For coming to inspect me. I mean, my air conditioner.”

Wade brushes a hand over his face. He glances at it after, as though just realizing he’s really grimy. I mean, really grimy is also really hot, and it’s not a criticism. Now that I know the guy isn’t going to wrap me up in plastic or in a rug and dispose of me, my normal inhibitions seem to have lowered right along with my good judgment. My hormones, on the other hand, seem to have ramped up.

“Give me a minute,” Wade winks at me. “Come in. I can clean up, and this time, I’ll keep things decent as long as you promise not to lift anything while I’m in the shower.”

I can feel my face turning scarlet. I’m burning up, and no, not from the sun. More like from my internal shame meter bursting off the charts, but I manage to give him a death glare to hide my lack of composure. However, he just grins at me and leaves the door open while he saunters off.

I walk into the house, which is indeed a disaster. There are no carpets on the floor anymore. The kitchen cabinets are in the living room on top of the plastic. There is a coating of white paint on them that I think is probably primer because I can see the wood grain through it. The place smells like paint and dust. Still, I sit down on one of the wooden kitchen chairs in the cluttered mess in the kitchen, amidst tools and drawers filled with kitchen stuff and covered off with plastic to keep it from getting dirty or dusty.

The shower must be ultra-quiet because I don’t even hear it, which I guess explains why I didn’t hear it running the other day when I “burglared” my ass in here.

I don’t know what to do with the pie, so I keep it wrapped up on my lap. I blame the residual heat emanating from it for the sudden overly warm feeling rampaging its way through me. Nope. The feeling is definitely not caused by thinking about Wade in the shower. Hell to the no.

Instead of thinking about shower Wade, I think about black hoodies and ball caps Wade. So maybe he’s not murdering anyone in here, but it’s still weird that he goes out in the full heat of summer dressed the way he does. It still seems like he’s hiding something. Oh no. Cut that shit off right there. You do not need another epic disaster to come from all those dumbass assumptions.

Maybe Wade is just strange in general, though he seems nice enough. There isn’t really anything wrong with being a little weird. Everyone is a little weird in their own way.

I don’t have to sit in the kitchen for long. Soon, Wade appears, freshly showered and dressed in a clean black t-shirt and fresh pair of faded jeans. I can tell they’re his work jeans because they still have stains and paint blotches all over them even though they’re obviously clean.

The first thing I notice is that Wade looks good with his dark hair freshly slicked back, and his face scrubbed clean. The second thing that hits me is the smell, and no, it’s not blueberry pie scent. It’s man scent—a nice, woodsy, spicy kind of scent from his shampoo or soap or whatever. It’s delicious, and when I get a whiff of it, I nearly fall off my chair.

Wade clears a spot on the table. He digs out two plates and a couple of forks from the plastic-covered kitchen drawers.

“So. Let’s have it then.”

It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about the pie. Right. That’s what the ‘it’ means. The ‘it’ does not refer to me getting up on the table for him to feast on. What the double eff is wrong with me?

I shove the pie onto the table so fast that it nearly rockets off the other side. Wade puts out a hand and stops the pie’s momentum. He raises a brow at me but cuts into it. When he leans forward to sniff at the freshly baked goodness, I nearly melt into my chair. I think watching him sniff it like that actually damaged something inside of me.