by Inara Scott
Unusually successful. Unusually rich. Unusually smart. Unusually hot.
She clicked on a few news clips. Money, sex, and charm. Apparently, sometimes first impressions were right. She only gave herself a few minutes to look at the stories, just enough to get an idea of who had just asked her to move in with him.
Livend Capital had apparently gone from a risky new venture fund to one of the biggest players in the tech scene in just a few years. The firm had first hit the papers when they funded the new social media start-up Pop-In—now the hottest app for anyone under the age of forty. Since then, they’d made a series of incredible deals that assured them hefty bank accounts, a place in Silicon Valley history, and no small amount of jealous antagonism from their competitors.
Mason and his two former college roommates were now living large in San Francisco—three deliciously attractive, single men with money, brains, and looks. Connor Ashton had a PhD in astrophysics—a certified rocket scientist, the papers liked to point out, not to mention he was a six-foot-four former college basketball player with the body of an athlete and the brains of a Mensa member. Nate Etherly was the son of a New York real estate mogul and a terrifying dealmaker. His dark good looks were matched by a reputation for ruthlessness. Mason was San Francisco’s hottest bachelor with a talent for rainmaking. And a reputation for breaking hearts.
They were almost more than the city could bear.
For one moment, she allowed herself to think about what it might be like to date a man like Mason, but the absurdity of it made her laugh out loud. She didn’t want a boyfriend of any kind, let alone a rich, conceited, full-of-himself one.
Though she had to admit, if she ever changed her mind, Mason and those rock-hard abs of his would be worth considering. At least for a night.
The sun, which had been playing peekaboo all afternoon, appeared for a moment through the quickly moving clouds as she hurried to her car. There was really nothing to decide, of course, and she was pretty sure Mason Coleman knew it. Four hundred dollars a day wasn’t a sum of money she was in any position to turn down.
Nor, really, could she think of any reason why she should. Other than feeling fairly certain that Mason wouldn’t be good for her equilibrium. He’d already knocked her off kilter, and that was after five minutes. Luckily, she had a feeling that once he got what he wanted—her taking care of the dog he’d apparently inherited from his sister—he’d be far less interested in giving her those sexy eyes all the time.
She did have to make some phone calls but had little doubt she could make it work. Just a few days ago, Erica, her boss at the vet clinic and one of her closest friends, had offered to give her some time off. “I know you’ve got midterms coming up,” Erica had said. “Why not take off a few weeks to focus on school? You and I both know you run yourself too hard, and I’m fine for a little while without you.”
Focus on school? Right. Erica had said more than once that she thought Tess shouldn’t work so much, but working three jobs, as crazy as it sounded, meant she didn’t have to take out any loans to get through college. And after years of fighting to get out from debt—most of it medical debt, from taking care of her grandma—that was essential. Thank goodness for online college. If that weren’t an option, she’d never be coming close to earning her degree.
At first, she’d been uncomfortable in her classes, most of which had online forums where you were supposed to engage in discussions and work on group projects with your classmates. She’d worried about the absurdity of being twenty-six and taking classes with kids just out of high school. She was also certain the fact that she’d been a horrible student who’d dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade and had only gotten her GED a few years ago was somehow visible in her posts.
But no one seemed to know her dirty little secret, and she gradually realized that all that anyone cared about was her contribution to the class. It was the first time she’d ever been successful at anything that involved a grade, and even though it meant getting little to no sleep and killing herself to study for exams, she wasn’t taking anything less than an A ever again. Four hundred dollars a day would definitely help with that effort. She wouldn’t have to look for new dog-walking clients for a while—might even be able to afford to take a summer class and put away some money for the vet school applications she’d be filling out that fall.
There was a lot that money could buy.
She forced herself away from her reverie and back to her phone. The three Livend Capital men were all attractive, but Mason was clearly the ladies man of the bunch, typically pictured at charity events and balls, always with a beautiful woman on his arm, and always looking heart-stoppingly gorgeous.
So yes, he was who he said he was. But she’d still have to be some kind of idiot to agree to stay overnight with him. Besides, she had Astro to think about. She obviously couldn’t bring Astro with her while she babysat the giant mastiff. He was probably just untrained, rather than aggressive, but an untrained mastiff could be dangerous.
Not to mention that after far too many years without male companionship it was entirely possible that Mason would be the one who’d have to worry about late-night safety.
She unlocked the car door and hitched Astro’s tiny harness to her doggie seat belt. Astro settled back in the seat with an adorable, ladylike sigh.
Tess turned the key and hoped the engine would start. It was a fun little game she liked to play—will I get home today? The beat-up Ford Escort had over 180,000 miles and was still (mostly) running but did get a little temperamental at times. It had been her grandmother’s car, then her mom’s, then her grandmother’s again before Tess had inherited it, and even though she spent far more in repairs than it was worth, she couldn’t give it up.
The rusty brown relic—it had once been magenta, but the sun had faded it to soft brown—shrieked to life with a high-pitched whine that turned to a grating roar before settling down to its usual rumble. Tess turned on her Bluetooth headset and placed her first call before pulling away from the curb. Erica’s perky voice sounded in her ears, her adorable Southern drawl prominent even in the answering message. “Hey, thanks for calling! I’m not available but please leave me a message, and you know I’ll get back to you as quick as I can.”
“Erica, it’s Tess, and I hope you were serious about me taking some time off for exams because I don’t think I’ll be able to come in this week. Can you call me as soon as you get this? I’ve got an opportunity for a full-time dog care gig, but I don’t want to leave you in the lurch.”
She hung up and hit another number on her phone, this time reaching her neighbor, Graciela.
“Yes, hello?”
“Gracie, this is Tess.”
“Tess?” Graciela’s sweet, heavily accented voice sounded a little confused, as if she wasn’t entirely sure how the phone worked, why someone might be trying to contact her on it, or why she was speaking English instead of Spanish. “Tess, mija, where are you?”
Tess smiled. She’d first met Graciela when she was a little kid, and now, the older woman was the closest thing she had to family. Gracie wasn’t nearly as confused as she liked to make out, but it suited her to act as if she was never quite sure how the world worked. She also liked to pretend she couldn’t remember English, even though she had lived in California for over forty years and was completely bilingual. Tess herself was never quite sure when Gracie was playing straight and when she was using her sweet old lady charm to her advantage.
“I’m just driving home, but I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
“Of course, anything you need. Did you want me to send Moses over to your house? Is everything okay?”
Moses was Graciela’s grandson, and he, along with his mother, Gracie’s two younger brothers, and a shifting group of cousins, aunts, and uncles that Tess could never quite keep track of, all lived together in their tiny three-bedroom house. Moses was sixteen, about five foot two, and as big as an ox, with deep brown eyes th
at were as innocently kind as his hulking frame was intimidating. He treated Tess as if she were as old and dotty as Gracie, which Tess would have found mildly insulting if it wasn’t so sweet.
“Everything’s fine, but I’m going to have to work in the city some long hours this week, and I was wondering if you might be able to let Astro out a couple of times during the day for me.”
“You know I always like to see my baby Astro,” Gracie said. “Do you want Moses to take her for a walk?”
Tess stifled a giggle at the thought of Moses and his biceps, each of which was probably broader than her waist, walking her tiny white dog. “You know you’ve got to stop volunteering him for things.”
“Oh, he’s a good boy.” Tess could almost see her waving her hand dismissively at the notion that she wasn’t entitled to boss around her grandson. “He’d love to help.”
“Well, tell Moses thank you. If he can walk her around the block that would be great, but it’s fine if he can’t. As long as she can get out into the backyard in the afternoon, she’ll be okay.”
“I can always bring her over here,” Gracie suggested, her voice rising hopefully.
Tess smiled again. Gracie made no secret out of the fact that she would have adopted Astro in a heartbeat if her landlord would allow them to have pets. It always pissed Tess off when she thought about the fact that Gracie and her family had been paying rent on their house for thirty years, more than time enough to buy it, but housing prices were so ridiculous in the Bay Area that the chance of them qualifying for a mortgage moved further out of reach every year.
“You know she’d love to stay with you whenever you want her, but I don’t want to get you in trouble with your landlord.”
Gracie brushed off her concern, and they chatted for a few minutes before she excused herself from the phone, saying she had a big pot of posole on the stove and had to keep her eye on it. Tess knew she’d never really mastered the art of multitasking.
She wove her way through the traffic, which was snarled getting onto the Bay Bridge, but relatively open after that. She drove faster than she should have, but she had barely two hours to get home and back to Mason’s place, and she needed to get her books and computer before she headed back. She had two assignments to complete before midnight, and she certainly wasn’t waiting to start on them until after she got home that night.
She really didn’t want to be late, but she had a pretty good idea that Mason didn’t have a lot of other options, at least not on such short notice. With his money, he could probably replace her by Monday afternoon, which meant if she were smart, she’d do everything in her power to find a way to convince him to keep her on.
But then again, she’d never been smart. At least not when it came to men.
Or money, come to think of it.
Which eliminated two of the most important areas of life, but who was counting, right?
She tore around the corners leading to her grandmother’s house, stopping with just the barest hint of a screech in front. Officially, the house belonged to her now, but she doubted she’d ever really think of it that way. It would always be Grandma’s place.
Her grandparents had built the house seventy years ago, back when there hadn’t been many homes out here, all the way past Oakland and just outside San Leandro. Thanks to her rootless mother, Tess had lived there on and off as a child. When she was fourteen, her mother moved them to Phoenix, starting the most disastrous chapter in Tess’s life. By the time her grandmother called, three years later, because she was sick and needed help around the house, Tess was a high school dropout with little hope for her own future. Even though it had been a heavy weight for her teenaged self, returning to San Leandro to take care of her grandmother had, for the first time in her life, given her a purpose and made her feel worthwhile.
Now, this house was home.
The lot backed onto a creek and an open space, and it seemed like every other week someone left a note in her mailbox saying if she ever wanted to sell, she should contact them. It made sense—the property was beautiful—but the house was all but uninhabitable. A rusted-out car lurked in the weeds somewhere in the backyard, the roof leaked in at least three places, and the back deck, which had an incredible view of the open space, was on the verge of collapse. She hadn’t been out on it in years, unsure if the rotted wood would hold her.
Yes, even though she was surrounded by tiny homes on much smaller lots selling for more than half a million dollars, Tess’s plumbing barely worked, and if there hadn’t been an electrical fire it wasn’t from lack of trying. She might have been able to get a home equity loan to do some work on the place, since she owned it outright, but she was fairly certain loans involved inspections, which probably wouldn’t go well when her foundation leaned more than the Tower of Pisa.
Once she was done with school and had a real job, she’d think about upgrading. Or to be honest, bulldozing. But as much as she knew there was little in the house left to save, it was impossible to imagine knocking down the place where she’d been born. Where her mother had grown up. Where her grandmother died.
So for now, it was a roof, four walls, and a door that locked. That was enough.
She ran up the muddy path to the front door, ignoring the rotted wood in the front step and avoiding the bucket in the hall between the living room and the kitchen before coming to her bedroom.
The room was meant to be an office, but the upstairs bedroom ceilings leaked, and she was never sure if the stairs would hold her, so she’d stopped going up there about a year ago. The downstairs bedroom had been her grandmother’s, and she couldn’t quite handle sleeping in the room where she’d watched the most beloved person in her life die. Not to mention that the windows in Grandma’s bedroom didn’t open, and the house became unbearable when the temperature outside went above eighty.
So instead, she used the room closest to the kitchen. It was sunshiny and bright, thanks to French patio doors leading to the unstable back deck and overgrown yard. There was no closet, which she didn’t really mind because she didn’t have many clothes, and the ones she did have fit easily into her grandmother’s old dresser. The creaky wooden structure was lined with old newspapers and smelled faintly of mildew, but she’d added small chips of cedar in mesh bags, and that took away the worst of the odor.
She grabbed her army-green canvas messenger bag from the floor beside her grandfather’s old desk and filled it with her computer and two of her textbooks. Then she pulled off her smelly jacket and stained T-shirt and exchanged them for a clean T-shirt and flannel shirt that she left loose and unbuttoned.
Hygiene did matter to her, though sometimes it didn’t look—or smell?—that way.
She passed through the kitchen to grab a granola bar and an apple and planted a final kiss on Astro’s soft fur before heading out the door. Astro didn’t like being left alone, but Tess had always made a point of treating her like a dog, not a baby, so she’d come to accept it.
Her car started off with a rumble, but didn’t hesitate, thank goodness. A quick glance at the clock on the dash told her she’d be on time, or close to it, depending on traffic. A little thrill of anticipation raced through her at the thought of seeing Mason again as she accelerated onto the highway.
He’s so far out of your league it’s not even funny, she thought, flooring the gas to get around a Prius driver who was paying more attention to her phone than her driving. She resisted the temptation to flip the idiot the bird as she sped past.
Have a little patience, her grandmother’s voice chided. And watch that temper, Tessie. You’re better than where you came from. Don’t forget that.
Even though she’d been gone five years now, Tess could still hear the quiet voice in her head. Could still remember the night she’d closed her eyes. Peaceful, ready to see her husband again. Sorry to leave Tess alone. Always sorry for what she’d been through. Always hoping for better for the granddaughter she loved.
Tess wiped away a lone tear that
seemed to be lying in wait whenever she went down memory lane. I’m going to make you proud, Grandma. I swear it.
Chapter Three
Tess raised her hand to knock on the door to Mason’s apartment. He opened it before her hand made contact with the wood, wearing a hint of a scowl.
“You’re five minutes late.”
Tess ignored his comment and her own guilt and sailed past him through the doorway. Was there a force field of heat around him? Some superhuman pheromones that gave off the scent of old whiskey, pine, and money? Whatever. Her nipples definitely didn’t spring to attention whenever he came within ten feet of her. That would be ridiculous.
He wouldn’t fire her for being five minutes late, would he?
She focused on the room. A white leather sectional occupied the center of an open living space, while a gleaming kitchen with marble counters and stainless steel appliances sat off to her right. A mid-century dining set with ten chairs lay to the left, on the other side of the sofa. The view caught her off guard, and she struggled to portray nonchalance. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
She’d been in a number of other apartments in the Stella, but Mason’s was her first of the luxury penthouses, with two-story windows surrounding the living area on three sides. To her left, high-rises and towers filled the glass with a breathtaking display of restless industrialization. To the right, the gray water of the bay filled the view, with the elegant sweep of the Bay Bridge stretching out in the far corner of the room as if it were right in Mason’s backyard. A break in the clouds sent the water of the bay sparkling in an obscene display of beauty.
She tried to hide her awe. “Too bad they couldn’t center the bridge a little better.”
