I hope he doesn’t know his smile affects me the way I’m willing to bet it affects just about every single other woman he comes into contact with. Just two words here. Panty. Sizzling. I’d say melting, but everyone says melting. I personally prefer to think of underwear going up in flames because generally, that’s how it works. You let your panties get away from you, and you get burned.
“I’m Wilder. Your new roommate,” he says as he sticks out his hand. It’s big and strong-looking—also concrete-ish. There are a few dark hairs on the second set of knuckles. He has manly hands.
I don’t shake it. “Yeah. I guess so.” I sigh so hard that I probably resemble a big bad wolf trying to blow a house down. “At least until I get tired of you, or you get tired of me and find somewhere else to live. I don’t know why these things happen to me, and guys like you get forced on me, but I promise not to take it peacefully, so don’t expect an easy time.”
“Alright. Good to know,” he says, but his expression doesn’t say it’s alright. Instead, his face looks surprised, like he’s shocked there have been others.
Yeah, so apparently, Pappy S forgot to clue him into that, or maybe Pappy S didn’t tell him much at all. Perhaps he really is just here for the room, and my great-grandpa is having money problems and needs another nurse. Maybe I should choose to give them both the benefit of the doubt because I seriously don’t want to think about what Pappy S is offering these guys to get them in the door.
Wilder’s brown eyes soften, and the sunlight catches them and makes gold flecks dance around his pupils. I hate that he thinks I’m funny when I’m actually serious. He’ll learn the hard way, and eventually, he’ll leave. Most guys can’t stand the zoo in the house, and I don’t even have to lift a finger to get them out the door. This is the third “roommate” Pappy S has forced on me, so I should know.
“Can I come in?”
Wilder has no bags or boxes, which comes off as overly suspicious. “Where’s your shit?”
“Shit?” he repeats, cocking an eyebrow at me.
“Your stuff. Why are you moving here anyway? From where? Why? And for how long?”
“I think those things are best discussed when not standing at the doorstep. And my shit is coming. My company’s moving it down here for me, including my car—a nice perk of company dollars. I didn’t have to drive myself down here. I’m not staying long, just six months. Also, I don’t have much, and I don’t need much.”
“Are you a minimalist?”
“The less shit, the better.”
“Hmm, well. Come in. I’ll show you where your room is.”
I already have this one planned out. I know, I know, it’s devious. I’m not naturally devious, and I don’t have a mean bone in my body. At least aside from the lady boner that I popped the moment Wilder walked through the door. Because that one was pretty mean. Jesus, peas, and corn.
Anyway, lady boners aside, I’m seriously not a bad person. I’m not a mean person nor a spiteful person. You know what kind of person I am? I am someone who is T-I-R-E-D of getting male roommates forced on her. One who wants to chase those said roommates away and is tired of good-looking men producing spontaneous lady boners that are totally and utterly unwanted and unwelcome. For my brain, at least because my hoo-ha doesn’t exactly agree. She thinks lady boners are great and that lady orgasms and other mind-numbing chemical reactions are excellent.
I grind my teeth and stalk through the house, my annoyance at myself lighting a fire under my ass, which I hope Wilder isn’t staring at. I need to stop thinking about him and his unfairly attractive physique because he is basically the enemy, and I’m on a mission to get him out of the house but at the same time also make him kind of believe it’s his own idea to leave.
No matter how badly I want to believe Pappy S is telling me the truth, it’s a pill I just can’t choke down. It’s too suspicious, and then there’s his track record of meddling. For good reasons, as he sees it. I can’t not love him for it, even if it does annoy the ever-living hecking heckly heck out of me.
I can’t wait for Wilder to see his new accommodations. I lead him so rapidly past the living room and down the hall that his head is probably spinning. Unfortunately for me, his long-ass legs make it easy for him to keep up. He’s like a Daddy Longlegs. Well, minus the daddy part because thinking about calling Wilder ‘daddy’ makes me hot and bothered in the bits that normally get hot and bothered, which makes me even more annoyed because I can’t stop the hot and bothered-ness from happening.