Billionaire With a Twist 3(6)

Surely Hunter had heard me pull in. Why hadn’t he come out? Was he at one of those curtained windows, just watching and waiting? Was he going to make me come to him?

Well, that was fair.

I squared my shoulders and left the car. Struggled to keep my posture straight and my face pleasantly neutral as I made my way up the path. I took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.

It banged open like a gunshot.

“Hunter!”

His name was torn from my mouth in a gasp.

He glowered, leaning heavily on the doorway in a rumpled plaid button-up and jeans that looked like they had seen more mud and engine grease than detergent in the sum total of their lives. He was grizzled and unshaven, his hair mussed and his eyes narrowed.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

And then he grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me inside.





FOUR


I was stunned into silence as I gazed up at him.

Hunter looked terrible.

I mean, he was still gorgeous, you couldn’t change that with a chisel, but he also looked like he’d been drinking for two weeks solid, and had only occasionally remembered to bathe. His eyes on me were furious, but underneath it I saw the unmistakable gleam of lust. Or was I imagining it?

“I asked what you were doing here,” he repeated slowly, his voice barely containing his rage. Even still, I felt my body responding to the heat rolling off of him, the press of his hands against my shoulders, the way our eyes locked.

Words failed me. What I wanted right then was to shove him against a wall and run my fingers down his chest, his tight abs, slip them under the waistband of his jeans to wrap around that thick, hot—no! I was here for a reason, a very important reason.

“I came here to, um…” Speech left me again as I saw his fiery gaze flick down to my lips, then dip lower to my collarbone, my cleavage—God how I wanted him to put his hands where his eyes were—before jumping back up again. He was still glowering at me like I was a Pinkerton agent come to check up on whether he was keeping an illegal moonshine still.

I tried again. “Hunter, I just—” I’m so glad to see you, it’s so good to see you, oh God, are you okay, oh, I wish I could say any of these things out loud and not risk getting shoved back out onto the porch and the door slammed in my face… “We need to talk.”

“Do we now?” he said, stony-faced.

“Yes. We do.”

I pulled away from his grip and his hypnotic eyes and pushed past him, further into the house. It was even more rustic than my cabin back at the estate had been; there was a fridge and stove, but that was about the only sign that this cabin existed in the twenty-first century. Everything else was wool rugs and antlers and animal hides, hand-hewn wooden tables and a lumpy homemade couch. A door off to the right looked like it might lead to a bedroom; I caught a glimpse of more wood.

I pulled myself back to the present; I hadn’t come out here to gawk at his living quarters. “What’s going on at the company? Have you seen the new campaign? You have to have seen the new campaign. How could that have happened? Can we stop it? We have to stop it! How do you think we can—”

“I haven’t seen them, and I have no intention of seeing them,” Hunter snapped. “And I’ll thank you not to bring them up again.”

He strode past me to rummage in the fridge for a cooler, a dented red and white number. He opened it to check the number of bottles, added a few more from a half-empty case on the floor. And of course I definitely did not examine the curve of his ass in those jeans as he leaned over, didn’t have to force myself not to drool. Not for a second.

“How can you say that?” I demanded. “This is your legacy!”

“Not anymore,” he said, grabbing at a bait box, which he balanced on top of the cooler; he picked up a fishing pole with the other hand. “I’m just being practical. Knowing the specifics isn’t going to change one damn thing, so I’d rather not know. Here’s all I need to understand: I lost control, the board outvoted me, and now it’s all over. See how simple that was? Or did you think things would turn out differently?”

He shot a glare at me that could’ve stripped paint, and stormed through the open door back outside.

I followed. “But—”

“I’m done listening to you,” he interrupted. He was making his way to the dock, his strides long, impatient. “I listened to you once before and look where it got me.”

The words hit me like a punch to the throat.

I pushed back at the pain, spluttering, “Fine, don’t take my advice on what to do. But do something. I can’t believe you’re just sitting here doing nothing at all!”

He bared his teeth in what was technically a smile, but looked like it was causing him actual pain. “Oh, I’m not doing nothing. I’ve got plans. Me, the lake, some fishing and beer. It’s golden.”

“Oh, great plans,” I said sarcastically. “Why didn’t I think of that? That’ll definitely save your family name, for sure.”

His jaw tensed for just a second, his eyes opening wide enough that I thought I glimpsed a moment of true hurt, like a puppy who had been kicked. Then he wheeled around and stomped away down the length of the dock without saying anything.

Damn that man!