Princess Next Door(12)

“You sound surprised.”

“That’s a sweet thing to do, right? Take care of someone you don’t really know?”

“He still there?”

“Yes. I need to clean his truck.”

“You threw up in his truck?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll be telling Marshall about that. He felt so guilty leaving you with Zane, but he loves his car.”

She laughed. “It was fine. Zane didn’t hurt me or anything, and I feel really comfortable around him.”

“If you ask me if that’s normal, I will slap you,” Tammy said.

“Okay, okay, I won’t say anything.” Even though all she wanted to do was ask the question.

“Have you ever just thought about trusting your gut with something like this?”

“No, absolutely not,” she said.

“Zane seems like a nice guy, and he could have just left you last night. I think you need to stop overthinking everything, otherwise you’re going to drive yourself insane.”

“Noted, and I hate to say this, but I am already there,” she said. She rubbed at her head. “Do you think I should make him breakfast?”

Tammy laughed. “Why don’t you think about fixing his truck, and then how he took care of you? Maybe there’s truth in that little rumor after all.”

Wynter snorted. She couldn’t help it. “Houses don’t bring people together. There’s no truth in it.”

“We’ll see. I can hear wedding bells in the distance.”

Saying goodbye, she hung up. Then she freshened herself so she looked like she could at least join the land of the living rather than staying camped out in her bathroom.

When she opened her door, Zane was already awake and stretching. He stood in front of her window, and she couldn’t help but admire the dragon tattoo on his back. The blue and black ink coming together as one was mesmerizing.

“I’m going to clean your truck, and I’m also going to say thank you so much for taking care of me. You really didn’t have to do any of that, and yet you did.”

He laughed and turned toward her. “I’m a real hero.”

“So as a real hero, do you want breakfast?”

“Bacon, eggs, and waffles?” he asked.

“I can make all of that if you’d like.”

“Count me in. I’ll check on our clothes. I did a load of laundry last night in between you vomiting.”

Once again, another reason to really appreciate him. He was not even rubbing it in her face, which she was pleased about.

Heading downstairs, she began making breakfast, settling for a bowl of fruit and some toast for herself.

She was nervous as he came out and began looking around her stuff.

“Did it take you long to move in?” he asked.

“Yeah. Tammy and Marshall helped when they could. They have a family of their own, so they didn’t have much free time.”

“Your family?”

She wrinkled her nose. “They didn’t even agree with me moving here so they didn’t help.”

“Are you far away from them?”

Shaking her head, she placed their food on the dining room table. It was only a small table, one she’d gotten from a flea market. She’d cleaned it up, and now it was good as new. “No, they’re about twenty minutes away, but they weren’t going to help me because they didn’t see what I was doing as a good thing.”

“That fucking sucks.”

“It’s the way it is. All the time I was looking and while the papers were going through they were trying to talk me out of it.”

“Wow,” he said.

“What about your family?” she asked, not wanting to talk about her own.

“They disowned me years ago. I didn’t want to join in the family business of real estate. They own an empire, so I went out on my own when I was eighteen and never looked back.”

“You don’t miss them.”

“None of them were all that interesting to miss. I’ve got my guys, and they’re all I need in the world.”

She sipped her tea.

“If you’d have come knocked on my door for help, we’d have helped you move in a lot faster.”

She still had a couple of boxes in the laundry room to unpack. For the most part, she was moved in.

“It was okay.”

“I can’t stand having boxes around, and all the moving shit. I can’t think with it lying around. It’s like a job that always needs doing.”

Wynter watched him eat, and she liked having him at her table, even without his shirt. No one in her parents’ house was allowed downstairs unless they were completely dressed.

She was a rebel, in her pajama shorts and shirt, eating breakfast with a man she’d spent the night with.

“Now that wicked smile on your face is telling a whole of stories right now. You’re going to share?”

“I’m just thinking about how different I’m behaving right now.” She shook her head, tucking some of her blonde hair away. “Ignore me.”

“Were your parents strict or something?”

“Not really. Just set in their ways. I’m now the black sheep of the family. Going out and living on my own.” She shrugged. “I like it. It’s freeing.”