Power Drilled (Roommates, #8)(24)

I had an armload of bags and dressed nearly as high as my head as I followed Penny down the hallway. Now that we were in the part of the resort that held the guest rooms, it had turned into a fucking rabbit warren. I half wished I’d dropped breadcrumbs so we could find our way back.

It took Penny quite a few tries to get the door to her room open, which I attributed more to the crappy keycard system than to what little she’d had to drink. She could take all the time she needed, though, because she was bent forward with her very fine ass pushing out the short skirt of her dress. She looked pretty, but she also looked a tad on the slutty side in that dress. Since that didn’t jibe with what I knew of her, I assumed it was more about making her asshole ex-boyfriend jealous than it was for my benefit, but hey, I’d take it.

We finally made it in the room, and I dropped all her things unceremoniously on the bed. A king-size bed, just like I’d imagined. God, she’d look good stretched out naked on it. Hell, she’d probably look amazing even if she wore Jackson’s oldest, ugliest coveralls that he wore when we painted.

The moral of the story: Penny was hot.

And off-limits. Jackson had made that perfectly clear. When she was out back editing videos with her laptop earlier today, he’d yammered on for what felt like years about how she was recovering from a bad breakup. How her ex had stomped on her heart. How this was a very stressful week for her, blah, blah, blah. I was half surprised he didn’t demand that we switch places, that he be allowed to come tonight and pretend to be me pretending to be Reid.

Not that we’d ever been able to fool each other with that kind of thing.

I sat on the bed, my legs spread wide and my forearms resting on my thighs as I watched Penny hang up her clothes. I could’ve deprived myself of the chance to watch the sinewy way she moved by helping, but I didn’t do well with pretty, feminine clothing. Unless you counted ripping it off women. I was fucking great at that.

But, damn it, my brothers were in my head. Reid would be lending her a hand, that was for sure. And Jackson would want to take a swing at me for not helping.

I got up and carried a hot pink bag that seemed to be a makeup case to the bathroom. It was hard to imagine Penny needing all that stuff, because she was fucking gorgeous, but it was probably important to her. Besides, she had an absolute mane of dark shiny hair that glided across her chest and back when she moved, and even I knew those kinds of waves took some work.

When I returned from the bathroom, Penny was crouched down on the floor.

“You okay?” She hadn’t had much to drink, so I didn’t think that was the problem. I got down next to her.

“I lost the back of my earring,” she said, scanning the pile carpet. “Dang it.”

I turned on the flashlight on my phone and moved the light around the dark rug. Then I chuckled. “Dang it?”

Penny flipped her hair out of her eyes and looked up at me. “What?”

“Well, the earrings must not be that important to you if all you can say is dang it.”

She flushed. “It’s just something I say, okay?” She took off her other earring and twisted around to put it on the dresser, giving me a nice view of the way the edge of her dress was riding up her thighs.

“Would the world end if you said the word damn?”

“It might,” she said, resuming her search.

“Could you do it if you repeated it after someone?”

She frowned. “It’s not a big deal, just a personal preference.”

“Say damn.”

“Dang.”

“Say shit.”

“Shoot.”

“Say crap.”

“Crud.”

I had to laugh at that last one. “You should come with a translator.”

She looked up, irritated. Getting under hot women’s skin—that was something else I did well. But then when I finally dragged my gaze away from her magnificent legs, I spotted something on the carpet. It was circular, translucent, and impossibly small. “Is that it?”

She picked it up, a relieved smile on her face. “Thank you.”

I got to my feet and pulled her to hers. “Are you thankful enough to cuss at me?”

“There’s no fricking way I’d do a cruddy thing like that.”

I grinned. This girl had a spark to her. Maybe the crappy things that had happened to her recently were trying to dampen it, but I didn’t think they’d win. My money was on Penny.

Once her stuff was settled, it was time to head back to the house. This hotel was at least a half hour drive, and that was without traffic. No way we’d have time to shuttle her back and forth all week, which was why we’d insisted she stay with us. But even though that prospect had initially scared the crap—excuse me, crud—out of her, she seemed to be with the program now. She grabbed her purse and followed me into the hallway.

I yanked on the door handle, just to make sure it was locked so that her pretty shit didn’t get stolen. But when I turned back to her, she was staring over my shoulder, her face pale.

A man and woman had just emerged from a room down the hallway and were staring at us. The blonde looked familiar, and then it hit me. This was Penny’s cousin, which made the asshole standing behind her Penny’s ex.

I saw red. That douchebag had not only cheated on her, but he’d also been the one to dump her. As if a woman as fine as Penny should ever have been with him in the first place.