So About the Money Read Online Free PDF Page A

 
    “The carpet installer’s scheduled for next week. He recommended I paint before he replaces the rug.”
    They both glanced at the hideous shag carpet.
    “Good idea.” A grin tugged at JC’s mouth.  
    She bit her lip to keep from smiling—the shag was truly awful—but the tension in the room dropped by ten degrees.
    He looked at her, studying her expression. “Actually, I’m impressed you took on the renovation.”  
    She raised an eyebrow.  
    “I thought you said you’d never live in Richland again.”
    “You heard what you wanted to hear.” One of the reasons they’d broken up was he’d wanted a stay-at-home wife, stuck behind a picket fence. She’d had no interest in playing the Stepford Wife role. Any chance they’d had of creating any kind of home crashed and burned when she came home from college after one of their arguments—about her being in Seattle and her plans to stay there after graduation—and found him with another woman.  
    But here she was, in Richland.  
    With a house.  
    An empty house.  
    Whatever.  
    “The house is an investment. Most of my friends think I’m nuts for renovating it myself.”  
    His lips tightened around a smile.  
    If she didn’t know him, she’d have missed it. One of the things he’d loved about her— said he’d loved—was her tendency to throw herself into projects other people thought were crazy. She always pulled them off, though.  
    “This place is butt-ugly on the outside, but you have to admit the view is stunning.” Keep him focused on the externals. The last thing she wanted was for him to look at her too closely. To see inside her the way he used to.  
    JC didn’t need to know she loved the ugly little house. Everything about the house and the renovation was tangible. Did she fix the water heater or not? Get the room painted or not? There were none of the murky gray areas like there were in the rest of her life, where maybe she succeeded—or maybe she didn’t.  
    He moved past her to the window, then turned and leaned against the wall. “I heard you were back.”
    She gave him an and-your-point-is ? look. What had he expected? That she’d call him? Show up on his cheating, black-hearted doorstep?
    “Why’d you move back to Richland?”
    She wasn’t going to tell him her father had suffered a midlife brain fart and taken off with his yoga instructor, or that she’d made a deal with her mother to bail out the family accounting business, a decision she regretted on practically a daily basis. And at a deeper level, his question pissed her off because he knew damn well exactly why she was there. She’d seen the cop powwow information exchange out at Big Flats, where the deputies had brought JC up to speed. All he was doing now was digging for personal information.  
    She crossed her arms and ignored the way her body heated up just because he was in the room. Stupid body. If it heated up, it was because she was mad. Period. “You know why I moved. And if you were really interested, it would take you about two seconds to find out when I changed the address on my driver’s license from Seattle to Richland.”  
    He smiled and two dimples appeared.  
    She caught her breath. Oh, man. How could she have forgotten about his dimples?  
    It didn’t matter how many times she told herself they were just a simple indentation of flesh. Dimples made serious, grown-up men look like they still had a mischievous little boy inside. The kind who sledded down the forbidden steepest slopes, dyed the dog green for St. Patty’s Day, or knew how to be especially devilish in bed.  
    And she personally knew every one of those items applied to JC.
    In spite of her irritation, she smiled at him and his grin widened. His shoulders relaxed and his eyes grew a shade warmer. “You never could pass up a chance to jerk my chain.”
    “You set yourself up often enough.”  
    Why was he making nice?She did the mental head-slap. What was she thinking?