The Billionaire's Beautiful Intruder (Billionaire Knights Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the next week with this angry hulk of a man. A man who very clearly didn’t want her here. Grim-faced, she nodded. “That sounds like a great idea.”
    Steve eyed her suspiciously. She’d agreed too easily. Why his brothers had sent her out here he still didn’t understand. He’d told them he was fine. That the only reason he’d decided to spend the winter on Tyler Island was because he needed to be by himself for a while, and out there in the world that was impossible. He’d tried, Lord knows he’d tried, but there was always some official business function to attend in his capacity as founder and co-owner of Knight Enterprises, or some family gathering or some other social nonsense.
    He’d been to Stuart’s wedding, and had felt so out of place, having to smile and be merry while inside he felt hollow and dead, that he’d decided to remove himself from the scene and retreat to the island for a while. He needed to be by himself, until he got things right in his head again. He certainly didn’t feel like talking to people, or burdening his family with his depressing presence.
    After what had happened on his third tour of duty he needed time and space. To be left alone until he could wrap his head around what had gone down—until he got those screaming voices out of his head, and those terrifying images. Until the nightmares stopped and he didn’t wake up bathing in his own sweat each and every night. Until that happened he needed to isolate himself, to be locked away from the civilization he’d sworn to protect and in whose service he’d almost come home in a body bag that final time.
    And now this woman. How was he going to cope? Already she was invading his space, invading his thoughts. Already he was feeling annoyed with her. And already he wished he’d personally put her on that chopper, strapped her in, and had watched Marco take off. He shouldn’t have allowed her to make up her own mind. He should have done it for her.
    He felt her presence before she’d announced it, and he turned on her in a flash, his instincts well-honed and lethal. When he saw the fear in her eyes he held back. He could see why she was scared of him. He was trained for war. Two hundred pounds of pure muscle and lethal skill. He could kill a man with his bare hands. He checked himself. This wasn’t her fault. She was simply a victim of circumstance, and his brothers’ well-intentioned but ill-executed attempt to help him.
    “What is it?” he asked her in his deep, rumbling voice.
    “I was just wondering if you could perhaps show me around a little? Explain to me how things work around here? I mean…” She held out a slender hand and displayed a tiny smile. “For starters, what about the bathroom situation?”
    He nodded. She had a point. If she was going to live here, she needed to know her way around. “I hope you’re easily satisfied, Miss Grayson.”
    She eyed him curiously. “I am,” she told him, and a small frisson of awareness assaulted him, a vision of her in his arms jumping out of nowhere. “I mean—accommodations are sparse, and perhaps not what you’re used to.”
    She opened her mouth to snap a retort at him, but then closed it again with a click. The man was simply incorrigible! She followed him as he took her for a brief tour of the house, pointing out the bathroom, kitchen, larder and storage space, and explaining how to operate the kitchen stove and the bathroom boiler.
    As he took her out back and showed her where he kept the supply of firewood, Molly thought he looked more formidable than any man she’d ever met. With his curly beard and his long hair whipping in the breeze, a stark stone wall his backdrop where it protected them from the sheer drop beyond, he could have been a Norman conqueror or some Viking king. Especially since his scowl seemed to be a permanent fixture, his lips never once hinting at a smile.
    A neat pile of chopped wood was placed inside a shack, an axe still lodged deeply