There's Something About a Rebel- Read Online Free PDF Page A

ever afters. It wasn’t for guys like him, always on the move. What was more, he didn’t need it.
Way
too problematic.
    Hot and fast and uncomplicated—
that
was what he needed. And by crikey, he thought, his lower body suddenly hard as rock, he needed it soon.
    ‘Got someone special waiting for you to ring, huh?’
    His head jerked up. ‘You always did get straight to the point, didn’t you? I need to make a few calls.’ A plumber and an electrician for starters. But it could wait till morning. ‘Your tools are worse than useless. I’ve secured the tarp over the main leak for now. Are you even aware of the state of the roofing?’
    She looked away. ‘I was going to get around to it.’
    Yeah? When? ‘I’ll organise something for tomorrow.’ He turned and walked to the door. A thought occurred to him and he turned back. and his mind went blank.
    She was holding his pillow by one corner and staring at him. He imagined himself walking over there and taking it from her hands, leaning close and breathing in the scent of her neck. Feeling the silky heat of her flesh against his knuckles as he untied her sash and slid the dressing gown from her shoulders before laying her down and letting her help him forget why he’d come home.
    But pink and pretty didn’t deserve to be used in that way.
She
didn’t deserve to be used in that way.
    She arched a brow, waiting, and he realised that he’d been about to ask a question before he’d been blindsided. ‘Are you working tomorrow?’
    She hesitated, looking uncertain. ‘No. Not tomorrow.’
    She also sounded vague. ‘Are you sure?’ he prompted. ‘You’re not thinking of playing hooky, are you? Because—’
    ‘Because you’re here to take care of everything and not to worry my pretty little head over it?’
    Right. He wouldn’t have said it in quite that way but, yep, that pretty much summed it up.
    She made a dismissive snort and didn’t lookthe least bit impressed. She had that sulky pout going on again.
    He didn’t see the problem. Protection came naturally to him. Other women would be grateful for his assistance. And only too willing to show that gratitude. In any number of ways.
    Not Melissa Sanderson apparently.
    ‘Okay. Fine.’
Whatever you say.
    But there was something she
wasn’t
saying, he could see it in the way she evaded his eyes. He also remembered the almost hunted gaze from earlier and the way she’d pushed at him. ‘I’ll say goodnight, then,’ he clipped. ‘Oh, and if you’re looking for a spare pillow, there are three other bedrooms to choose from.’
    As he walked out into the stormy night he wondered whether she had, in fact, planned to sleep in his bed. The thought of that soft satiny skin on his sheets and that alluring feminine scent on his pillow smouldered through his bloodstream. Lengthening his stride, he distanced himself as quickly as possible.

CHAPTER THREE
    B LAKE carried the rest of her decorating gear up to the house, then returned to see what he could do about the mess. He swapped the small container beneath the now free-flowing drip for a bucket and snatched up a newspaper from beside the couch to absorb the water on the floor.
    As he spread it out he noticed an ad for a retail assistant’s job in a beachwear shop circled in a red felt-tipped pen then crossed out with ‘TOO LATE’ scrawled beneath it and a sad face. Hadn’t Lissa said she was an interior designer?
    Was that why she wasn’t working tomorrow? Because she didn’t have a job? He glanced over to the final notice on the fridge door. Obviously she was in financial difficulty and just as obviously she hadn’t told Jared because if he knew his old mate, no way would he have let this situation arise. No job and inadequate accommodation.
Dangerously
inadequate accommodation.
    Bloody hell.
    Blake had inherited a duty of care here. Notonly because it came naturally to him but because Jared had been his closest mate, the brother he’d never had. As a young