Page 3 of Winning His Wager
Good thing she wasn’t living in a romance novel. Otherwise, she’d be totally bummed right now.Thiswas not the hero of her dreams here at all.
Not even close.
“You are stuck with me, dude. Completely stuck with me. Except when I am at the inn, the diner, or on a hot date. Don’t worry—I will call if I plan to stay out all night.”
“You won’t be staying out all night and working here.” Oh, the grouchy got even worse there. If he was aSesame Streetcharacter, he’d be green and living in a trashcan right now.
“Why not? I mean, if the next day is my day off, can you really stop me? Does this place have a morality clause? I know you aren’t a virgin, Fletcher. I’ve so seen you perving over my cousin. And I saw you eyeballing those hot ladies from Texas last week. I mean, right there in the inn lobby, right in front of Char and everything. So not cool.”
Dylan yelped when hard hands went around her waist and she was just lifted right up like she weighed nothing at all.
Fletcher Tyler was averystrong man.
No denying that.Strong, muscled, kind of beautiful. If one liked mean, cranky-cowboy types, anyway. Which she did not. Her taste now ran to really tall, lanky children’s villain actors with kind eyes and broken hearts. Even if cranky cowboys had very toned arms that she wanted to run her fingers all over.
She had no dignity at all.
Of course, a woman wearing Wonkus McBubbles and Scraggle-Popps accessories probably didn’t have much dignity to begin with. There was that.
Quade—the actor who played Wonkus McBubbles and had asked Dylan to dinner again this weekend—was going to be just afriend,of course. She had suspected that before she’d even said yes—it was obvious he needed a friend, and she knew he wasn’t ready for real romance right now—but she wasn’t going to tell this guy that.
Fletcher already thought she was only half the woman Charlotte was. He’d said that the first time they had even met.Nothing even real woman about you!or anything.
Hard to forget that.
Dylan knew she wasn’t exactly rolling in the girl charms and everything—kind of hard to do when she was the size of a garden gnome and had weird spiky, almost-white hair and freckles and everything—but she wasn’tthatbad. She didn’t think. She’d dated a few guys before. Like, really dated them.
She’d even slept with one for a while.Thathad been really fun.
Until her family had moved again and she’d had to say goodbye. Brody had wanted her to stay behind. Live with him. And try to make it together.
Brody had been talking babies and a house. Just the two of them, building their own family. But she’d not been ready for that. She’d only been twenty at the time—and she hadn’t been willing to leave her sisters. Or her mom.
Her family had needed her. Dylan had done what Dylan had to do. No matter how much it had hurt.
Of course, Charlotte had that whole supersexy fiery redhead thing going for her. And she’d seen the way this dude looked at her cousin sometimes.
“I am not perving over Charlotte. We decided years ago that we weren’t what the other needed. We are friends, and that’s it.”
“Sure you are, big guy. Sure you are. So…why this room? I mean, it’s like next door to yours? Shouldn’t you put me far away as possible? I am the hired help and all.”
“Nikki’s room has a full bath,” he said, almost all rumbly and everything. “I do not want to share a bathroom with you.”
“Well, I am housebroken, you know.” Dude, he so had the grumpy part of grumpy/sunshine down pat. “Sweet. So, no tripping over your dirty undies in the bathroom. Gotcha. And you’ll keep your lovers out of my room. Totally cool with that. So, if the time comes and you need privacy, you going to put the sock on the door?”
Dylan waited. He was going to chuck her right out the door into the nearest snowbank. She was sure of it. If he did, then she won. And he’d just have to deal with it. Housekeeper, six months—winner got a thousand dollars, after all.
That money was going in Dylan’s house fund. Period.
She tried to peek into his room. Just to see what he would do. Of course, she twisted her ankle and tripped. That was the way the world worked for her—she had long accepted such things.
In an instant, Dylan found herself up off her feet. Off the floor, actually.
Truckboy movedfast.
“Fletcher,” she drawled out his name. “I do appreciate the rescue. But you can’t go around sweeping the housekeeper off her feet like this. It just isn’tdone.”
She was hanging from his hands like a child right now. Not exactly what she wanted. She wiggled.