The words aren’t out of her mouth for an instant when Ruby closes her mouth with a sharp click of her teeth, breaking my gaze.

I am rock hard. I don’t know what possessed her to take it that far, when I was just barely scratching the surface of flirting, but she did, and now her face is the picture of embarrassment.

“I mean—” She tries to walk it back, her shoulders tensing. “You might learn more about me than you bargained for today.”

I want to reach across the seat and pull her close into me, press my lips against hers, and tell Phillip to keep driving until I’ve had the chance to fuck her until she comes. My grip on my phone is so tight I’m worried it might shatter in my hand, so I put it down on the seat next to me.

“I’ll try to keep it professional.”

She takes in a big breath and lets it out slowly, which only serves to make it more obvious how hard her nipples are beneath her bra and tank top. Her hands flutter toward the zipper of the hoodie she’s wearing along with yoga pants that hug her ass so closely that it looks like they were made just for her and no other woman on the planet, but she doesn’t zip it.

“Me too. That—” I freeze, waiting for the next words out of her mouth. “That wasn’t very professional. I’m sorry,” she says.

“I’m not.”

She flicks her blue eyes toward me. “I am.” Damn, this woman is all over the place. “This is—this is too important to be distracted with…”

“You’re absolutely right.” There’s no denying that there’s something between us. There is no way she could look me in the eye right now and tell me she doesn’t feel the heat that’s making the back of the town car feel like an inferno. But I have the sense that if I press her now, she’ll go running in the opposite direction. “So, when we get there, where should I start?”

Ruby looks out the window at the traffic making its way alongside us. “I’d start downstairs. Everything is tagged from the last company I used, so it should give you an idea of...well, at least an idea of what they thought.”

Then she turns back to me and smiles.

That’s a good sign.

Right?

Ruby is frowning by the time we pull up in front of the house. It’s an incredible piece of architecture, one that could easily be mistaken for a palace. Still, it fits in with the neighborhood, which says more about the people who live here than anything else. If I didn’t want to live in the city, I’d fit right in.

She gets out of the car without waiting for me or Phillip to open the door and climbs the stairs in front, digging for something in her purse along the way. I catch up just in time to watch her shove the keys into the lock and twist them, hard.

I don’t ask.

“Here we are.” Her voice has gone cold, and a shiver runs down my spine. “The formal living room is to the left. There are a lot of furniture pieces there.”

This time, I see everything with new eyes. There are quite a few pieces of furniture that will need a once-over by my appraiser. The previous company did an excellent job of tagging everything, though I disagree with their assessment more than once.

I make my way through the formal living room and into what seems to be a well-appointed den. “What do you think—”

I turn to ask Ruby the question, but she’s not there any longer.

Strange.

I suppose it would be a little odd to watch someone walk through your childhood home and deciding whether the value on endless price tags were correct, so I keep going. She doesn’t need to be here for this.

When I walked into her house yesterday morning, I made my offer not realizing just how much the house contained. She was right. Negotiation is absolutely necessary. 

It takes an hour just to give a cursory glance to most of the things on the first floor, and then I head up to the second. There’s less here, but only slightly. It’s clear that some of the bedrooms are guest rooms and a few were for exclusive use of the family. At the end of one hallway, I open the door, and I know instantly that I’m in what used to be Ruby’s room.

The first clue is an elaborately painted script of her name. It’s worked into a painting designed to surround a mirror. It looks like some kind of fairytale doorway around the outside of the glass, and at the top, there’s her name, as if it had been chiseled there in the painted stone.

The second clue is that her scent has settled into the carpet. It’s a pure, clean scent that reminds me of roses.

There’s almost nothing left in the room—no books or papers or other things, just a four-poster bed and a small matching desk—but I can’t help wishing she was with me now so I could ask her...anything, really. 

Her big windows overlook the sprawling lawn in the back of the property, and when I glance down into the backyard, I see her for the first time since we got here.

She’s standing at the edge of a flower bed, looking out to where the property slopes down into a wooded area. Her arms are crossed over her chest, her hip cocked to one side, and she’s totally still—all except for her head. She looks left, then right again, just watching. Or taking it in—I don’t know which. But if things are really as bad as she says, this entire property might be gone soon after the things inside are.

That’s when it hits me. No matter how much I want Ruby, it’s unlikely that I’m ever going to get her. She loves this place. She’s breathing it in right now with what I’d expect is a mixture of pain and love, because it’s never going to be hers. Her inheritance is about to be yanked out from under her.

And I’m going to be the one to do it.