Page 13 of Rising Heat

He pushes off the island and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a ring of keys. His gaze flicks to me for half a beat before he thumbs one free—silver, simple, still warm from his palm—and holds it out.

“What’s that?”

“Your key.”

I look from the key to his face to the key.

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“What about the references?”

“You showed up exactly when you said you would. You’ve been coordinating this tour for weeks without once being flaky, and the Pennsylvania address on the license you sent over tells me you’re doing something big. That’s enough for me.”

I stare at him.

He just looked at a Pennsylvania address and a punctual email chain and decided I was worth a key, and he’s not even being charming about it. He’s just being certain, which is somehow so much worse.

“You can’t just hand out keys because I seem organized.”

“I can. I own the building,” he smirks.

I huff out something that is embarrassingly close to a laugh.

“That is deeply irresponsible.”

“Probably.” His grin turns softer. “But I’ve got a good feeling about you.”

I choose to deliberately ignore the way my lower belly flips in response, and I look at the key instead.

Silver, simple, warm from his hand.

My fingers brush Tyler’s when I take it.

I look up and find him already watching me, the teasing gone from his expression. Like he’s just as aware that something shifted as I am and wants to see what I’m going to do about it.

I’ve known this man for less than twenty minutes. I ended an engagement three weeks ago. I drove three hundred miles on four hours of sleep, and now I’m standing in an empty apartment holding a key that apparently belongs to me.

My landlord has forearms that should probably be regulated by some kind of governing body. The sunlight is doing something genuinely unreasonable to the brick wall. There’s a kitchen in there where I would put lemons in a bowl and⁠—

Fuck.

CHAPTER THREE

tyler

The thing about being the fun one is that nobody ever wonders what you’re thinking.

Usually because they’ve already decided. I make that pretty easy on them.

Like tonight. I know exactly how this plays out before Mack even gets home. By now he’s probably seen the signed lease land in his inbox and knowing my brother, his head is already spinning. He’ll lecture me about responsibility, I’ll make a joke. Same roles we’ve been playing for three decades.

The problem is, I know exactly how this is going to look—I saw a pretty face and did something impulsive. Which would be a lot easier to explain if that were actually what happened.

I’ve been the fun one my whole life—high school, parties, the firehouse, every room I’ve ever walked into. Mack’s always been the responsible one. Which has always been funny to me, because apparently once you’re good at one thing, nobody stops to consider you might be good for anything else too.

I found that out the hard way about two years ago.