Snowed in with Mr. Heartbreaker (Copper Valley Bro Code #5)

Chapter 9

9

Cash

I shouldn’t have said any of that.

Not a single word.

Hi, Aspen. We might have to cuddle naked and I will definitely get a boner when we do, so I’m warning you about something that might not actually happen if the power miraculously turns back on, or if the fire gives off enough heat for me to stay here on the couch.

Almost forty years on this earth and I am still an awkward dumbass when the cameras are off and I let myself be real.

She’s fully facing me now, and I don’t know what that look on her face means.

“Is this how you flirt with the models and actresses and performers you bring with you on the red carpet?” she asks.

Fuck.

There’s no other word for this situation beyond fuck .

Most of them are only a few years older than Aspen.

“They’re…picked on purpose,” I tell the fire beyond her.

“It’s all a ruse,” she murmurs. “You do the Hollywood publicity game. Keep them talking about you by having a different woman at every event.”

I tug on my collar. “Not all of them. Just…most of them.”

Got an actress who needs some publicity before they announce she’s starring in a big role , my agent will say. Take her to your premiere, get seen walking out of Whole Foods together. Her people are tight with that director you’ve been wanting to work with.

Showrunner was just announced for that book-to-movie adaptation you said you wanted to star in. They want a Casanova type. So-and-so from such-and-such modeling agency owes me a favor. Pack your bags. We’re getting you a hot date to Fashion Week.

Big director on an action film is wooing that new rock chick. Take her to the charity event next week. We’ll get you on his radar through her, and I’ll find out what her team wants in return.

And so on.

It’s all this-for-that. The game behind the scenes.

If we click right, we’ll blow off steam in bed together, then go our separate ways. If we don’t, we’re professionals and treat the entire event that way.

“Do you ask how old they are before you agree to look like you’re dating?” she asks.

I wince. “No.”

“Then why does it matter how old I am?”

Fuck again.

This time because the question has my balls tightening and my cock getting hard.

I swallow.

Open my mouth.

Decide because I see myself as your mentor and father figure is the worst lie I could utter right now, and close my mouth again.

The truth is closer to because I like you more than I like any of them .

“How old did you think I was when we were texting?” she asks.

I look at the fire again, but it doesn’t offer up any free passes. “I don’t know. Late twenties? Mid-thirties?”

“You didn’t look me up?”

I’m fish-mouthing again.

There are zero good answers to that question.

When Beck pinged me a year ago to ask if I’d consider renting my pool house to someone as a favor to a friend of a friend, I assumed he was talking about someone who’d been in the trenches trying to make a name for themselves for years.

Just talk to her , Beck said when I initially refused. You get someone trusted to make sure your housekeeper isn’t pulling more crap. She gets a place to live. You never have to see each other because she travels a lot too. Struggling musician type. I passed her your number. She’ll use the code phrase ‘Noses are red and your first wedding was a massive mistake ’ when she gets in touch .

She did.

She used that exact phrase and followed it with Also, if that’s the code phrase your friends pick, I don’t want to know what code phrases your enemies would use .

We texted for hours.

I almost missed a flight.

I had my business manager do the paperwork for the pool house rental. She moved in while I was gone and texted me pictures of the plants around my pool to assure me they were still alive under her watch.

When I got back, she was traveling, so I texted her pictures of the pool house to show her it was still standing.

We texted other stuff too.

Long day shooting. This is a nice life, but sometimes it wears you out.

I was doing a set at this club in Boston and someone started throwing those weird gummy Nerds things at me.

Saw my family today for the first time in months. I always forget how much I miss them until I see them.

Must be nice—my hedgehog is basically my family. Well, and Waverly.

Waverly’s name should’ve been a clue, but it wasn’t, because I didn’t pay attention to the young woman Waverly introduced me to one night at a party at my place several months before Beck pinged me.

Waverly and I weren’t tight, so meeting Aspen was no more of a thing than meeting up-and-coming actresses at other parties around town. I registered meeting someone new, introduced by someone that I assumed worked the game the same as I did. I recognized our paths likely wouldn’t cross again, or if they did, it would come with a formal introduction from my agent, and I moved on to hanging out with my inner circle.

I probably hit six parties that week.

It’s what you do when you’re in town for a few days and you’re looking for what’s next and you want to network and see a few friends.

Seven months into Aspen living in my pool house, we were finally both there at the same time. Ironic, considering I’d helped her find Commander Crumpet a new home without ever actually seeing her in person.

I was nervous as fucking hell to meet this woman that I was obsessed with.

Probably had three fake girlfriends in the time we’d been texting.

I hadn’t hooked up with any of them because they didn’t live up to what I imagined Aspen to be.

My hands were sweating. Mouth was dry. Dick and heart half clenched in terror that the vibe I got through texts wouldn’t be the same vibe I’d get in person.

I was nervous to knock on the door of my own damn pool house.

But I did it.

And when she opened the door, soaking wet from her hair to her crop top to her baggy cotton shorts to her painted toenails, I almost choked on my own tongue before getting a word out.

“You’re blonde,” I’d blurted, barely stopping myself from saying thirteen and swapping it out for her hair color at the last possible second.

Pretty hazel eyes stared back at me with a deadass I look like I just went for a dip in your pool with all of my clothes on, and you want to talk about my hair color?

And the thought of her swimming in my pool—naked, to be completely honest, despite the fact that she was wearing clothes at the time—made my dick do things it definitely should not have done around Waverly Sweet’s best friend , who couldn’t have been more than twenty-four years old, and whom I finally recognized for who she actually was.

She asked me if I knew a good plumber because the dishwasher had just made a weird noise, and when she opened the door, the sprayers stayed on and soaked the entire kitchenette.

I got to play hero because I knew how to shut off the water line.

And then I went back inside my house and jerked off to images of her thanking me with her mouth on my cock.

Nothing has been right in my world since.

Including now, when Aspen’s smirking at me, which isn’t doing anything to relieve the pressure in my dick. “You thought I was some waitress who should’ve given up her dreams a decade or two ago.”

“I thought you were someone with a lot more life experience.”

“News flash, my friend. Some of us pack more life experience into every day than other people have to.”

We’ve never talked about where we come from. Just where we are. But the little she’s said on top of what she doesn’t say is cluing me in to the fact that there’s likely a reason she’s never talked about where she used to live or what she used to do.

“And even if we don’t,” she adds, “age is just a number. It’s only a fraction of who we are.”

That sound?

That’s not wind. It’s not trees groaning under the weight of the snow outside. It’s not either of our hearts beating or the fire crackling.

It’s the sound of my brain catching up to the fact that she’s telling me I’m not too old for her.

It’s the sound of my cock catching up to the hint that she might be interested in me. “You don’t care how old I am?”

“The second time we were both at your house at the same time, you had a party where you did shots off an ice luge and jumped into your pool with all of your clothes on. I think it’s safe to say I don’t look at you and think you’re bound for the nursing home next week.”

I snort out a soft laugh. “I forgot about that.”

“Because you’re old.”

“ Hey .”

She cackles.

It’s fucking delightful.

“I was trying to distract myself from following you around the party,” I admit.

I shouldn’t.

This is going nowhere.

But we’re stuck. It’s warm in front of the fire. And she’s so damn pretty with her hair down—brown now, what she insists is nearly her natural color—her face free of makeup, wrapped in loungewear.

It feels like home here.

Like someplace I could spend every day and never get tired of it.

She pulls her legs up to her chest and lays her head on them, still wrapped in her quilt, watching me.

“I wrote ‘Forget Christmas’ about you,” she whispers.

No.

No fucking way.

I scratch my chest, unable to reach where it’s actually itching deep inside, under my breastbone, approximately where my heart is located.

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did. I didn’t want to do a Christmas album. I didn’t want to record twelve fucking songs about a holiday that’s given me nothing but bad memories. So I asked myself what would make me happy, and your face popped into my head. Because you’re my friend. And you’re hot. And I just…wrote it like you made Christmas better.”

“Aspen.”

“The day you knocked on the pool house door and the dishwasher had just exploded—you didn’t yell at me. I was sure you’d yell at me, and I was ready to yell right back, but you didn’t blame me.”

“You looked really good wet.”

Her eyes smile. “When I broke your wall, you laughed. You laughed . And then you asked me what color I wanted the room when everything was fixed, like it was my house.”

“You see it more than I do.”

“I don’t have permanent homes. I don’t get comfortable. I don’t break things without expecting a blowup. But you made me feel like I belonged because you wanted me to pick a paint color. I don’t think you can understand how big that was.”

She doesn’t have family to spend the holidays with. While I don’t know her full history, I know she’s had several bad rental homes. Waverly is the only friend I’ve heard her talk about, and the only job she’s mentioned prior to her pop career taking off was something to do with medical billing.

People have hurt her.

Not just someone .

Multiple someones.

I want to hunt down every one of them and make them pay for how they’ve hurt her.

She hugs her knees tighter. “Part of me is still waiting for you to decide you want your pool house back and that I have to go.”

“It’s yours as long as you want it.”

Those wary eyes gut my soul.

Truth? I don’t want her in my pool house.

I want her in my house house. In my kitchen. In my living room. In my bedroom. In my shower. Sprawled out on my dining room table.

Stop it , I order myself.

Doesn’t work.

Not when she wrote a song—her most popular song—about me.

Not when I want to be the man standing between her and every bad thing that could ever happen to her from now on.

Not when being here with her is only making me want her in ways I’ve never wanted another woman.

That’s why I tell myself I’m too old for her.

It’s why I tell myself she sees me as nothing but a mentor.

Because if I give in, if I tell her how much I want her, if there’s even a chance she wants me back—I can’t fuck this up.

Not with her.

I like her too much for her to be one more woman I’ve screwed around with just for fun.

I don’t want fun .

I want everything .

“This would be much easier if you weren’t nice to me,” she whispers.

“I’m completely incapable of not being nice to you.”

Which is why I’m definitely sleeping on this couch tonight.

Even if we didn’t have a very large age gap, she’s not someone I want to fuck things up with.

Ever.

So I’ll take it slow. Keep being nice to her. Keep being the guy she can trust. The guy who doesn’t yell at her. And the guy who wants to crawl onto that mattress and kiss the wariness right off her face, but who knows she needs to be the one to make the next move.

I shoot to my feet. “I’m gonna move the chicken to the freezer with the ice. If the power’s not back on tomorrow, we can try roasting it over the fire.”

She watches me go.

Doesn’t say another word.

Doesn’t ask me to tell her more about liking her.

Doesn’t ask me not to either.

Fucking mouth.

It’s gonna be an even longer night tonight.