Free The Offer by Karina Halle

free, just
until you get a good job and your feet back on the ground. What do
you say?”
    What do I say?
I have no fucking idea. Why on earth would Bram McGregor offer me a
place to live for free? It doesn’t make any damn sense and I don’t
want any part of it.
    “You can think
about it…” he goes on.
    “No,” I say
and he looks shocked. “Sorry, but…no. Move into your empty
apartment? Why? Why would you do that? Why not rent it out for
thousands of dollars a month, which is what I’m sure the rent
is.”
    “But I don’t
want the rent to be that high,” he says.
    “It doesn’t
matter what you want,” I tell him. “You have a mortgage on that
place and I know it costs a pretty penny.” And it doesn’t really
jive with everything I’ve known about Bram. He’s grown up with
money. He spends it like a gambler who thinks he has nothing to
lose. Everything about Bram screams, “I’m here to make money and
spend money!” Letting Ava and I live in his complex for free would
completely mess up those plans.
    It doesn’t
make any sense and I sure as hell don’t like it.
    “You let me
worry about matters of money,” he says, rolling up the sleeves of
his dress shirt. I notice his perpetual tan, his skin a nice honey
bronze that I don’t think is fake and makes me wonder where on
earth he’s gotten color like that. His forearms are large, muscular
and toned. Forearms are my weakness. As are hands. He’s got good
hands too, big and strong.
    He catches me
staring and smiles, just a little. “Please, this isn’t anything
weird.”
    “Like hell it
isn’t.” I scoff, tearing my eyes away. “This is an insanely
generous offer and I have a hard time believing you aren’t coming
from a despicable place.”
    He flinches.
“Wow. Just how poorly do you think of me?”
    “I don’t think
of you at all,” I fire back.
    He mouths,
“Ouch.” For a moment I feel bad but then I remember him pulling
that chick into the bushes and how humiliated I felt, and I don’t
feel so bad anymore.
    “What do you
want, really?” I ask him. “Just be honest.”
    He throws his
hands up. “I am being honest. I want to help you and your little
one. Sometimes people do things because they can help and because
they want to.”
    I ain’t buying
it. My eyes narrow at him. “What do you want in exchange?”
    “Nothing,” he
says, sounding strangely sincere.
    “Right. As if
I’m not supposed to be your sex slave or something and, like, suck
you off anytime you want. Nothing is for free.” Boy did I know
that.
    He grins.
“Sweetheart, you wouldn’t know what to do with my dick even if you
tried.”
    “I most
certainly would!” I blurt out, unable to help myself. I regret my
words immediately.
    There’s one
hell of a long, mortifying second as he slowly raises his dark
brow, a twinkle in his eye. “Oh really?” he muses, smile dancing on
his lips.
    Shit.
    I cross my
arms. “You know what I mean.”
    “Not really.
But you could show me.”
    “You aren’t
selling me on this at all, you know.”
    He rolls his
eyes and gets up. In another lifetime, a naïve one full of
meaningless sex and yellow-brick roads, I would have been
completely enamored with how damn handsome this man is. Because,
really, he is. But in this lifetime, the short stick I’ve been
handed (I haven’t had a long stick in a long time, if you know what
I mean), his good looks and hot bod and slick suits mean nothing to
me.
    “Look,” he
says. “I’ll be honest with you. I’m not just trying to be a nice
guy.”
    And the truth
comes out. I breathe a sigh of relief that we’re finally getting
somewhere.
    “If I take in
a low-income resident,” he explains, “someone who can’t find
affordable housing in the city, then I get a big tax break from the
government.”
    “Well, why
didn’t you just tell me that to begin with?”
    He gives me a
lazy shrug. “Thought I could earn some extra brownie points with
you.”
    “And why would
you want