Free Courting Trouble (Reality Romance Book 5) by Lizzie Shane

write it on your door. Funny, I never thought that would be a distinction I would have a reason to think about.”
    “We’re going to find whoever left that note,” he said, instilling confidence into his tone. “And you can stay at my place as long as you like. I have plenty of space.”
    “My hero,” she murmured, but the sarcasm she’d tried to lace into the words didn’t quite make it.
    “I’m not a hero.” He’d never liked that word. It was a pedestal he didn’t deserve.
    “That just confirms it. The ones who protest they aren’t anyone’s hero are the really heroic ones.”
    His driveway saved him from having to respond. He hit the button to open the gate. The security lights—tastefully concealed in the landscaping—illuminated the beach house as he spun the wheel and pulled into the drive, the gate sliding silently closed behind them. “Here we are.”
    The cottage, Sandy had called it when she gave it to him, proving that movie stars had very different definitions when it came to real estate.
    Elena dropped her feet from the dash, her jaw dropping as well. “You’re kidding. You live here ?”
    Adam’s neck heated. “It was a gift.”

 
     
     
    Chapter Eight
     
    Elena was busy gawking, so it took a moment for his meaning to register.
    It wasn’t huge, maybe two thousand square feet, and there wasn’t much in the way of land between the high, solid walls separating it from the neighboring mansions—but she hadn’t missed the fact that they were right off the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. On the beach side, no less.
    This little patch of real estate had to be worth several million—and that was without counting the house, with its subtle touches of elegance that screamed money. The excessive kind of money. The charming little oasis of calm sat amid multi-colored cacti and other artful drought-friendly landscaping, overlooking what she was fairly certain would be a spectacular, unimpeded view of the Pacific when the sun rose the next morning. It looked like heaven. And it was his.
    “Wait.” She turned to look at Adam as he parked in the driveway and cut the engine. “Someone gave you a house as a gift?”
    She was fairly certain he was blushing. “You really don’t know who I am, do you?”
    “When I saw this place I was thinking Tony Stark, but if people are giving you houses my best guesses are Scientology leader or gigolo. Either way, I have grossly underestimated you.”
    “Where were you last October?”
    “Sequestered in the Marrying Mister Perfect bubble with the other Suitorettes. Who gave you a house?”
    He hesitated for a moment, as if he would lie, then answered, “Cassandra Newton.”
    Elena’s eyebrows took a trip toward her hairline. “And why is the most famous actress in America giving you houses? Are you the secret love child she gave up for adoption when she was fifteen or something?”
    He didn’t laugh. “Google me.” The words were steeped in resignation.
    “What?”
    “Google my name.”
    “Ooo-kay.” She pulled her phone out of her purse, feeling his eyes on her. He’d said it casually, almost tossing out the request to Google him as a challenge, but there was nothing casual about the intense way he watched her. This was a Big Deal in Adam’s world. Whatever it was.
    “Dylan with a Y, like Bob Dylan not Matt Dillon,” he corrected, when she would have spelled his last name like the movie star’s.
    The most popular result was a link to a YouTube video. Agent Adam Dylan Saves Newton Princess.
    “That’s the one.”
    She tapped the link and moments later the video filled her screen. It was jerky and unfocused at first, obviously shot from the cell phone of someone who was running. For a few seconds all she could tell was that it was night, and then the running stopped and the camera spun dizzily until a house came into view. A beach house—larger and more opulent than the one they were parked in front of—and consumed with