Free High-heeled Wonder (A Killer Style Novel) (Entangled Ignite) by Avery Flynn Page B

and grabbed Sylvie’s orange leather overnight bag and one of his black duffel bags. The other go-bag stayed in its spot, hiding the latch to the trunk’s false bottom. He slammed the trunk closed and the dog took off running toward Joey on the front lawn.
    Ryder nodded toward their nephew. “You know he’s going to spill everything about you having a guest to Alessandra. Who will tell mom. Who will be scandalized and, at the same time, oh, so hopeful that her boy has finally found someone good enough to bring home to Mama.”
    Tony glanced at Joey, who was lying in the middle of the front yard eating his boogers while Kermit licked away the last vestiges of peanut butter from the boy’s cheeks. Ryder was right. His nephew would rat him out in a heartbeat, and there was nothing he could do about it.
    He shrugged his shoulders. “Whatcha gonna do?”

    It hit Sylvie the moment she walked into the bedroom. Man smell. Not locker room man smell, thank God, but warm-blooded, all-American testosterone mixed with sandalwood and soap. Closing her eyes, she took in a double lungful and her thighs actually quivered.
    “You okay?”
    Heat blasted her cheeks and her eyes snapped open at Tony’s voice. “Yeah, fine.”
    The stubborn hardwood floor refused to open up under her feet. She had some sort of Pavlovian response to the kind of hotness Tony exuded. The whole situation sucked. Why couldn’t he be a troll who smelled like rotting funk instead of a hottie who turned her into some kind of hormonal teen with a smelling fetish?
    At this point, fate was just fucking with her. A stalker with physical damage on his agenda. A burglar who left diamonds but took old laptops. A hot guy who said he didn’t want her but looked at her like she was a supermodel. It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke. But it was her life. No wonder her time-to-freak-out alert had gone haywire.
    “I turned the guest room into an office. I’ll stay on the pull-out couch in there.” He swiped a pair of jeans from a leather chair and shoved a dresser drawer shut with his foot.
    “I can’t kick you out of your room.” And sleep in his bed, where she’d probably spend the night sniffing his pillow.
    “You’re not kicking. I’m offering some Waterberg hospitality.”
    Sylvie flipped through possible excuses but couldn’t come up with a thing that didn’t sound churlish or pathetic and force her to tell the truth. No way was she going with “I’m afraid I’ll do indecent things with your pillow.”
    He quirked an eyebrow at her continued silence.
    Time to suck it up, princess. “Thanks, that’s really nice of you.”
    “Great. Why don’t you hang out in the living room and call your dads while I get this mess cleaned up?”
    Chicken that she was, she wanted to hug him for giving her an out to escape his bedroom. Instead, she skedaddled away from the temptations he offered—it took a little effort, but she did it—and strode into the front room, which was dominated by a huge TV and a well-worn couch. She whipped out her cell phone and punched in the number she knew by heart.
    “How’s my favorite bulldog doing today?” Henry’s voice immediately calmed her riled nerves.
    She sank down into the dark blue couch. “If I tell you the truth, do you promise to sit on Anton until he calms down?”
    “You know I’d be sitting on him until Betsy Ross mop caps came back into vogue before that happened. You better just spill it.”
    For a second she considered lying to protect her fathers from the mess her life had dissolved into. They’d done so much for her, and she’d spent every day since her adoption day trying not to disappoint them or be the center of any kind of drama. She owed them that much. But she had to face it, her life of staying safely out of the spotlight was over.
    “Someone broke into my apartment,” she confessed.
    “Oh my God, are you okay?”
    “Yeah, Tony and I were at The Darling House when it happened. They