Free Provocative (Tempting Book 3) by Alex Lucian Page B

calm.
    Before I could stop him, the guy walked into the dining room and then through the study, looking. I felt so fucking stupid for allowing him to come in.
    Following him around the house seemed to be the only thing I was capable of doing. I watched as he opened the closet doors in the study before frowning.
    Nathan’s study was off-limits to me. Not that Nathan had specifically said not to go into it, but I could tell—his study was his. I made tiny messes elsewhere in the house, but the study was his zone—his place to Zen or work or watch porn or whatever the fuck he did in there.
    So to see this guy wandering the room, pulling open drawers and cabinets and looking under the desk, was more than a little disconcerting. I imagined the look of horror on Nathan’s face, knowing that his pens had been shifted out of order on the top of the desk as Elias crouched and bumped into it.
    “What the fuck? Do you make a habit of waltzing into the homes of people you don’t know?”
    The guy only gave me a glance, an arch of one dark eyebrow before he resumed his search.
    “Pretty sure breaking and entering carries a minimum two-year sentence in Mass, jackass.”
    He paused, large hands braced on Nathan’s desk top. “Only if I’m armed.”
    I swallowed. He looked at me like he didn’t need a weapon. The sheer size of him—from his arms to his hands—looked like he could break me in half without even trying.
    “Are you armed?”
    He lifted a shoulder and some of the frustration momentarily left his face. “Are you going to frisk me and find out?”
    Shiiiit. What in the world could I say to that? Instead of answering, I shifted my gaze to the closet whose doors he’d left open.
    To his credit, he did seem like he was looking for something, and seemed to know the place pretty well. I was still pissed that he acted like he had every right to walk around the house, but I was even more pissed at Nathan.
    “Why don’t you come back tomorrow?” I said when he turned the corner and walked passed me, back to the entry way, hoping the delay would give me time to bring it up to Nathan so that he could get in touch with this guy himself.
    He seemed annoyed by the idea. “Can you tell him I stopped by?”
    “Yeah, I’ll tell him some asshole barged his way into the house.”
    His eyes burned when he pinned me with a stare. He didn’t say anything for several seconds, just glared at me with eyes so dark they looked black. And then his eyes flicked to the wall. “This is my sister’s house.”
    The answer shocked me. I began to say something, but no words came.
    “She spent hours picking and applying that wallpaper herself,” he said, pointing a finger inches from my eyes, to the design on the walls, the design I had always admired, the gently curving lines that intersected before arching away.
    “You’re in my sister’s house,” he said before turning and leaving.
    After I closed the door behind him, I sank to the first step on the staircase. I couldn’t look at the wallpaper without seeing her. Looking around the house, I saw very little evidence of me. But Diana, Nathan’s first love, was everywhere.
    I didn’t think I could feel any smaller than I did in that moment.

Chapter Thirteen
    E very single day for the last two weeks, people kept interacting with me. They waved when they passed, some even spoke to me. Judging from their reactions, I must have been speaking back, nodding appropriately and giving the kind of reactions that they expected. But I’m not sure how. Everything was gray and fog. And I didn’t know how to get out of it, how to clear my eyes and my head. I definitely didn’t know how to clear my heart.
    This loss, this visceral, jagged thing that had been punched through my chest, was different than when I’d lost Diana. I’d never seen it kick through Adele’s stomach, seen the movement of her stretched-out skin. I didn’t know what color hair it had. If it was a boy or a girl. I