Free Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire) by Amy Jo Cousins

and wish for something she couldn’t have.
    A woman like Addy Tyler would rather walk out into the cold of a freezing morning and face her reality than sit in a cozy bed dreaming.
    Spencer jogged down the staircase and headed to the kitchen. He was up; might as well get the coffee brewing.
    A flutter of white caught his eye. He hadn’t expected a note.
    You can’t always get what you want. Isn’t that what the Stones sang? You’re a good host, Reed. Tell the charity I wish them well with the house.
    Addy
    He blinked and found the note crumpled in his fist. The desire to go back in time to his conversations with Adeline and voice some of the doubts he’d felt but kept silent about came near to overwhelming him.
    She might drive him crazy with her stubbornness and her never-ending rudeness and baiting of him, but he knew one thing: Addy Tyler deserved this house. If only so she could exorcise her own ghosts.
    Not one to dwell in anger, Spencer headed back toward the kitchen. By the time his steps had planted him in front of the coffeemaker, he had his cell phone in hand.
    In the end, he decided that four in the morning was a little too early to be making the phone call he’d planned and settled down at the kitchen table with some contracts in need of line edits.
    When the clock over the stove ticked onto seven o’clock, however, he punched in the number he’d pulled from his handheld organizer.
    “I hope I’m not waking you, Mrs. Tyler. But I wanted to introduce myself to you as soon as possible and discuss a few matters important to us both.”
    “My name is Spencer Reed, and I’m going to be getting married to your daughter Addy.”

Four
    T o say that her family didn’t take her news well would be putting it mildly.
    And that was before she found out about the bombshell dropped on her mother by Mr. Take-Charge Attorney-at-Law.
    Mr. Stick His Nose In Where It Wasn’t Wanted was more like it.
    “I’m not marrying your buddy Spike!” she shouted at last and whipped a couch pillow at her brother’s big, fat, incredibly stupid head.
    He ducked in his recliner and snagged the pillow in mid-flight, rescuing several framed pictures on the wall behind him. “Wait a second!” He made a T with his hands, the quarterback calling for a thirty-second time-out in the last minute of the big game. “Not for real. What do you think I am, crazy? Just one of those—what do they call ’em— marriage of convenience things.”
    “First of all, you are crazy. That’s a given,” put in her sister Sarah, curled up at the far end of the couch with a book inher lap and her long, straight hair in a neat ponytail. When their brother launched the abused couch pillow at her, she grabbed it one-handed and tucked it under her knees, sticking out her tongue at him when he pouted at the end of the fun. “Weren’t you paying attention? Addy’s got to live with her husband in that house for six months. You want her to share rooms with Spike?”
    “There is something about a man almost entirely covered with tattoos.” This, dreamily, from Maxie, sitting on the floor at Sarah’s side. Addy’s youngest sister was looking very Breakfast at Tiffany’s today, with her short, curly hair pinned ruthlessly into control, a tailored black-and-white dress and matching wide-brimmed hat. Oversize black sunglasses perched on the coffee table next to her.
    “Yeah, something that says he’s lost his mind.” Addy looked for a pillow to throw. They were all under someone else’s control. She settled for sticking out her tongue at her baby sister. “That’s enough out of you, Audrey Hepburn.”
    Maxie’s wide grin told her she’d guessed correctly at the day’s costume. And why was her brother still babbling on?
    “…just saying, if you offered him five grand, he’d sleep in the garage for six months. No problem.”
    Her brother’s hopeful, handsome grin almost made her smile, but she kept her face straight and her voice firm.