Chapter Two

“Move in with you?” The woman looked at him like he was several marbles short of a full set. “Are you insane?”

Mason was unable to believe his luck. The disheveled street urchin had dark hair piled on top of her head, half of it spilling out around her ears in a messy ponytail. A tiny, gamine face with a pointed chin and warm brown eyes peeked out behind large, dark-rimmed glasses. She wore loose jeans and an oversize army-green jacket beneath a yellow vest.

She was dirty, rumpled, and if those glasses weren’t throwing shadows, had dark circles under her eyes.

She was perfect.

And if he wasn’t mistaken, just a tad desperate.

Which made her even more perfect.

“Oh no, I’m definitely not insane. And I’m not kidding.”

He’d seen her in the lobby of the building before, usually with a small herd of dogs and that ridiculous yellow vest, yet she was so utterly forgettable, blending in so well with her surroundings that he’d never really noticed her.

Trust Tess? Hell, he’d marry Tess if she’d take care of his dog.

She cocked her head, as if trying to decide if he was serious. The dogs sat next to her like statues, the little white one in her arms wearing a look of utter disdain. “Ah, thanks, I guess? But we’ve known each other for less than one minute. I usually wait at least five before I bring over my toothbrush.”

He launched into persuasion mode. “Just hear me out.” He waved his free hand toward Wick. “This monster needs full-time care. And training. To be honest, I’m not sure there’s ever been such a poorly behaved animal. Not to mention the whole bathroom business.” He sighed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Well that sounds enticing,” she said drily.

“A challenge!” She wasn’t jumping at his request, but to her credit, he might have been taking the wrong tack by emphasizing Wick’s faults. “He’s the sweetest thing, really. I just don’t know a thing about dogs. I’m clearly in need of professional help, and I’ve heard great things about you—I was actually just going to call Chris to get your number.”

This was a lie, of course. He had no idea what Chris Rosen, who lived three floors down and occasionally ended up at the same parties he did, thought of her. Nor did he have Chris’s number. But he recognized Chris’s dogs from a previous elevator encounter. The man was weirdly attached to them—they had celebrity names, if he recalled correctly. If Chris trusted this woman, so did he.

“Chris is too kind.” He waited for her to say more, but she simply studied at him with those big, shadowed eyes. “And I appreciate your interest. But unfortunately, I don’t move in. Or do overnights. I’m happy to talk about coming over during the day, though, if that would be helpful?”

“Sure, I can see how an overnight would be inconvenient, not to mention you probably have safety concerns.”

She adjusted the tiny creature in her arms and a piece of hair fell over her forehead, shielding half her face. She pushed it back with a small, feminine hand. Her nails were short and neat. No shiny lacquer. No jewelry or watch.

He tried again, determined to make some headway. “Here’s the thing.” He focused on exuding trustworthiness, which was surprisingly challenging while gripping the collar of a two-hundred-pound dog who was determined to keep his head on the ground. “I work all day, so I can’t be around when he needs to get out. And sometimes I have evening events, too. That’s why I was thinking having you stay overnight would be perfect. Surely we can figure something out? Some way to make you comfortable with the arrangement?”

Her mouth thinned in irritation. He froze, startled by her lips. They were pink, lush, and finely shaped, full on the bottom with a perfect bow on top that promised something completely at odds with her otherwise disheveled, haphazard appearance. Something he’d said bothered her, and he forced himself to look away from those lips to meet her eyes.

“What’s that?” he said, turning back on the charm as he realized she’d said something while he was staring at her lips.

She sighed. “I said I work all day, too. And at night. I’m sorry, I really do appreciate the offer, but I can’t just drop everything and come babysit your dog twenty-four hours a day.”

He surveyed her again, noticing this time the fraying at the cuffs of her jacket and the faded leather of her boots. “Where else do you work? Can you take time off? Just until he’s settled? I’ll compensate you very well.”

He put a little extra emphasis on the last sentence. Not enough that it sounded indecent, just enough to suggest that he understood this might be a hardship.

She pushed the stubborn lock of hair back behind her ear. He read people for a living, but it didn’t take an emotional telepath to see she was considering it. “I work part-time for a vet,” she said, “I don’t have vacation days. And I definitely can’t stay the night. I have other commitments. That’s nonnegotiable.”

In his experience, nothing was nonnegotiable.

“What do you do at night?”

“None of your business,” she said evenly. “Look, I appreciate the fix you’re in, and your offer is an interesting one, but it’s not going to work out. Maybe you should try one of the online services. I know there are people who do overnight jobs.”

He glanced at her hands. No ring.

And something about her seemed…well…single.

“Tess, please, you can see I’m desperate, but I also really care about Wick. I can’t imagine trusting him to a stranger.”

She cleared her throat. “You do realize that I’m a stranger, right?”

“No way. You are the answer to my prayers. Everyone in this building trusts you. What do you normally charge Chris? An hourly rate? I’ll double it. Triple it. And I’ve got all sorts of references you can call. I swear I’m not creepy.”

The tiny white ball of fluff in her arms whined softly. She absently stroked the dog’s head, seeming strangely unaffected by the display Mason was putting on. “I’m pretty sure the creepy ones don’t announce it.”

“You can Google my company. Livend Capital. I’m an upstanding businessman.”

“A businessman?” She gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Well then, I’m definitely safe.”

He laughed, enjoying her refusal to back down far more than he should. “I grew up in Yuba City, near Sacramento. You can call my high school principal. And my grandmother. I’m pretty sure they’ll both vouch for me. I’d put you in touch with my mom, but she’s out of the country right now.”

“And perhaps not the most unbiased of sources.”

Wick groaned and lurched around, struggling to get to his feet in a sudden rush, as if he’d just remembered that this had all started because he needed to pee. Mason’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He’d promised Connor and Nate that they could get together this afternoon to make up their usual Friday meeting that he’d missed because of Alli’s panicked call. Not to mention that they needed to talk strategy, since he’d also missed the meeting he was supposed to have had with the fuel cell kids who were probably right now being courted by one of their rivals.

“Four hundred dollars a day,” he said quickly, deliberately not thinking about how much this could end up costing him. Damn Alli and her bladder-control-challenged dog. “You can come at six in the morning and leave at ten at night.”

He had to admit the overnight thing was a little much to ask. At least for now.

Wick whined and stretched, then pawed Mason’s leg and pointedly rubbed his head on Mason’s ankle. Mason was starting to think the dog deliberately flung his drool all over Mason’s pants to punish him when he didn’t move quickly enough.

Tess looked pointedly at the dog, then back at Mason. “Four hundred dollars,” she said, “but I’ll come at eight, leave at eight. With breaks to take care of my other clients. Weekends are an additional hundred dollars a day, but I’ll stay till ten if you need me.”

“Wick can’t be left alone for more than an hour or two.” He eyed the street urchin more carefully. He hadn’t expected her to drive a hard bargain. Or any bargain, for that matter.

“That’s fine. I can work around that. So I arrive at eight in the morning, leave at eight at night. I’d be here unless I’m walking my other clients, but I won’t leave him for more than two hours at a time. Good?”

He nodded slowly. Had she just out-negotiated him?

“Good,” she said again, with a sharp dip of her chin in assent. “But I can’t commit just yet. I need to make some calls to my other jobs and then I’ll let you know for sure. And I need a couple of hours to run home before I stay for the rest of the day.”

“I need you back in an hour,” he said, punching the elevator button behind him. “Or I’ll have to start calling around for other people. I’ve got meetings today.”

“I need two and a half hours,” she replied firmly. “You said yourself that you’re desperate. Not to mention I have stellar references, and I don’t just walk, I also train. Which you clearly need. Now, two hours isn’t going to kill you, but your menace of a dog might kill mine. I’ll have to take her home. And I need a parking space nearby. I’m not taking the bus home at night. Do you have an extra space in the garage by any chance?”

He contemplated her silently for a moment. “You’re very demanding.”

“So I’ve been told.” Her pointed chin jutted in a delightfully stubborn way.

The elevator chimed behind him. He had already poked around a little online and there were a million services that provided dog walking. But he needed someone who was good. Someone he could trust. Someone who could start right away.

“Fine.” He examined her more closely, wondering if there was a body under all those clothes. She was average height, and he guessed she was in her mid-twenties, though something about her eyes seemed older. Legs? Breasts? He stopped around mid-chest to assess more thoroughly. It was hard to tell precisely what lay under the stained T-shirt and oversize jacket. But those lips. He looked at them again. There was something about those lips. “The code for the garage is seven-zero-zero-six. Park in space number thirty-three, and then come up to the fifteenth floor, number three.”

She pulled out a cell phone and managed to balance the dog in the crook of her arm while she typed in the digits. “Give me your phone number,” she said, a hint of a flush rising in her cheeks as he continued to examine her.

He paused. “I don’t give my number lightly,” he said. “Too many naked selfies come my way for that.”

She startled, her head jerking up. “What?” When he gave a mocking grin she gritted her teeth and gave him a deliberately fake smile. “No worries about that. But I do need a way to contact you. I may not be back.”

He smiled, looking her over one more time, taking in the color in her cheeks and the faintest hitch of her elevated breathing with a small feeling of relief.

She had noticed him looking.

“I’m not worried. You’ll be back.”

…

Arrogant. Not to mention full of himself. Not to mention cocky and conceited. And rich. And hot. Jesus, she’d thought her body might spontaneously combust when he’d studied her from head to toe. Her nipples might also be permanently at attention, thanks to that searching examination.

Tess stopped on the sidewalk outside the Stella and stared at her phone, scrolling through the Google results. He wasn’t making it up. Mason Coleman was one of the three founders of Livend Capital, which, according to Google, was a venture capital fund with its home office in downtown San Francisco. This was a little unusual, as venture firms tended to be located in Palo Alto or Menlo Park, but unusual seemed to describe Livend and its founders perfectly.

Unusually successful. Unusually rich. Unusually smart. Unusually hot.

She clicked on a few news clips. Money, sex, and charm. Apparently, sometimes first impressions were right. She only gave herself a few minutes to look at the stories, just enough to get an idea of who had just asked her to move in with him.

Livend Capital had apparently gone from a risky new venture fund to one of the biggest players in the tech scene in just a few years. The firm had first hit the papers when they funded the new social media start-up Pop-In—now the hottest app for anyone under the age of forty. Since then, they’d made a series of incredible deals that assured them hefty bank accounts, a place in Silicon Valley history, and no small amount of jealous antagonism from their competitors.

Mason and his two former college roommates were now living large in San Francisco—three deliciously attractive, single men with money, brains, and looks. Connor Ashton had a PhD in astrophysics—a certified rocket scientist, the papers liked to point out, not to mention he was a six-foot-four former college basketball player with the body of an athlete and the brains of a Mensa member. Nate Etherly was the son of a New York real estate mogul and a terrifying dealmaker. His dark good looks were matched by a reputation for ruthlessness. Mason was San Francisco’s hottest bachelor with a talent for rainmaking. And a reputation for breaking hearts.

They were almost more than the city could bear.

For one moment, she allowed herself to think about what it might be like to date a man like Mason, but the absurdity of it made her laugh out loud. She didn’t want a boyfriend of any kind, let alone a rich, conceited, full-of-himself one.

Though she had to admit, if she ever changed her mind, Mason and those rock-hard abs of his would be worth considering. At least for a night.

The sun, which had been playing peekaboo all afternoon, appeared for a moment through the quickly moving clouds as she hurried to her car. There was really nothing to decide, of course, and she was pretty sure Mason Coleman knew it. Four hundred dollars a day wasn’t a sum of money she was in any position to turn down.

Nor, really, could she think of any reason why she should. Other than feeling fairly certain that Mason wouldn’t be good for her equilibrium. He’d already knocked her off kilter, and that was after five minutes. Luckily, she had a feeling that once he got what he wanted—her taking care of the dog he’d apparently inherited from his sister—he’d be far less interested in giving her those sexy eyes all the time.

She did have to make some phone calls but had little doubt she could make it work. Just a few days ago, Erica, her boss at the vet clinic and one of her closest friends, had offered to give her some time off. “I know you’ve got midterms coming up,” Erica had said. “Why not take off a few weeks to focus on school? You and I both know you run yourself too hard, and I’m fine for a little while without you.”

Focus on school? Right. Erica had said more than once that she thought Tess shouldn’t work so much, but working three jobs, as crazy as it sounded, meant she didn’t have to take out any loans to get through college. And after years of fighting to get out from debt—most of it medical debt, from taking care of her grandma—that was essential. Thank goodness for online college. If that weren’t an option, she’d never be coming close to earning her degree.

At first, she’d been uncomfortable in her classes, most of which had online forums where you were supposed to engage in discussions and work on group projects with your classmates. She’d worried about the absurdity of being twenty-six and taking classes with kids just out of high school. She was also certain the fact that she’d been a horrible student who’d dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade and had only gotten her GED a few years ago was somehow visible in her posts.

But no one seemed to know her dirty little secret, and she gradually realized that all that anyone cared about was her contribution to the class. It was the first time she’d ever been successful at anything that involved a grade, and even though it meant getting little to no sleep and killing herself to study for exams, she wasn’t taking anything less than an A ever again. Four hundred dollars a day would definitely help with that effort. She wouldn’t have to look for new dog-walking clients for a while—might even be able to afford to take a summer class and put away some money for the vet school applications she’d be filling out that fall.

There was a lot that money could buy.

She forced herself away from her reverie and back to her phone. The three Livend Capital men were all attractive, but Mason was clearly the ladies man of the bunch, typically pictured at charity events and balls, always with a beautiful woman on his arm, and always looking heart-stoppingly gorgeous.

So yes, he was who he said he was. But she’d still have to be some kind of idiot to agree to stay overnight with him. Besides, she had Astro to think about. She obviously couldn’t bring Astro with her while she babysat the giant mastiff. He was probably just untrained, rather than aggressive, but an untrained mastiff could be dangerous.

Not to mention that after far too many years without male companionship it was entirely possible that Mason would be the one who’d have to worry about late-night safety.

She unlocked the car door and hitched Astro’s tiny harness to her doggie seat belt. Astro settled back in the seat with an adorable, ladylike sigh.

Tess turned the key and hoped the engine would start. It was a fun little game she liked to play—will I get home today? The beat-up Ford Escort had over 180,000 miles and was still (mostly) running but did get a little temperamental at times. It had been her grandmother’s car, then her mom’s, then her grandmother’s again before Tess had inherited it, and even though she spent far more in repairs than it was worth, she couldn’t give it up.

The rusty brown relic—it had once been magenta, but the sun had faded it to soft brown—shrieked to life with a high-pitched whine that turned to a grating roar before settling down to its usual rumble. Tess turned on her Bluetooth headset and placed her first call before pulling away from the curb. Erica’s perky voice sounded in her ears, her adorable Southern drawl prominent even in the answering message. “Hey, thanks for calling! I’m not available but please leave me a message, and you know I’ll get back to you as quick as I can.”

“Erica, it’s Tess, and I hope you were serious about me taking some time off for exams because I don’t think I’ll be able to come in this week. Can you call me as soon as you get this? I’ve got an opportunity for a full-time dog care gig, but I don’t want to leave you in the lurch.”

She hung up and hit another number on her phone, this time reaching her neighbor, Graciela.

“Yes, hello?”

“Gracie, this is Tess.”

“Tess?” Graciela’s sweet, heavily accented voice sounded a little confused, as if she wasn’t entirely sure how the phone worked, why someone might be trying to contact her on it, or why she was speaking English instead of Spanish. “Tess, mija, where are you?”

Tess smiled. She’d first met Graciela when she was a little kid, and now, the older woman was the closest thing she had to family. Gracie wasn’t nearly as confused as she liked to make out, but it suited her to act as if she was never quite sure how the world worked. She also liked to pretend she couldn’t remember English, even though she had lived in California for over forty years and was completely bilingual. Tess herself was never quite sure when Gracie was playing straight and when she was using her sweet old lady charm to her advantage.

“I’m just driving home, but I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

“Of course, anything you need. Did you want me to send Moses over to your house? Is everything okay?”

Moses was Graciela’s grandson, and he, along with his mother, Gracie’s two younger brothers, and a shifting group of cousins, aunts, and uncles that Tess could never quite keep track of, all lived together in their tiny three-bedroom house. Moses was sixteen, about five foot two, and as big as an ox, with deep brown eyes that were as innocently kind as his hulking frame was intimidating. He treated Tess as if she were as old and dotty as Gracie, which Tess would have found mildly insulting if it wasn’t so sweet.

“Everything’s fine, but I’m going to have to work in the city some long hours this week, and I was wondering if you might be able to let Astro out a couple of times during the day for me.”

“You know I always like to see my baby Astro,” Gracie said. “Do you want Moses to take her for a walk?”

Tess stifled a giggle at the thought of Moses and his biceps, each of which was probably broader than her waist, walking her tiny white dog. “You know you’ve got to stop volunteering him for things.”

“Oh, he’s a good boy.” Tess could almost see her waving her hand dismissively at the notion that she wasn’t entitled to boss around her grandson. “He’d love to help.”

“Well, tell Moses thank you. If he can walk her around the block that would be great, but it’s fine if he can’t. As long as she can get out into the backyard in the afternoon, she’ll be okay.”

“I can always bring her over here,” Gracie suggested, her voice rising hopefully.

Tess smiled again. Gracie made no secret out of the fact that she would have adopted Astro in a heartbeat if her landlord would allow them to have pets. It always pissed Tess off when she thought about the fact that Gracie and her family had been paying rent on their house for thirty years, more than time enough to buy it, but housing prices were so ridiculous in the Bay Area that the chance of them qualifying for a mortgage moved further out of reach every year.

“You know she’d love to stay with you whenever you want her, but I don’t want to get you in trouble with your landlord.”

Gracie brushed off her concern, and they chatted for a few minutes before she excused herself from the phone, saying she had a big pot of posole on the stove and had to keep her eye on it. Tess knew she’d never really mastered the art of multitasking.

She wove her way through the traffic, which was snarled getting onto the Bay Bridge, but relatively open after that. She drove faster than she should have, but she had barely two hours to get home and back to Mason’s place, and she needed to get her books and computer before she headed back. She had two assignments to complete before midnight, and she certainly wasn’t waiting to start on them until after she got home that night.

She really didn’t want to be late, but she had a pretty good idea that Mason didn’t have a lot of other options, at least not on such short notice. With his money, he could probably replace her by Monday afternoon, which meant if she were smart, she’d do everything in her power to find a way to convince him to keep her on.

But then again, she’d never been smart. At least not when it came to men.

Or money, come to think of it.

Which eliminated two of the most important areas of life, but who was counting, right?

She tore around the corners leading to her grandmother’s house, stopping with just the barest hint of a screech in front. Officially, the house belonged to her now, but she doubted she’d ever really think of it that way. It would always be Grandma’s place.

Her grandparents had built the house seventy years ago, back when there hadn’t been many homes out here, all the way past Oakland and just outside San Leandro. Thanks to her rootless mother, Tess had lived there on and off as a child. When she was fourteen, her mother moved them to Phoenix, starting the most disastrous chapter in Tess’s life. By the time her grandmother called, three years later, because she was sick and needed help around the house, Tess was a high school dropout with little hope for her own future. Even though it had been a heavy weight for her teenaged self, returning to San Leandro to take care of her grandmother had, for the first time in her life, given her a purpose and made her feel worthwhile.

Now, this house was home.

The lot backed onto a creek and an open space, and it seemed like every other week someone left a note in her mailbox saying if she ever wanted to sell, she should contact them. It made sense—the property was beautiful—but the house was all but uninhabitable. A rusted-out car lurked in the weeds somewhere in the backyard, the roof leaked in at least three places, and the back deck, which had an incredible view of the open space, was on the verge of collapse. She hadn’t been out on it in years, unsure if the rotted wood would hold her.

Yes, even though she was surrounded by tiny homes on much smaller lots selling for more than half a million dollars, Tess’s plumbing barely worked, and if there hadn’t been an electrical fire it wasn’t from lack of trying. She might have been able to get a home equity loan to do some work on the place, since she owned it outright, but she was fairly certain loans involved inspections, which probably wouldn’t go well when her foundation leaned more than the Tower of Pisa.

Once she was done with school and had a real job, she’d think about upgrading. Or to be honest, bulldozing. But as much as she knew there was little in the house left to save, it was impossible to imagine knocking down the place where she’d been born. Where her mother had grown up. Where her grandmother died.

So for now, it was a roof, four walls, and a door that locked. That was enough.

She ran up the muddy path to the front door, ignoring the rotted wood in the front step and avoiding the bucket in the hall between the living room and the kitchen before coming to her bedroom.

The room was meant to be an office, but the upstairs bedroom ceilings leaked, and she was never sure if the stairs would hold her, so she’d stopped going up there about a year ago. The downstairs bedroom had been her grandmother’s, and she couldn’t quite handle sleeping in the room where she’d watched the most beloved person in her life die. Not to mention that the windows in Grandma’s bedroom didn’t open, and the house became unbearable when the temperature outside went above eighty.

So instead, she used the room closest to the kitchen. It was sunshiny and bright, thanks to French patio doors leading to the unstable back deck and overgrown yard. There was no closet, which she didn’t really mind because she didn’t have many clothes, and the ones she did have fit easily into her grandmother’s old dresser. The creaky wooden structure was lined with old newspapers and smelled faintly of mildew, but she’d added small chips of cedar in mesh bags, and that took away the worst of the odor.

She grabbed her army-green canvas messenger bag from the floor beside her grandfather’s old desk and filled it with her computer and two of her textbooks. Then she pulled off her smelly jacket and stained T-shirt and exchanged them for a clean T-shirt and flannel shirt that she left loose and unbuttoned.

Hygiene did matter to her, though sometimes it didn’t look—or smell?—that way.

She passed through the kitchen to grab a granola bar and an apple and planted a final kiss on Astro’s soft fur before heading out the door. Astro didn’t like being left alone, but Tess had always made a point of treating her like a dog, not a baby, so she’d come to accept it.

Her car started off with a rumble, but didn’t hesitate, thank goodness. A quick glance at the clock on the dash told her she’d be on time, or close to it, depending on traffic. A little thrill of anticipation raced through her at the thought of seeing Mason again as she accelerated onto the highway.

He’s so far out of your league it’s not even funny, she thought, flooring the gas to get around a Prius driver who was paying more attention to her phone than her driving. She resisted the temptation to flip the idiot the bird as she sped past.

Have a little patience, her grandmother’s voice chided. And watch that temper, Tessie. You’re better than where you came from. Don’t forget that.

Even though she’d been gone five years now, Tess could still hear the quiet voice in her head. Could still remember the night she’d closed her eyes. Peaceful, ready to see her husband again. Sorry to leave Tess alone. Always sorry for what she’d been through. Always hoping for better for the granddaughter she loved.

Tess wiped away a lone tear that seemed to be lying in wait whenever she went down memory lane. I’m going to make you proud, Grandma. I swear it.