Falling for the Marine (A McCade Brothers Novel) (Entangled Brazen) by Samanthe Beck

within her own heart and find happiness there—to stop needing someone else to make her feel whole.
    The shoes may or may not have made a difference, but her interview with Lynne couldn’t have gone better. Within a week, she’d been winging her way to Sedona to start her first assignment, and she’d never looked back.
    She slipped the lucky shoes on. The four-inch heels gave her height and confidence. They made her feel like she was going places without even taking a step. Maybe they looked a little odd with her cutoffs and tank top, but what the hell. She wasn’t walking the red carpet, just trying to rustle up some luck.
    A few quick strides brought her back to the living room. Decorative pillows, a throw, and various doodads she’d hauled over from her apartment infused some much-needed color and texture in the otherwise dull, functional room.
    The carpet, however, bore the signs of her trips back and forth. She braved the dreaded guest room closet, retrieved the vacuum, and grabbed her MP3 player while she was at it. Soon she was singing about good girls and blurred lines while sucking up the telltale trail of debris running from the guest room, down the hall, through the living room and to the front door.
    Very domestic chore. S ure you haven’t turned into your mother, or worse, started building a white-picket fence around Michael’s apartment?
    Absolutely not. Now shut up . Determined to drown out the useless, negative thoughts, she cranked the volume up.
    …
    Michael walked up the stairs to his apartment intensely aware he and Chloe had just over twenty-four hours to become the perfect couple. Step one, sit down and discuss the situation. Devise a strategy over dinner. Yeah, that sounded good. Logical. He stuck his key into his lock, realized it was already unlocked and made a mental note to warn her not to leave the apartment unsecured if she was there alone. He turned the knob and walked in. “Lucy, I’m home.”
    Then he blinked. His formerly orderly, somewhat sparse apartment brimmed with enough colorful crap to fill a swap meet. He recognized some of it from his brief but memorable visit to her apartment—the square pillows, the fuzzy throw, an abundance of candles. Where the hell was she planning to put all this stuff?
    Chloe stood in the midst of the disarray, with her back to him, pushing a vacuum. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders. She wore mile-high shiny black pumps that made his throat go dry, a thin, white tank top, and the tightest, tiniest Daisy Dukes imaginable. Oblivious to his presence, she shook her booty and sang off-key to a song streaming into ear buds connected to a player clipped to her hip pocket. All thoughts of a calm discussion flew right out of his head. The only thoughts left involved lots of noise, vigorous energy, the creative use of a few of those otherwise pointless pillows…and deserved a triple-X rating. He also realized he’d forgotten to stop and buy condoms.
    She turned, and, in the midst of a mesmerizing hip shake and a painfully flat high note he nevertheless recognized as, “Bad Romance,” she noticed him standing there. She froze and then smiled self-consciously. A second later the roar of the vacuum ceased. Into the silence, she shouted, “Hey, roomie.” She ran a hand through her curls and shook them out. “Jeez, is it four thirty already? This day totally flew by.”
    The volume of her voice told him she had the Gaga cranked to eleven. Did he have a stupid look on his face? Felt like maybe yes. He pointed to his ear.
    She pulled her earphones out and laughed as she brought them together and tucked them under the strap of her tank top. “Sorry. Kind of a loud homecoming, huh?”
    “I’ve flown choppers that made less noise,” he admitted.
    That pulled another laugh from her as she tugged the vacuum cleaner cord and yanked it from the wall socket. “Are you telling me I sing like a rusty engine?”
    The reply on the tip of his tongue dissolved when