CHAPTER ONE
If possession was nine-tenths of the law, possession while bare-assed naked was probably a nonissue.
Keys in hand, Annie Franklin froze just inside the threshold of the Folly Beach house she’d rented. So did the guy in the foyer with his fingers threaded through his hair and his man parts dangling, not unlike the keys in her hand. For about two seconds her gaze swept over a very startled expression and then dove helplessly downward.
“My God! What are you doing here?”
“I’m sure I could ask the same.”
Annie forced her gaze upward, meeting a pair of very blue eyes. The surprise was gone now, replaced with something more like bemusement.
Vying for a glimpse inside the house, Lady, her curious Labrador nosed the back of her thighs and Annie made a discomfited sound. “Sit girl! Sit!” she commanded. “Look, there must be some mistake! Is this 1776 East Ashley?”
“Yep.”
Horrified, Annie dangled her keys between them. “But I have keys,” she said. He, on the other hand, had nothing—not even clothes!
“I see that.”
Annie peered down at the keys in her hand, as though they could somehow come to her defense. She’d driven a long way and she wasn’t precisely in the frame of mind to have a discussion with a naked man. “Will you please get dressed?”
“Christ!” he said, raking a hand across the scruff on his face. “Sure. You might as well come on in … looks like we have a few things to figure out.”
More than acutely aware of the mole she’d spied on his left hip, Annie kept her gaze trained on his face. “Um, yeah, but I think I’ll wait out here. If you don’t mind. Thanks,” she said. And then a little nervously, added, “I’ll, uh, just wait … on the porch.”
He looked at her as though she’d crawled out of a curio box, his expression not particularly amused, but neither was it cross and then he disappeared into an adjacent room, leaving the front door wide open.
Apparently, modesty wasn’t a virtue he was blessed with. But he got more than his share elsewhere. Someplace she didn’t really care to have imprinted like a snapshot in her head.
Chewing the inside of her lip, Annie waited anxiously on the front porch while Lady sat dutifully at her heels, staring up at her with a question in her faithful brown eyes.
At the moment, Annie didn’t have answers and not having answers, she discovered, was equally as unnerving as facing a rather large, unfamiliar penis. Whether or not he was a big dick, too, remained to be seen. But this is what she did know: A) There was a naked man in her beach house—the house she’d rented more than six months ago—the house she’d already paid for, and B) She had to have this house and no other house would do. If she couldn’t have this house, she might not find the nerve to do what she had to do. Symbolic or otherwise, the house was part of her plan and plans were meant to be followed—that’s why you made them in the first place. The instant you yanked out a single brick from the foundation, the entire structure collapsed.
Right now, Annie desperately needed structure.
“This isn’t good,” she said to Lady as she rummaged through her purse for her cell phone.
Lady contemplated her with big round eyes while she dialed the management company, intending to get some answers before the interloper returned. “Hi, this is Annie Franklin.”
“Hi, Annie! Did you find the house OK?”
Annie was so confused. “I think so.” She glanced into the house at the closed bedroom door. “But there seems to be a tiny problem.”
“Problem?”
“More like a big problem.” And she wasn’t just talking about the size of his package, which Annie was horrified to realize she recalled in disturbing detail. She lowered her voice. “There seems to be a man already here!” She left out the naked part for the moment.
“Seems to be?”
“No, I mean, there is a man—a guy—in the
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