Playing the Playboy by Noelle Adams

once, he wasn’t going to let him down.
    ***
    Laurel wasn’t a bit hungry, but she made herself eat a sandwich as she reorganized the pantry. The pantry didn’t need reorganizing, but she needed a distraction from Andrew, and organizing always made her feel better, more secure—as if there were things in life she could really control.
    She couldn’t control Andrew, and that fact was really upsetting.
    As she worked, she tried to think of a new plan. She’d given up on her first plan, since she wasn’t cold enough to have sex merely as ammunition to use against the Damons. She’d ruined her next plan of earning his sympathy by getting angry. Andrew would never be on her side now, but there must be something else she could do to give herself an advantage once the legal process started up for real.
    She knew the Damons must have a very good legal argument for their claim to the inn, or they wouldn’t be doing this. Cyrus Damon had an intimidating reputation for playing hardball, but he’d never been known to cheat or steal. The fact that she still didn’t know exactly what their claim was to the inn worried her.
    They hadn’t told her since they didn’t want her preparing a defense.
    She didn’t have money for a good lawyer. She didn’t even have money for the lawyer she had. Waverly had agreed to help her out of the goodness of his heart, but his legal expertise wasn’t worth much anyway. He was only going to provide a minimal amount of protection against the army of lawyers the Damons would send after her.
    She was good at making plans. She’d figure out something to do. She just needed to focus.
    After removing all the canned goods from a shelf, wiping down the shelf, wiping down each can, and then replacing them in neat rows with the labels easily visible, she finished her sandwich and went to throw away the napkin she’d been holding it in.
    As she did, she caught a glimpse of Andrew climbing the steep stairs toward the parking area.
    He must be leaving. She was glad. She never wanted to see him again.
    He made her feel confused and helpless and a lot of other emotions she should never have indulged even briefly.
    She wondered why he didn’t have his bags with him as he left.
    That incongruity was strange enough to prompt her to walk up to his room. The door was locked, but she had a master key, so she let herself in.
    He hadn’t even started to pack. His clothes were in the drawers and the closet. His laptop lay closed on the desk. A pair of brown leather shoes were tossed haphazardly in the general vicinity of the closet.
    She instinctively lined them up on the floor of the closet. Then she realized what she’d done.
    He wasn’t her guest, he wasn’t her friend, and he wasn’t her lover. He was unlawfully trespassing in her home when she’d told him clearly to leave.
    She went back to the closet and pulled out his suitcase. She set it on the bed, opened it, and started to neatly fold his clothes up until the closet and dresser drawers were empty.
    Then she went into the bathroom and gathered his shower and shaving supplies, packing them efficiently in the case he’d left on the counter.
    She felt a little strange handling his personal items this way. Her belly twisted uncomfortably as she thought about him doing domestic things like shaving and brushing his teeth. She ignored the feeling, however, and finished packing him up, concluding by sliding the laptop into the beat-up leather messenger bag he used for a briefcase.
    If she’d been someone else, she would try to get into his laptop and see if she could find any helpful or incriminating information. He probably had it password-protected, however, and she wasn’t a thief or a spy.
    She hauled his bags down the stairs and set them in a neat pile on the entry terrace, just at the bottom of the stairs.
    She nodded in satisfaction and went around and locked every door in the inn, so he couldn’t get back inside. There were a lot of them. It took