Homecoming: The Billionaire Brothers (2 page)

Arousal, all the stronger for being so unexpected, tightened his belly. “Is that right?”

Pink bloomed over her cheekbones and down her neck, but instead of getting bashful, she lifted a flirty brow and said, “That’s exactly right, sugar. So long as you can snake my pipes.”

His bark of laughter surprised even Dylan. “Is that my cue to make a crack about showing you my tools?”

“Don’t strain yourself, sugar.” She waved a cheerful hand. “I work the night shift at the only restaurant on this island that serves alcohol. Trust me, I’ve heard every dirty joke there is. Now get in here, the clock’s ticking and the plumbing isn’t the only issue. I’ve got a whole list.”

When Dylan hesitated, reluctant to own up to belonging to the family she’d rolled her eyes over before, a slimly toned arm shot out and grasped the lapel of his leather jacket. With a laugh, she hauled him over the threshold and into the dimness of the house.

Half a second later, Dylan Harrington, third son and heir to the multibillion-dollar Harrington fortune, stood in a small white-tiled, paisley-wallpapered bathroom staring down at the plunger in his hand.

Glancing up, he caught a glimpse of his own bemused expression in the gilt-edged mirror above the pedestal sink. The wry half-grin tugging at the corner of his mouth gave his face an unfamiliar lightness, but it felt good.

So much for a vacation from women who wanted something from him.

But somehow, as he faced down a misbehaving toilet and whipped out his smartphone to search the Internet for tips on plunging, Dylan admitted to himself that this was something different.

The mystery of who this woman was, and why she was living in his grandparents’ old vacation house, roused Dylan’s curiosity. But the bigger mystery was why he found himself attracted to a woman whose clean, fresh looks screamed “good girl.”

Dylan gripped the handle of the plunger, his rusty laugh echoing off the bathroom tiles. For the first time in a long time, his life had taken a sharp turn … and he couldn’t wait to find out what was around the corner.

Chapter Two

Penny Little smoothed her palms down the front of her oft-mended uniform, fingertips automatically worrying the frayed buttonhole at the collarbone, and breathed deep to calm her racing heart.

When she phoned her employers for help, Penny had been expecting Grady Wilkes, the local handyman, or one of the Hackleys who ran the hardware store on Main Street. Not some tall, muscled, motorcycle-riding, scruffy-chinned vision of hotness on her doorstep.

“Bad Penny,” she muttered as she escaped to the kitchen to fix a pitcher of sweet tea. “Quit thinking about borrowing trouble. You’re full up already.”

And a man like the one who’d peeled off his leather jacket to reveal a white T-shirt straining across broad shoulders was nothing but trouble. A dark band of ink circled one muscular bicep, and Penny’d had to stop herself from asking where else he was tattooed.

Still, trouble or not, good manners dictated that she offer him a glass of something cold, Penny told herself as she headed back down the hall to the sound of muffled curses from the bathroom. Good manners. That was all.

But she recognized that for the dirty lie it was the instant she cracked open the door. Her breath caught at the sight of trouble leaning over the toilet in a way that molded those sinfully tight jeans to his lean hips and … well. Penny wished she had a hand free to fan herself with.

His surprisingly high-tech phone buzzed from the side of the sink, and he frowned down at it as he reached to heave the lid off the tank. The muscles in his corded forearms bulged briefly, drawing Penny’s gaze to the tanned skin dusted with hair a shade or two darker than his light brown buzz cut.

Setting the lid down with a clang, he twisted at the waist to consult his phone again, pulling that T-shirt tight across his chest.

“Is that for me?”

The deep voice startled Penny into bobbling the glass. Ice sloshed and cold tea dripped onto her hand as she dragged her gaze up from the mesmerizing play of muscles under his clothes.

He was smiling at her again, the devil grin that heated Penny’s blood and sent it racing through her body like a runaway horse. When he reached to take the glass from her, their fingertips brushed. A jolt of electricity zipped up her arm, and the slippery glass dropped and shattered on the floor.

“Oh, shoot!” Penny grabbed the hand towel from the sink and moved to wipe up the spilled tea before realizing most of it had drenched the front of his T-shirt before dripping down onto his jeans. She’d actually been about to cop a feel, with only thin terry cloth and wet, clinging denim between her hand and his—

“I’m so sorry,” she gasped, feeling her neck and face go hot with embarrassment. Okay, embarrassment and lust, but the lust was a little embarrassing, too, so, yeah.

“No big deal.” He smiled and raised her core temperature by another ten degrees when he reached for the hem of his soaked T-shirt and drew it up and over his head. “I was due for a shower, anyway.”

Penny blinked. Granted, it had been a few years since she’d been face to chest with a half-naked man, but even considering that, she was pretty sure she’d never seen anything to compare to the golden-tan planes and ridges of this man’s perfectly sculpted torso. He looked like a movie star or an underwear model, one of those guys whose whole job rested on their ability to strip down and render ordinary women speechless with desire.

Well, being a handyman required plenty of heavy lifting, she reasoned dazedly, her eyes glued to his pecs. And a flexible schedule that probably left plenty of time for the gym.

Mmm, flexible …

“If you bring me another glass of tea, I promise I won’t throw it on the ground.”

Penny’s gaze snapped up to his face. He sounded repentant, but the look on his face was anything but. Wicked amusement danced behind his shockingly blue eyes. This man had a very clear understanding of his body and its effect on women.

Natural contrariness stiffened Penny’s spine. She wouldn’t be another notch on this gorgeous handyman’s tool belt. “Sorry, no second chances,” she said, the words as automatic as breathing. “House policy.”

Confusion narrowed the sky-blue eyes. “House policy?”

Kneeling to carefully pick up the larger pieces of sharp glass, Penny snorted. “Okay, no. Not house policy, as in imposed by the rich folks that own this place. From what I’ve heard, they’re pretty permissive when it comes to family members misbehaving. No, the one-strike-and-you’re-out stuff is all me. Call it a personal philosophy.”

A lesson she’d learned well and thoroughly, at heavy cost.

“Sounds like a tough way to live. Everyone deserves a second chance, now and then.”

His low, husky voice startled her out of her reverie. Finger jerking, she nicked herself on the corner of a glass shard and pressed her lips together as a droplet of blood welled to the surface. “Not everyone. Trust me.”

Glass crunched softly under his black motorcycle boots as he crouched down to her level. “Okay, you win.” He smiled easily, a man used to using his charm to get what he wanted. “I’ll live without the iced tea.”

Right, they’d been talking about spilled tea, not her life story. Cursing the riptide of her memories for sucking them into these deeply personal waters, Penny smiled back and let him help her to her feet. “Thanks. Give me a second to grab the broom, and I’ll get the rest of this cleaned up.”

Every inch of her was so hotly aware of his smooth, hard body a mere breath away from hers. Shivering, Penny backed toward the door and the relative safety of the hallway.

He stopped her with another quick smile. “What you said about the family that owns this place. How much do you know about them?”

“The Richie Riches?” Penny blinked. “Not much, except that they have enough money to leave this gorgeous old place sitting empty for years on end. Such a waste. At least they cared enough to hire a caretaker.”

His face cleared as if she’d slotted the final piece into a jigsaw puzzle. “Right, a caretaker. That’s you.”

She laughed. “Of course! What—did you think I was squatting? No, I’m paid to stay here and make sure the house doesn’t fall down while the Harrington boys live the high life in New York City.”

“The high life.” He said it absently, turning back to the partially dismantled toilet, but Penny caught a glimpse of his slight frown in the sink mirror. He looked upset, maybe annoyed.

She could sympathize. “I know. When you work hard for a living, it’s aggravating to be reminded there are playboy types out there who can afford to do nothing but drink and dance the night away. I’ve even heard … oh, listen to me gossiping! Never mind, I’ll get that broom.”

“Wait. What have you heard?”

Thoroughly embarrassed, Penny winced, but when she made reluctant eye contact with the handyman again, there was no judgment in his lean, handsome face. Instead, he looked curious, if still a little tense.

She unbent enough to quirk a half-grin. “Well. I’ve heard one of the Harrington brothers is actually so famous for his partying that he has a nickname in the press: the Bad Boy Billionaire.”

He twitched a bit, clearly as repulsed by the moniker as she was. “Sounds like a douche bag.”

That shocked a laugh out of her. She leaned against the doorjamb and admired the play of light over his muscles. It was so sweet of him not to have put his damp shirt back on. “I don’t know the man personally—gosh, I can’t even remember his first name. But apparently he’s quite popular with the ladies.”

“I hate this guy.”

Penny grinned at him. “Don’t sweat it. Any woman who’s worth having would prefer a man like you, who makes an honest living working with his hands, over a guy who cats around enough to be a breeding ground for sexually transmitted diseases.”

His eyes went wide, and Penny felt herself flush. Could she be any more awkward and obvious about her attraction?

“Anyway, I’ll let you get back to work! And, shoot, I’d better get to my other job. I wait tables at the Firefly Café,” she explained. “Hey, if you get peckish later, you should come over to the restaurant. The food isn’t fancy, but it’s delicious.”

“Sounds great.” He stood there, bare chest gleaming and so, so distracting, with a smile lurking in the depths of those ocean-blue eyes.

“Okay. Great,” Penny echoed, flustered by the way she couldn’t seem to look away from him. “So maybe I’ll see you later, um…”

She stopped, shocked at herself. “Wow. Here you are, half nekkid in my powder room, and I don’t even know your name.”

“Dylan,” he said at once. Sticking out a large, square-palmed hand, he cleared his throat. “And I can put my shirt back on, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Penny Little,” she replied. “It’s nice to meet you. And please don’t put your shirt on!”

The hint of a smile graduated to full-on wicked smirk. “No?”

Face flaming with heat, Penny soldiered on. “I mean, because it’s all wet. At least let me wash it for you first.”

And if he had to stay shirtless while his tee was stain treated, laundered, and dried on the line in the backyard, well. Sometimes life was hard.

Grinning, Dylan picked up his shirt from the pedestal sink and stepped close enough to drape it around her shoulders, since her hands were still full of glass shards.

“Thanks. Careful though,” he said, hoarse and deep. “It’s my favorite.”

The dark scent of sweet tea and working man surrounded her, and Penny drank it in gratefully. “I’ll treat it like it’s one of my bosses’ custom-tailored wool suits,” she promised.

“No worries,” he said, flashing that charming grin. She didn’t want it to be as effective as it was. “It’s been through worse than a tea bath. It’ll survive.”

Great. The shirt would survive. But as Penny hightailed it out of the powder room and gasped in her first breath of non-Dylan-scented air in minutes, she wondered.

Would she survive this house renovation with her sanity—and her heart—intact?

Chapter Three

The moment the front door closed behind Penny, Dylan had his phone in hand, fingers frantically touch-typing out a query to his middle brother’s frighteningly efficient personal assistant. If anyone had the scoop on the caretaker in charge of the Sanctuary Island house, it was Jessica Bell.

But when the ringing of the phone clicked through to voice mail, it was Logan’s voice in his ear.

“
Jessica can’t come to the phone right now,
” his brother intoned solemnly. “
She’s too busy inserting herself into every aspect of my life and making sure I waste time eating and sleeping instead of working in my lab. When she’s ready to stop annoying me, she can have her phone back. Until then, leave a message, I guess. I certainly won’t be checking them or passing them along to her, though.
”

Dylan hung up before the beep. No extra info from Jessica, then. Fine, he’d have to figure out what Penny Little’s deal was the old-fashioned way—with a generous dose of charm.

He didn’t question his desire to spend more time here, in this house with this woman, and without the heavy baggage of the reputation he’d recklessly built back in New York. Penny Little was interesting. Working on the house was surprisingly interesting, or at least satisfying.

The whole thing felt like a vacation from the boring, predictable cynicism of his real life.

So yeah, he hadn’t come clean about who he was. But seriously, what if he admitted to being the Bad Boy Billionaire Penny despised? That would end things in a hurry. No, he’d decided on the spur of the moment to play this out a little longer, and even though he felt an uncomfortable tickle of guilt at lying to Penny, he shrugged it off.

He wasn’t hurting anyone. In fact, he was saving Penny from the embarrassment of realizing she’d bad-mouthed him and his entire family right to his face. Plus, Penny was getting the help she needed with the house repairs. Everybody won.

Syrupy afternoon light was pouring through the newly polished windows by the time Dylan had made his way through the first quarter of the to-do list Penny had left. Some of the tasks were self-explanatory—it didn’t take a genius to wash a window, just a good ladder and a guy with zero fear of heights. For the rest, well, thank God for Google. And the local hardware store.