Arrogant Neighbor: A Navy SEAL Romance Read Free Page B

ceilings and the wide rooms. The man who converted the building back in the fifties was careful to maintain the original spirit of the place. Instead of gutting the entire building and turning every spare inch into rentable space, he left the downstairs almost entirely intact, turning the living room into a gathering place for tenants, the dining room and the kitchen left whole so that tenants could cook and dine together. Sometime in the seventies or eighties, they turned the kitchen into a laundry room, and the dining room was now a small gym. But all the old wood, the original details that made the house what it was were still there.
    And the apartments, of course, had been modified over the years. There were originally five apartments, each formed from the original bedrooms the house contained. But then they had been modified to include full kitchens, reducing them to three. But they still had the tall ceilings, the amazing woodwork, and the original linoleum in some of the bathrooms that gave the house the character those who built it before the turn of the century had given it. That was a big part of the reason I’d chosen to live there, too. That and its location. An address in downtown Houston wasn’t always an easy one to get.
    “You interested in architecture?”
    She shrugged. “Only as far as the feel and look of a place. I really know nothing about it beyond that.”
    I nodded, a little surprised at the sharp edge of disappointment that cut through me.
    “I should go. I start a new job today,” she said. But she didn’t move. She continued to stand there and stare at me for a long moment. I finally got the message and stepped back against my door even though there was plenty of room for her to get by from where I was standing. But that was clearly her issue, because she strode quickly toward the stairs, offering a brief wave as she disappeared down the curving staircase.
    Hmph. A bit of a stuck-up bitch, wasn’t she?
    But I wouldn’t mind teaching her a thing or two…

Chapter 4
    Sloane
    “ Y ou would not believe the office they gave me! It’s huge!”
    Kyle laughed on the other end of the line. He was still my best friend. Despite the fact that we slept together on graduation night, things had never been weird between us. We just went back to being friends and it’d worked all those years. I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d want to share my excitement with than him.
    “They must really like you,” he said.
    “I don’t know about that. The guy who showed me around, my supervisor, said that it was the only space they had available at the moment.”
    “He was probably just saying that because he was jealous.”
    I smiled but I didn’t respond. What do you say to something like that? Was it catty to agree?
    “My apartment is gorgeous. I can’t wait to get all my stuff unpacked.”
    “I’ll come over this weekend and we’ll do it together.”
    “That would be great. Maybe you can meet my neighbor.”
    “Good looking?”
    An image of Major jumped unbidden into my mind. He had incredibly intense blue eyes and dark hair that he kept super short, almost like a guy in the military might do. But it was still long enough on the top to see that it would sport big, full curls if he grew it out much more. And then there was that t-shirt stretched to its limit over his chest, the rippling muscles covered in dark-colored tattoos, the ripped jeans and the way those jeans fit over his hips, over his... Hmm, he was good looking. But not my type.
    Too big. Too rough looking.
    Was I a snob for thinking that?
    “He’s quite popular with the ladies. He had some girl in his apartment last night, and let me just say that the walls between our apartments are pretty thin.”
    “Did you talk to him about it?”
    “I called the building manager. Twice. And he must have talked to him because he apologized.”
    “Well, at least he has manners.”
    “Maybe.”
    I sat back in my office chair and turned to look