Otherwise Engaged Read Free Page B

going to let me live this down, are you? Damn, there goes my chance at being invited to join the Billionaires’ Yacht Club,” she said. “Me and my big mouth—and my foot firmly entrenched within it. Too bad—and I was
so
looking forward to the annual Sunrise Key Beach Ball Day high-society dinner dance.”
    “Not a problem. Sell me this house, and I’ll make sure you have a pair of tickets seating you at the mayor’s table.”
    She laughed. Pres liked making her laugh.
    “Yeah, right. Big deal. There’s no such thing as the annual Beach Ball Day dance.”
    “Sell me the house, and I’ll throw one—in your honor.”
    “I don’t get it. Is there oil on this land?” she asked, eyes narrowed. “Or maybe a gold mine underneath the basement?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    Molly shook her head, moving past him downthe stairs. “Yeah, like you’d tell me about it if there were, right?”
    The Beach Boy was Preston Seaholm, the billionaire. Lord, wasn’t that just her luck.
    Or maybe it
was
lucky. The Beach Boy might’ve turned out to be a laid-back, no-worries kind of guy who traveled with the weather and the good times and lived hand-to-mouth. He might’ve been the kind of guy who worked just enough to pay the rent and fill his stomach, and was available to hang around all hours of the day and night—funny and charismatic—proving to be a nuisance and a distraction.
    Not to mention one hell of a temptation.
    But the Beach Boy wasn’t a beach boy. He was a shark—the corporate kind. He was Preston Seaholm, a man rumored to possess an unnatural need to own every available piece of property on this island, intent on making Sunrise Key his kingdom in every sense of the word.
    No, she wouldn’t see too much of him, thank God. No doubt his days were kept extremely full from his legendary sleeves-rolled-up, hands-on running of the Seaholm Resort, not to mention the arduous task of keeping track of all his money.
    And a billion dollars would take a great deal of keeping track of.
    “If there were gold or oil on this land,” he told her, following her the rest of the way down to the marble-tiled front entrance, “someone would have found it already.”
    “So what’s the big deal?” she asked. “You own everything else on the island, you don’t need this place.”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “What, did you spend too much time playing Monopoly as a kid?”
    He smiled. “Actually, I’ve never played the game.”
    “Went right from Candy Land to playing the stock market, huh?”
    His smile turned into a grin, wide and genuinely amused. Robert Redford, Molly thought suddenly. Even though Pres Seaholm didn’t look anything like Robert Redford aside from the fact that they were both men with light-colored hair and they were both breathtakingly attractive, his smile reminded her of the heartthrob actor. It was a genuine, honest smile—which either meant it
was
genuine, or like Redford, Pres Seaholm was one hell of a good actor.
    “Tell me honestly, would you tease me like this if I were wearing a business suit?” he asked.
    “Would you have leaped onto the roof to help me with the tarp if you were wearing a business suit?”
    Preston Seaholm the first and only didn’t hesitate before answering. “Yes.”
    She believed him. She gazed into his warm hazel eyes and … believed him. And oddly enough, she realized that she liked him. How strange. And she’d been so prepared to dislike or at least strongly disapprove of Sunrise Key’s local celebrity. “You don’t look like a billionaire,” she admitted. “You’re much younger than I thought you’d be.”
    “You’re not what I imagined, either.”
    Silence surrounded them, warm and humid and suffocating. Molly couldn’t seem to break away from the magnetic pull of his gaze. When she spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper. “Why
do
you want this place so badly?”
    “Do you really have to ask?” He looked away from her, and Molly felt as if