Playing for Love at Deep Haven Read Free Page B

might give him a
little information about where she was from. It was carefully modulated, almost
as though she’d watched a lot of Grace Kelly movies and taught herself how to
talk that way.
    “Oh. I’m the,
uh, the houseguest. I’m the guy staying here for the next few weeks.”
    She laughed, and
the timbre pinged in his head, strangely familiar.
    “What are you
talking about? You’re staying here? I’m staying here. I’m staying here for the next two weeks.” Her voice ratcheted up a
notch and lost just a touch of its refinement.
    “I don’t think
so. John told me it was free for the entire month of October and that I could use
it for as long as I like.”
    “John?”
    “John Lewis. The
owner.”
    “Well, Lena Lewis said I could stay here,” she said tightly.
    “Oh, man.”
    Lena Lewis. Loony
Lena, John’s estranged wife who’d sometimes show up at the Cornerstone offices,
carrying on publicly about her shitty divorce settlement. John had bragged to
Zach just last week that while Lena had ended up with their condo in Greenwich,
he hadn’t had to pay her another dime. Zach remembered his exact words: “A
solid prenup’s worth its weight in gold, Z.”
    “Oh, man . . . what ?” asked the woman.
    “You probably
already know this if you’re friends with Lena, but John and Lena Lewis are at
the end of a pretty nasty divorce. I’m positive John owns this house. And I’m
pretty sure Lena’s hard up for cash.”
    “No. No no no . You must be wrong! Lena
Lewis is—well, we’re in a ladies club together. She   said I could use this place rent free. I just
needed to pay her a thousand dollars for the utilities.” She whipped her iPhone out of her back pocket and started typing quickly. “I
have an e-mail.” She kept typing, the phone’s screen casting a slight bit of
light on her shadowed form. She tilted her head back, glancing up at the starry
sky in frustration. “There’s no signal here. But, believe me, I have an e-mail
giving me permission to be here.”
    Zach cocked his
head to the side, squinting to see her better in the dim light, but she stood
several feet away. He could barely make out her silhouette.
    “Well, John said
I could use it. Said it was empty and vacant. Said I should use it to get away
for a few weeks and work.” He rubbed the inside of his wrist before flicking
his lower lip with his thumb.
    The moon shifted
from behind cloud cover and for a moment he could make out the shininess of her
eyes. She probably didn’t mean for them to drop and linger on his lips for the
second they did, but he noticed. She shifted slightly, catching some moonlight,
and he could see her chest was proportionally larger than the rest of her
slight frame. Zach was a fan of big tits on small women and felt his body
tighten a little.
    “But I have
e-mails,” she insisted again. “Lena said I could . . . You cannot stay here .”
    “Huh. Okay,” Zach
said. He saw what was going on here. He had been invited to use the house by the actual owner , cleared his
incredibly busy calendar, pissed off Malcolm, rented an SUV for two weeks, and
brought his guitar, keyboard, and two weeks’ worth of Scotch on an eight-hour
excursion north only to be kicked out before he got in the door.
    Not so fucking fast, fake-voiced, Sister-Big-Boobs.
    “Looks like you’ve
got a little problem,” he said as he backed up against the side of the SUV,
crossing his arms.
    “Looks like you’ve got a problem. I have permission
to be here. I paid to be here.”
    “You may or may not have permission to be in a house that doesn’t belong to
the person offering it. And all you probably paid for was Lena Lewis’s ticket to Cabo ,”
he said, walking around to the back of the SUV and popping the trunk, the dome
light shining down on his various bags and cases.
    “What are you
doing?” she demanded in a light shriek, and something about her voice made him
pause again. When she dropped the bullshit mid-Atlantic accent,