Love's Nine Lives - Colter/Caron Cara/Cassidy

And now, staring at his ceiling, he told himself he was going to do the job because of Fred, but he knew in his heart of hearts that wasn’t the entire truth either.

There was just something about Miss Daisy that was driving him crazy.

In that moment of vulnerability, shaken by sleep as he had been by the husky loveliness of her voice, he admitted what it was.

He wanted to see her again.

Ached for it.

“Trouble,” he said out loud. “Justin West, she means trouble.”

He was the wrong kind of man to deal with a woman like her. He was all rough edges, and she was all polished refinement. He had learned almost everything he knew about life—and he figured that was plenty—from the school of hard knocks. She came from an ivory tower. What she knew about the real world he could probably put into a thimble. And what he knew about her world—of books and culture and all that crap—could fit in the same size container.

“Hey, West,” he told himself sternly. “You’re going to build her a cat door. You’re not proposing marriage.”

Oh, yeah, she’d be that kind of woman. The kind who liked commitment and rings and church bells and everything done just so. He could tell by the way she kept her house and treated her cat. She was just dying to get her hands on something worth caring about.

At least he knew for sure that was not him.

He liked putting his feet on the coffee table and eating supper right from the can. He liked fishing and hunting and a game of pool with the guys. He liked satellite TV because he could watch football and baseball and hockey until the cows came home. And he liked women who wore tank tops and low-slung jeans, who drank too much beer and sang rowdy songs in the parking lot after the bar closed.

But if that was true, how come not one of those women’s eyes had ever haunted him long after he’d said goodbye?

He looked at the clock. He should call Bridget back and tell her he’d changed his mind. He’d checked his schedule, he couldn’t do it.

This was already way more complicated than he liked his life, and he hadn’t even started the job yet.

Of course, if he did tell her the deal was off, then he’d have to explain it to Fred.

And the truth was, he missed Fred. They had talked on a more or less daily basis for a whole lot of years. Fred was what he had left of family. The old guy was solid as a rock, loyal and wise.

And Fred liked Bridget Daisy.

“Okay,” Justin bargained with the ceiling. “I’m doing the job. I’ll do most of it while she’s at work. It will be like my good deed for the year. There won’t be any more thoughts of her eyes or her lips or hands in her hair. Not a single one. I will be a perfect gentleman.”

There was only one problem. He wasn’t quite sure how to be a perfect gentleman.

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