Her Three Entrepreneurs [The Hot Millionaires #8] by Zara Chase Read Free Book Online

“There’s no need to be nervous,” he said, spreading an old cotton sheet, worn smooth by years’ worth of laundering, across the mattress. “I don’t bite.”
    Athena tried to look indifferent. “Who’s nervous?”
    He chose a couple of pillows and shot her a confident smile. “You are.”
    His disgusting self-confidence was more than she could handle right now. Her head was swamped with a thousand different reactions to the events of the day. She absolutely didn’t need a not-entirely-civilized male with taut muscles and a tantalizing smile messing with her already overloaded brain. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
    “You seem to have everything under control here, so I’ll leave you to it.” She headed for the door. “The bathroom’s down the hall.”
    “Hey, what did I say?”
    “Good night.”
    She closed the door softly behind her, aware of his bemused expression. Athena felt rather pleased about that. She might not be able to get the better of him when it came to verbal sparring, but at least she’d managed to walk out on him. She doubted if many women invented reasons not to stay in his bedroom.
    Athena badly needed a shower, but the house only had one bathroom. She didn’t intend to make prolonged use of it and find him lurking outside the door when she was done. Not that he’d given her any reason to suppose that he was thinking along those lines. If she was honest with herself, in her current state of frustration, she was probably more of a danger to him.
    “Get over yourself,” she muttered, making a dash for the bathroom.
    She washed in record time, brushed her teeth, and made it back to her room before Bay emerged from his. That was a good thing, wasn’t it?
    Athena was exhausted, but sleep eluded her. Her mind whirled as she tried to figure out who was behind the attack on her grandfather. As far as she was aware, all the locals liked and respected him. If he had any enemies, she didn’t know who they were. The Americans were the obvious culprits, but she knew now that they weren’t guilty. She tossed and turned, feeling lonely and restless in her solitary bed. The lack of regular male company hadn’t bothered her that much since moving back to the farm, and she blamed the three Yanks for changing that situation. They’d messed with her head, reminding her there was more to life than working her fingers to the bone. Reminding her that she was a woman with needs and desires, just like the rest of her sex.
    They had no business being such hunks, crowding her out, making her feel there was something missing in a life that up until today had suited her perfectly well.
    Rowan, lying on the rug next to her bed, appeared to be as restless as she was. He must be missing Gramps, too. She reached out a hand and carefully tugged his ears. He whined softly, turned in several circles, and appeared to nod off.
    Athena tried to do the same, but it was no good. She glanced at the clock. An hour had gone by and she hadn’t slept a wink. Usually she went to bed and died. That was the upside of living such a physically active life. She hauled herself out of bed and headed back down to the kitchen. She’d finish tidying up the mess downstairs. That ought to do the trick.
    Wearing just an oversized T-shirt, she crept down the stairs, careful not to wake Bay. The dining room, which they seldom used, housed all her grandmother’s best china. She had only glanced round the door up until now, but that was enough for her to know that the room had been trashed. Seeing the broken china would upset her but not nearly as much as it would upset Gramps. She needed to salvage what she could before he came home.
    Athena steeled herself and opened the door. It was worse than she had previously realised. Broken china crunched beneath her slippered feet, and she walked across the rug, causing her anger to erupt. Why? She and Gramps had so little to show for their hard work. These few pieces of china