Her Wicked Heart by Ember Casey Read Free Book Online

the T-shirts. The colors are so bright that I’m afraid they’re going to burn my retinas, but it’s better than looking at the guy I almost-but-didn’t-quite make a very, very bad mistake with. I need to stop making new mistakes and start fixing the ones I’ve already made. No more excuses.
    And if I’m going to be a better, stronger person, I can start by sucking it up and dealing with these T-shirts already. Even if every time I see that stupid embroidered “Huntington Manor” logo I feel like I’m being stabbed in the gut. I get to work, making my way through an entire pile of hot pink shirts and half a pile of the electric purple ones before I find my gaze drifting back over to Ward.
    He’s leaning against the wall, scribbling on a little notepad. His brow is slightly wrinkled in concentration, and every once in a while, he sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, just a little, as his pencil moves across the page. Once, he stops to scratch his side. His shirt slides up just a little, and my eyes drop to the exposed skin before I can stop them.
    Shame he turned out to be a jerk , I think, tearing my gaze away from his abs. Shame I’m not supposed to be thinking about men in the first place.
    “Do you always stare at people when they’re working?” he says. He glances up. “Or did you change your mind about my earlier offer?”
    “Are you going to be able to finish that window by tonight?” I ask, ignoring his question.
    He laughs, allowing the dodge. “No way in hell. I’ll be lucky if I can get all the wood cut by tonight.” He turns and looks at the remains of the window again. “The upside to this is that it really needed the update. Look at this. The wood had started to rot. No wonder we went through. I wonder if the others are this bad.”
    I glance down the room at the other windows.
    “They’re pretty old,” I admit.
    “It’s not the age that’s the problem with this place,” he replies. “It’s the lack of proper upkeep. You’d have been shocked if you’d seen the condition of this place when I started working here.”
    I try unsuccessfully to ignore the prickle of annoyance in my chest. “Well, it was vacant for a few months after the sale, wasn’t it? That’s probably the problem.”
    He snorts. “The problem is that those people didn’t take care of their house.”
    Those people. My fist tightens around the T-shirt in my hand until my knuckles are white. By ‘those people,’ he means my family.
    “Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “There are a lot of cool things about this place. It’s fascinating, really. The original architect was definitely going for something Gothic, and you don’t see that a lot on this side of the pond. Especially in a private home. It’s more of a work of art than an actual living space.” He shrugs. “But of course the Cunninghams needed all their modern amenities, so you end up with this weird mishmash of new and old.”
    “You’d rather they hadn’t put in electricity?”
    “I didn’t say that. I mean there are ways to incorporate technology into places like this while preserving the integrity of the original design. And throwing in computerized closets isn’t the way to do it.” He shakes his head. “But that’s not even what pisses me off. It’s that they threw all their money into shit like that and didn’t even do standard maintenance. They were letting this place slowly crumble into pieces. Don’t get me wrong—the foundation’s sound. But this house needed a lot of updates to meet code.”
    “Well,” I say, trying to keep my voice neutral, “I imagine it’s hard for one family to keep up with a place like this.”
    “Exactly,” he says as if I’ve just proved his point. “I don’t care how rich you are. There’s no reason you need a place this size. Especially when you can’t take care of it.”
    I press my lips together. I should keep my mouth shut. The last thing I need to do is blow my cover before I’ve