I am Not Your Melody: (steamy cowboy romance) by Shoshanna Evers Read Free Book Online Page A

me.”
    He almost made it sound like a good thing.
    She shuffled closely behind him, her hand gripping his.
    “First step,” Bill warned.
    They went down the stairs at a snail’s pace. At the end at the landing, Bill pushed open the door into the bar.
    Allie was so grateful to be out of that apartment, she could’ve kissed the dirty cement floor at her feet. Instead, she turned around and looked at him, unable to hide her anger.
    “Y-you’ve misled me,” she said, her voice shaking. “I can’t believe I actually paid money for this dump. A lot of money. All my money.”
    The long hours in the car, the humiliation of falling on her ass and having Bill toss her over his saddle — combined with sheer disillusionment — came to a head. Tears that had been building up in her all day finally fell, and she leaned up against the dusty mahogany bar in exhaustion.
    “Whoa, there.” Bill took a step back, crossing his arms as if to barricade himself from her. “I didn’t ‘mislead’ anyone,” he said firmly. “I sent you pictures of everythin’ in detail. Complete descriptions. You signed a contract that said AS-IS.”
    “I never saw pictures of that ! It looks like it was taken over by a group of heroin addicts or something!” she said, her voice rising. “I thought I could stay here while I was fixing everything up. Clearly that is not the case.”
    The muscle in his jaw hardened.
    “You should have warned me,” she added.
    Each verbal jab at Bill made his jaw clench even tighter. Well, he could just be as pissed off at her as he wanted to be. It was a free country. But he’d better not dish out more than he could take, because right now, Allie was about two steps away from saying screw it — forget the whole thing.
    “I can get the water and electricity back on,” Bill said. “I can have the guys come in and take out the furniture that’s no good. We’ll call the plumber if we need to. It won’t be pretty, but you could live here if you want to.”
    “Are you kidding me?” This time she didn’t bother to moderate her volume. “I can’t live here. And don’t look at me like that—”
    “—like what?”
    “Like I’m some prissy city-girl,” she said.
    Bill raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. “You said it, not me.”
    “You can’t be serious,” she fumed. “If I went to sleep in that apartment, the rats would probably eat my face off. That is, if whatever plague is growing in that toilet didn’t get me first.”
    Bill didn’t reply.
    Ah. So now he was playing the cowboy-of-few-words. Seriously, that trait was annoying when she had to deal with it in person — even if it was sexy in a western movie. And she knew him better than that. He couldn’t be as nonchalant about this as he pretended to be — so unruffled by her display.
    “Anythin’ else?” he finally asked.
    Allie exhaled heavily and shook her head. But she couldn’t leave it like this between them. He didn’t act like he understood what she was feeling. Maybe he didn’t even care.
    No wonder they called him Big Bad Bill. Their first day together and he’d already reduced her to tears.
    “I feel like I was duped,” she said, looking directly in his eyes — making him see her. “I spent all of my money to do this. The only way that I could do this is because you are paying for the renovation. I’ve never even renovated anything before!”
    The look on his face gave her pause. She’d told him that before, right?
    At some point, she’d had to have come clean and mentioned that while she knew her way around a bar, she had zero experience with renovations. Or maybe not.
    Well. Secret’s out .
    Bill didn’t look happy with her now, either. “You’d told me in an email that you’ve helped renovate your sister’s house.”
    “I put up the curtains, all right? And before you ask, no, I didn’t use the drill and attach the curtain rods. I literally just put the curtains on the rods.” She smiled