Neely wanted to scream as she watched him return with another big box and deliberately set it beside the others on the floor. His floor.
“I can’t believe you bought it,” Neely muttered, still fuming.
“I can’t, either,” Sebastian said so cheerfully that she wanted to smack him. “But it’s perfect.”
That comment actually surprised her. She would never have thought Sebastian Savas would consider a rather battered half-century-old houseboat perfect at all. She’d never seen his place, but Max had said he lived in a penthouse somewhere. What had happened to that?
“I can’t imagine why you think so,” she said acidly.
“But then, you don’t know my circumstances, do you?” he said, hands on his hips as he stood surveying his domain.
“Did you get evicted?” Neely asked sweetly.
He gave her a stare hard enough to make her back up a step. She would need to watch her mouth if he really intended to stick around.
But the next instant she found herself saying, “Or maybe you ran away from home.”
“Maybe I did,” he agreed.
She blinked. “Yeah, sure. Tell me, why did you do it?”
“Danny asked if I wanted to buy a houseboat.”
“And you just thought, ‘Sure why not?’ and whipped out your checkbook and said, ‘I’ll take it’?”
“Something like that.”
She didn’t believe a word of it. “Get real.”
He just shrugged.
She hated that about him—that superior cool detachment, that nothing-gets-to-me disdain. At work they called him The Iceman behind his back. They might have called him Iceman to his face for all he’d care.
She watched him open one of the boxes, remove some books and casually begin taking over the bookshelves. She sucked in her breath.
Sebastian turned and glanced her way. “What? No protest? Are the shelves mine, then?”
“As they’re built in, it seems they are,” Neely said through her teeth. “But as the renter I’m entitled to use some of the space.”
“Ah, yes. Your rent.”
“It’s locked in—the amount,” she said firmly, in case he decided to triple it. Or worse. “On my lease.”
He didn’t reply, just said, “Shall I measure and divide the space, then? To be sure you’re getting your fair share?”
“I think we can work it out,” Neely muttered, glowering at him as he straightened again, hating the six feet, two inches of hard, lean, dark masculinity taking over her space and scoring her with assessing looks from his piercing green eyes.
They were gorgeous eyes—such a pale green at contrast with his olive complexion and thick black hair. They made his strong, handsome, almost hawkish face even more memorable—and appealing.
“Who’s he? He’s hot,” all the temp girls at the office said when they first caught a glimpse him. “I’ll take him for my boss.”
But once they’d worked for him, they changed their minds.
Sebastian Savas had a reputation for being exacting, demanding and unflappable. Absolutely businesslike. And completely cold.
To a woman, the fools flirted with him, batted their lashes at him, simpered and brought him endless cups of coffee in the hope that he would: speak to them, date them, marry them.
He barely noticed them.
As far as Neely could tell, he only noticed buildings—the taller and pointier the better.
A fact which she had once mentioned to him. Had wondered aloud if his fascination might be a means of overcompensation. But only because he’d dismissed her sketches saying they weren’t building doll houses for Barbie!
No, they weren’t. They were designing offices for a trendy women’s magazine publisher whose signature color was hot pink. But Sebastian hadn’t understood that. He’d just dismissed her attempt to get the color in the interior lines of the offices.
She hadn’t had anything to do with him since.
Didn’t want to.
He was Max’s right-hand man and Max thought he was terrific. He’d sung Sebastian’s praises often enough. But they were pretty much two of a kind, so why wouldn’t Max think so?
“You’ll like him when you get to know him,” Max had promised.
Neely didn’t think so. And she had no wish to get to know him at all.
She had no use for workaholic men. Twenty-six years ago, a workaholic man hadn’t married her pregnant mother. Not that her mother had been, at the time, the marrying kind.
But all of that was irrelevant at the moment.
What was relevant right now was finding out exactly what sort of game Mr. Iceman Savas was playing.
“So you’re saying you just whipped out your checkbook to save Frank’s bacon?” She pressed.
“I did us both a favor. He wanted to sell. I wanted to buy. We made a deal. Simple.”
It wasn’t simple at all. Not to her. Neely opened her mouth to argue further with him, but knew there was no point.
Arguing wasn’t going to change anything. The loan had fallen through. And to be honest, she’d always known it might. Her bank balance was promising, but not substantial, certainly nowhere close to what Sebastian Savas’s was.
She’d only been earning good money since her graduation from university two and a half years ago. And a good chunk of that every month went to repay her student loans and provide a bit more ready cash for her mother. Lara, who had married finally when Neely was twelve, was now a widow with a limited pension and a small jewelry business. She was self-sufficient, but there were no extras—unless Neely provided them.
Buying the houseboat had been her dream. She’d loved it from the moment she’d rented a room from Frank six months ago. And she’d dared to hope, when he decided to give in to Cath’s wishes and sell the houseboat, that she would have enough saved to qualify to buy it.
Apparently she hadn’t. Yet.
And with time of the essence, Frank had been unable to wait and had taken the easy way out.
The Sebastian Savas way out.
“Speaking of deals, I have a deal for you, Ms. Robson,” Sebastian said now. He was standing there holding a stack of books in his hands, regarding her steadily with his green gaze.
“Deal?” Neely said, suddenly hopeful. “You’ll sell to me?”
Would he really? After all the bad things she’d thought about him? After the less-than-pleasant things she’d said to him?
He shook his head. “No, but I’ve got a place you can go.”
She felt punched in the gut again. So much for pipe dreams.
“There’s a vacant studio apartment in a building I own.” He looked at her expectantly, as if he thought she would jump for joy at the prospect. “You can have it rent-free for six months.”
She shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere.”
His brows drew down. “You have to. I’m moving in.” He hefted the books to make his point.
“Bully for you.”
He stared at her. The green gaze grew icier than ever. “So you’re saying