Despite the Gentleman's Riches: Sweet Billionaire Romance (For Richer or Poorer Book 1) by Aimee Easterling Page A

uninvited guest.
    Uninvited, but not unexpected. My landlord lived next door, so it was easy for him to come up with an excuse to drop by each day, his social calls growing more and more personal as the days dragged on. It had become obvious that Mr. Reed was interested in me as more than a tenant, which would have been flattering if the man hadn't been approximately fifty years old, with oily, thinning hair and a beer belly that he enjoyed showing to the world whenever he mowed his lawn. But I didn't want to get on my landlord's bad side since I depended on Mr. Reed to provide a spot for my trailer to park. So I just pretended not to notice his advances...and trained Florabelle to drive the slimeball away with her volume.
    "Hey, Mr. Reed," I said, hearing Florabelle suck in a breath in preparation for her first shriek at the same time I opened the door. Lena barely had time to giggle before the ear-shattering squawks made it impossible to hear anything not immediately in front of me.
    Unfortunately, my landlord had finally wised up to my tactics. "Come outside!" he yelled, the words barely audible over Florabelle's acoustic attack. "It's time for a chat."
    With a pained look at Lena, I gave in to the inevitable, stepped outside the trailer, and shut the door.
     
     

Chapter 9
    "Is something wrong?" I asked into the sudden quiet. Inside my trailer, I could hear Lena praising my pet and soothing the bird back into tranquility at the same time as Mr. Reed settled himself into a plastic chair on my tiny deck. I used to keep my lawn furniture in the garden where I could sit and visually embrace the greenery after a hard bout of weeding, but had since moved the furnishings up to the front deck after realizing that the chairs just gave my landlord an excuse to linger and watch me work. And now the new arrangement proved to have backfired as well since my neighbor looked like he'd settled in for the duration.
    "Well, now," Mr. Reed hedged in response to my query. "I wouldn't say anything's wrong , exactly. Why don't you take a seat so we can visit for awhile?" He patted the second chair, his words less of an encouragement than a command, and I restrained myself from bristling at the invitation to partake of my own property.
    But what right did I have to bristle when it really wasn't my own property, was it? Sure, the plastic chairs belonged to me, and so did the trailer. But the earth that Pippin had sunken her roots into was owned by Mr. Reed, and I'd best remember that fact. So I pulled up a smile that felt more like a grimace and perched on the chair beside him.
    "This is nice," Mr. Reed said pleasantly, clearly content that I'd obeyed his command. "You've got a good view here, don't you? I'm surprised you don't spend more time out on your deck."
    Was the man really so clueless? I didn't relax in front of my trailer because whenever I came outside, Mr. Reed appeared like clockwork to hang out with me. At least in the back garden, he sometimes didn't notice that I was present, so I was left alone. But a cold shoulder never had the desired effect on my landlord, so I just shrugged and waited to see why he'd tracked me down this time.
    I didn't have long to wait. "I heard you lost your job," Mr. Reed continued, his words sympathetic although I noticed a bit of glee drifting across his round face. "You know your lot rent is coming due next week...." My landlord's words trailed off, and I was glad to have an easy way of derailing this conversation since I was suddenly afraid to find out where our chat would have gone if I hadn't found another source of income so quickly. Would Mr. Reed have offered to forgive the month's rent if I invited him over for a home-cooked dinner, as he had suggested once before? Or would he be even more overt in his advances? I'd always tried to keep my distance from the older man, but today I felt more jittery than usual in his presence and was absurdly glad that Lena was hovering within earshot in case I