Read Online Knight in Leather by Holley Trent - Free Book Online Page A

didn’t wear their hair in dense knots held in place by rubber bands they’d yanked from around bouquets of broccoli. Dasha had seen him filch the elastic at Simone and Heath’s. Ethan had gotten frustrated by his hair and took the band off the produce.
    At least he’s industrious .
    And that was more than she could say for her ex. Ben hadn’t had a creative bone in his body. He didn’t know how to make due or to problem-solve. All that fell to Dasha. She was plenty creative, but he’d never wanted her to use that gift for anyone but him. He was so jealous of everything. He didn’t like her thinking too much apart from him, so naturally she got to the point where she didn’t want to think about him at all.
    After a pathetic sigh, Dasha forced herself to take a bite of the hamburger. She didn’t want to think about Ben anymore. Getting him to back off had taken a lot of effort and legal paperwork, and there was no good reason to dredge up memories. He couldn’t follow her to North Carolina. He wasn’t going to ruin her life any more than he already had. He still had a couple of years left on a federal prison sentence. She’d hoped to have herself emotionally squared away before his release, if not physically. She didn’t know if the odds were looking so good.
    Simone departed from Heath and went to work the crowd. Heath, wearing a starkly neutral expression Dasha rarely saw on the charismatic prince, moved with his hands in his pockets toward the courtyard. His gaze wasn’t on Simone, where it generally was by default, but on the parking lot.
    Dasha set down her plate and, letting out an exasperated breath, put her feet on the ground. “Okay, what is going on up there?”
    “Nothing.” Siobhan plucked the bratwurst off Dasha’s abandoned plate and took a bite.
    “Don’t tell me nothing . There’s definitely something happening. When Heath isn’t smirking, there’s something going on.”
    “Stop worrying,” the princess said through a mouthful of food. “Ooh!” Her eyes went round, and she pointed at Dasha as she chewed.
    “What?”
    Siobhan swallowed. “You said you had motel ideas. Tell me about them. Are they going to affect the next phase of construction? I’ve been trying to buy the neighboring lots so we could have a privacy buffer. We’d like to be able to separate the housing from the guest areas.”
    “I don’t think my ideas would affect that one way or another. And what’d you do? Did you track down the owners of the lots?”
    “Yep. Both of them,” Caryl said. “The one on that side”—she pointed to the right—“hadn’t done anything with that old gas station in twenty-five years. I guess he kept telling himself that one day he’d fix the place up, or whatever. I actually tracked him down after I’d seen that the city had gone by and slapped a condemned sticker on the shop door.”
    “I bet you snapped the property up for a steal.”
    “Nope.” Siobhan scowled. “That weaselly bastard nickel-and-dimed me. I guess he could tell how badly I wanted to take the lot off his hands. The property sure as shit wasn’t worth what he was asking, but Heath told me to just give him the damned check before the guy decided to jack the price up again. He accepted the offer. Just waiting for him to confirm the closing date.”
    “What about over there?” Dasha canted her head toward the left. On the other side of the motel was an empty one-acre lot, which was huge for land that close to the beach. There wasn’t even a real estate company sign staked near the road, and Dasha had never seen anyone tending the land. It was overgrown and littered with garbage folks had tossed out of their car windows or that had blown on from the beach. She’d believed the county owned the space.
    “That was trickier,” Siobhan said. “I had to look up the county records and trace the owner, just like with the place on the other side, but the owner on record was dead. Apparently, there was some