Irresistible Bachelors: Books 1-5 by Landish, Lauren (bts books to read TXT) 📕

“Tell you what, you get out here, and I’ll make sure to find some guy you can order around and tease constantly. Speaking of which, how is Caleb?”

“He’s been doing okay. Tony’s mom has gotten her friends to give him quite a few jobs over the past few months,” I tell her, shaking my head. “We go on our weekend runs usually, but he’s been so busy with his handyman work that he has to skip it sometimes. Not to mention, it seems like I’m always out doing something for Oliver anyway. You know, real estate investment is more than sitting on your ass behind a computer.”

“Says the woman whom I taught everything she knows,” Hannah laughs. “If it weren’t for me, you’d still be running around Aurora and taking weekend trips to the sex toy shop to replace your most recently worn out toy, Elmer.”

“Shh,” I reply, putting on a dopey accent. “Be vewwy vewwy qwiet. I’m hunting wabbits.”

“Yeah, well, I hope you’re not needing one anymore,” Hannah says, but when I don’t answer, she hums. “How long has it been?”

“A bit,” I admit. “But come on, Han, it’s not that bad. I’ve just not had the time. I’m enjoying working for Oliver, and I want to learn everything I can from him. You know, opportunities like that don’t just fall from the sky.”

“Yeah, well, you just remember that good men don’t fall from the sky either. You gotta go out there and find them,” Hannah says.

We finish up the call and I lean back in the water, letting the scent and the warmth wash away days of tension. The fact is, despite coming across as flirty with the opposite sex sometimes, I’ve been trying to be more low-key since moving to work with Oliver. I want more out of life than a latex toy, that’s for damn sure, and while I’m not a saint, I’m not the girl who was using yoni eggs and packing a silver vibrator in her bag anymore either. Even Hannah senses it, I think, and our comments are more for fun than anything else.

Getting out of the bath, I evaluate myself in the mirror. I’ve let my hair grow longer. It’s almost halfway down my back now, and I think it looks good on me, even if it does make me look a little shorter somehow. I change into some lounge around the house-worthy short shorts and a tank top, letting the boobies dangle free. I’m not built like a pinup model, but I make up for it in other ways.

I get my salad and plop down to my one not-so-secret guilty pleasure, reality shows. Whether it’s Real Housewives, bachelors and bachelorettes looking for love in all the wrong places, or even people wanting to get totally ridiculous motorcycles built, I love them. Tonight, it’s Wedding Dress Hunters, and while I eat my salad, I smile as the girl on-screen says yes to a poufy princess monstrosity that looks like it came out of a cheap sci-fi movie or something. Whatever floats her boat, I guess.

Finishing my dinner, I pull my laptop into my lap and start searching for potential properties. It was one of the first things that helped Oliver start to place trust in me. I’m always looking for the next deal, and I routinely find potential properties for him. But my next goal is to do a flip from start to finish . . . find the property, research it, renovate it, and sell it on my own. It’ll be my little jump forward on Oliver’s trusting me to be independent.

I get lost in the listings, and before I know it, it’s almost midnight. I click Save on a few of the listings that I want to drive by this weekend and crash into bed, happily exhausted. Maybe it’s not a night on the town, but I feel like I’ve accomplished something.Caleb

“Ugh,” I mutter involuntarily with a wince, holding my hand over my mouth. It doesn’t help much. I still feel like the stench is a physical blanket that’s assaulting my mouth, nose, and eyes to the point I’ve got tears running down my cheeks. I’ve got a pretty strong stomach. I’ve choked down plenty of disgusting stuff in my time, and I have no problem going elbows deep in a clogged toilet if I have to . . . but this is pushing the limits.

The house is a mess—trash in the corners, holes in the walls, a decided slope to the floor from the front of the house to the back, and a wretched putrid smell that seems to be soaked into every square inch of the walls. When the listing said the house was a ‘fixer-upper’, I think they were being generous. No wonder Oliver got it so cheap.

I pull out my phone, dialing Oliver. He wanted me to give him a call as soon as I could give him a work estimate. While I wait for him to pick up, I try the window next to me, but it’s jammed. Gagging, I head to the back door, but the metal screen door is stuck until I put my boot on the lock and break it off. Fuck it, that’s the least of the concerns for this place.

“Hey, Caleb, how’s it going?” Oliver greets me. In the background, I can hear the lively conversation in the coffee shop & deli that is Mindy’s Place. It’s a weird thing about Oliver. He has a perfectly good office upstairs that he could use, but he spends most of his creative time either in the basement taking up a corner of the metal table the pizza chefs use for rolling dough, or a seat in the shop if things aren’t too busy. “You’re quick on the call. You have an estimate for me already?”

“Hey, Oli, and yeah. How’s the restaurant today?”

“Good,” he says. “Mindy had the