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“I’m Dex.” Said like he was Cher or Zendaya. “I’m looking for Ashley?”
“Well, you’ve found her. And you’re late.”
“I am?” He checked his watch.
“By four hours.”
“Didn’t someone call?”
“No.”
She couldn’t see past his sunglasses, but the smirk said it all.
“This is a volunteer gig, right? Thought the timing was flexible.”
“Your time might be but mine isn’t. This volunteer gig to you is a business to me.”
She sounded prissy—she hated hearing it in her tone—but what was she supposed to do? It wasn’t her job to wrangle naughty jocks with time-keeping issues.
He pushed his sunglasses on top of his head. Maybe he thought his eyes would do the heavy lifting of an apology. They were a deep, drown-in-me blue, but had no impact on her. Handsome men-boys had long ago stopped making her feel anything but a mild contempt.
“Hey, I’m sorry.” Said with the least sincerity ever.
That’s when she saw the dark circles under those eyes, the troubled gaze, the tiredness.
Those baby blues might be gorgeous, but they were also weary. The mouth might be pretty, but the smirk was half-hearted at best. And his hair, which was rakeable—was that a word?—looked like he’d been tearing through it with his fingers.
“I’m sorry, too. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to wrangle you when I’m this busy.”
“Wrangle me? Hey, I’m not one of your puppies.” He stepped in, and she was abruptly conscious of his size. The man could give a Sequoia a run for its bark. “I said sorry.”
He added a grin, which was supposed to make that lazy-ass apology more palatable, she supposed. Not today, buster.
“I bet that usually works on everyone you meet.”
“Not everyone.” He sounded genuinely perplexed. “Some people prefer to be hard asses for no good reason.”
Had he forgotten they were doing him a solid? So, there was a quid pro quo in the favors department, but he was the one who’d arrived hours late. In some recess of her brain, she knew she should let this slide and forget about it. But the words to smooth it over refused to come.
“Is this how you think the world works? You don’t get your way, so you act like I’m the problem?”
He ran his fingers through his hair again. At this rate, they risked exiting their follicles and drifting to the tiled floor. His chest rose on a deep inhale, the Rebels R on his gray long-sleeved tee stretching taut as his lungs filled and his pecs firmed. She felt her gaze drift on a dreamy cloud downward to his trim waist, narrow hips, and thick thighs wrapped in dark sweats. The perfect pro-athlete body.
Unable to stop the catalog, she took note of the angel’s face with its iron jaw, slashed cheekbones, Roman nose, and sensual lips. With a package like that, no wonder he was used to getting what he wanted.
Having observed her interest, he reactivated the smirk, and all the goodwill engendered by his face and body left the building.
“No.”
He looked taken aback. “No?”
“No,” she repeated, liking how it sounded on her lips. She was usually a “yes” girl and it probably was in her interest to be a “yes” girl right now, but this guy was rubbing her all wrong and was fully deserving of her rejection.
When would she ever get a chance to say “no” to a man this hot?
Bafflement creased his brow, and even that looked attractive on him. Poor dumb jock, who didn’t understand why she wasn’t bowing down to serve him.
He opened his pretty-boy lips, and she steeled her spine for whatever charming absurdity might come next. She expected to be highly entertained by it.
