Seeing him tonight undid all the hard work I’ve done the past two months. You have no idea how impossible it was for me to decline Isaac’s numerous offers to run a background search on Alex when I failed to find him. I may have even ridden the elevator at my apartment building at the same time every day the past two months just in hopes of seeing him again.
I’m not desperate!
Well, I am, just not in the way you’re thinking.
I want to know why he spied on me. I get Isaac’s persona can be overwhelming, and he may have regretted his abrupt departure, but he could have manned up and entered the room as stealthily as he did the first time. He didn’t have to hide behind the curtain like a weasel.
His lack of assertiveness was why I sent the bottle of wine to his table instead of behaving like the pathetic ass I was in the elevator.
Josie was nice—bat shit crazy—but nice nonetheless. I should have never lumped her in the same pile of shit I wanted to rain down on Alex. I don’t know why annoyance was the first thing I felt when I saw him again. He’s a stranger who aided me after he hurt me. That makes us even. He doesn’t owe me anything, and I owe him sweet fuck all—right?
Right.Then why did I want to gouge out Josie’s eyes every time she laughed at Alex’s corny jokes?
Tequila.
I should have listened to my mother. No good comes from a final shot of tequila. If I had stopped drinking when I said I would, my every step wouldn’t be shadowed by a man I’m dying to see nude.Can you be charged with indecent exposure if your clothes are removed involuntarily?
My head emerges from naughty clouds when a gruff voice says, “Let me.”
Not waiting for a response, Alex snatches my coat from the doorman's grasp, then jerks his chin up, requesting for me to spin around. He barely touches me when he drapes my coat over my almost bare shoulders, but the spark of electricity shooting through me makes it seem so much more. The zap is so strong, my heart jump a few beats.
“How far down are you parked?” Alex asks as his eyes scan the populated street.
When I fail to answer him, he returns his eyes to mine. “Did you use the valet?”
“No,” I say with a shake. “I walked.”
“You walked?!” My ears ring from his furious roar. “In that?!”
His eyes drop to my scarcely concealed cleavage. Before I can laugh at his absurd reaction to my favorite LBD, he yanks me forward by the lapels of my coat before he does up the buttons. He grumbles several times under his breath, but I can’t hear a word he is speaking. I’ve once again been rendered stupid by costly cologne and the scent of a hot, virile man.
“I need to breathe,” I garble when Alex fastens the top button of my jacket. “No one uses all the buttons on a trench coat. They are there for symmetry—not comfort.”
“Not now, they ain’t,” he fires back before curling his hand over mine and marching for the exit doors.
I try to put up a protest, but a man as strong and sturdy as him is too much of a challenge. So, instead, I use words. “What are you doing?”
He ignores me. It should piss me off more than it excites me, but for some reason, it doesn’t. I have a fondness for blushers, but taming a wild, beast of a man is a challenge every hot-headed woman loves. He wasn’t on a date, much less carrying a weapon the last time we met, so I’m free to explore the brutishness pumping out of him.
See—you should always put down the last shot of tequila. It makes you stupid.
Alex hails a taxi before dropping his eyes to mine. They don’t have to wander too far. With the heels on my boots lifting me the extra four to five inches he has on me, we stand at a similar height.
“In.” He nudges his head to the taxi idling next to me.
After undoing the top three buttons of my jacket, I snarl, “Ladies first.”
Anger blisters across his face, but shockingly, he holds in his retaliation before sliding into the back seat of the taxi.Mojo killer!Peeved at his deficient backbone, I clamber in after him.
We only travel a few feet before the reason I decided to walk smacks into Alex. The traffic in Ravenshoe on Fridays is the worst of the worst. We’ve barely crawled an inch.
“Are you ready to call defeat yet?” I ask a short time later.
Alex mutters a curse word under his breath before digging his wallet out of his pocket. After throwing a handful of bills at the driver, he requests for him to pull over.
I laugh when we scramble onto the sidewalk. We’re literally half a block from the restaurant. After yanking me to his chest to ensure I’m not knocked over by a bicyclist zooming down the sidewalk, Alex scans the street. “Which way is your apartment building?”
“Ah. . . I think it’s that way.”
