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Maybe Tony was the nice one.
Though if he’d looked like the nice one, she certainly wouldn’t have developed such a desperate, inadvisable crush on him. No, she liked his rough edges. The way his hair stuck out underneath his hard hat and clung to the back of his neck, a few weeks overdue for a visit with the scissors. The way his hands always looked so beat up when he held the door open for her—a dark blood blister under his thumbnail, a crack in one knuckle.
A man who worked hard, knew what he wanted, and didn’t take flak from anybody.
“I live over in Mount Pleasant,” he said. “Sunnybrook Lane.”
She flapped one hand and made a dismissive shape with her mouth, as if to say, No, no. Though what she was denying, she couldn’t say. That she’d wanted to know where he lived? That she minded going into basements with strange men?
She did mind. Or she would, normally. It was just that the tornado siren had short-circuited her brain.
And also, his voice was rich and dark and delicious. He wasn’t a big talker, and maybe that was because his voice was such a valuable substance, he had to ration it. She might actually be able to live on it for the next week.
“You need to know anything else to be sure I’m not gonna maim you?” he asked. “Social security number? Height and weight?”
She shook her head with too much energy.
He smiled.
Amber thought she just might die.
It was dazzling. Tony Mazzara had a dazzling smile. Like a toothpaste commercial dipped in a porn movie.
“Now we’re at the part where you tell me your name,” he said.
“Sorry?” She had an urge to shake her head and clear away the smile vapors, but she managed not to. Just.
“Your name, honey.”
“Amber.”
“Amber what?”
“Amber Clark.”
His eyes were laughing at her, but they were doing it kindly. He had nice eyes. Dark, dark brown eyes and wavy black hair. A face like his name, like it should have been chiseled out of marble, with a big Mediterranean nose, high cheekbones, and one of those brows that could go dark and menacing and make a girl shiver.
His mouth was probably illegal.
She needed to stop cataloging him, because it only made the blushing, perky thing worse. The guy she now realized was his brother gave her sly looks whenever the two of them passed her. Looks that said, I see the way you watch him. Everybody sees.
She wanted to tell him, It’s not like you think. I’m not mooning over him. I’m trying to figure out a way to drag him into my bed and tie him up.
But that was such baloney. She was mooning over him.
“And you live …?”
She pointed out the door in the general direction of her place. “Camelot Arms apartments. A mile or so over that way.”
“And if I go into that basement with you, you’re not going to attack me? Compromise my virtue?”
“I’ll call your mother and swear to it if you want.”
He huffed, half a laugh, and his mouth curved into a sideways kind of smirk that lit her panties on fire.
“All right, Amber Clark. Shall we go find ourselves a corner to huddle in?”
Read on for an excerpt from Ruthie Knox’s
