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So much proximity with that delicious male specimen.
And I’d thought this apartment was going to suck? Not hardly.
I shut the door and gripped my pizza box for dear life. “Yes. How much do I owe you?” Not that I knew why a mechanic was delivering pizzas, but right then, I did not care.
Nor did I care that he’d never reacted quite like this to me before. I could not say the same. I’d pretty much been in heat in his presence since the first minute we’d met.
Maybe it was his big oil-stained hands or the scent of gasoline and leather that clung to him. The muscles layered upon muscles didn’t hurt. Or his killer blue eyes, even now shrewdly analyzing me and possibly mentally stripping me naked.
A girl could dream.
He swept his tongue inside his lower lip. “Think we can negotiate.”
Two
Things were definitely looking up.
Or maybe that was only one part of my anatomy, but close enough.
I hadn’t wanted to run out pizza to the new tenant in the Forrester building. Actually, the words “I don’t want to” summed up this day in its entirety. But Pop was shorthanded at the pizza shop and Wes was having a grand time helping in the kitchen, which mostly consisted of banging pots and pans along with the occasional sneaking of pepperoni under the careful supervision of my mom.
Me, I’d been taking calls and delivering pies for the last three hours since Ellie and Connor had both gone home sick. It was a damn epidemic in town.
Kinda fit this shitty-ass day. Much as I didn’t want to notice the date, every year I did. It had only been two years, so I supposed it wasn’t that shocking.
Two years since Wes’s mom had bailed on us. At least physically. She’d been gone mentally before that.
Most of the time, I didn’t think about her. My life was too full to spend on recriminations. Katherine was a big one, if only because she’d deprived my son of his mother. The rest I didn’t regret. Life was rough. Sometimes shit didn’t work out. But for a kid, you tried harder.
You were supposed to fucking try.
So, yeah, after finishing at the shop, the last thing I’d wanted was to be called into service to help Pop. Nor make chitchat with everyone who opened their door to me. Curse of a small town. By the fourth time I’d explained I was helping out my dad, I was ready to light up.
And I didn’t even smoke.
The one good thing was that I’d been too busy to watch the clock. Now that my shift was over, I could acknowledge it hadn’t been that bad. I was just tired after putting in a long day at J&T’s, and I knew my day wasn’t over yet—not with a six-year-old to get washed up and into bed.
Right now, I could take this unplanned break. Dad had a closer coming in who could handle any other deliveries for the night.
I was officially free.
But I probably shouldn’t stay long. Kelsey and I barely knew each other. Friends of friends and all that, and recently, we’d found ourselves at some of the same events. She always said crazy stuff and tried too hard. As pretty as she was, she didn’t seem comfortable in her own skin.
If anything, I was too comfortable in mine.
I didn’t date much for obvious reasons. Impressionable little kid who already didn’t have a mom. Semi-bitter father who couldn’t be bothered with games. I was barely thirty, but when it came to relationships, I’d felt as if I’d seen it all and didn’t need a repeat.
Occasional hookups were about all I had bandwidth for. Even those were damn rare. I didn’t even know how long it had been since the last one.
Another reason I had no business taking a bite out of Kelsey’s pie.
But she was different tonight. Not only had she stood up for herself in our little argument, she had a wild look in her eyes. She wasn’t making idle chitchat, seemingly content to stand beside me at the narrow counter in her just as narrow kitchen and shift slices onto paper plates. The entire place was in a state of disarray, and there wasn’t anywhere to sit. Books were scattered on the floor. She’d barely made a dent in her unpacking.
Not that I was worried overmuch about her decorating right now.
She kept licking her lips as she checked me out, as openly as I was doing the same. Not the first time for me either. I’d been behind her at Oliver and Sage’s Vegas wedding and let’s just say it was a good thing she hadn’t been able to see me ogling her legs in her snug blue dress.
Those mile-long legs were on full display right now. A lot of her was on display, to be honest. Her tied off shirt revealed a healthy amount of skin and her tits were one deep breath from spilling free. I didn’t know if she was wearing a bra. If she was, it was flimsy at best. Her curves were slight, but it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. She was put together just right, from the tips of her red-gold hair right down to her candy pink toenails.
