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And hopefully, that will come soon.
I’m not sure if I can handle a half-hour drive into the city if I have to, uh…do more than pee.
I groan softly and set my palm on the windowpane. I match that with my forehead a minute later, mushing it up against the warm glass.
Atlas is stacked. He’s jacked. He’s basically every woman’s fantasy. His brother was just as hot—I mean, I’m sure they were brothers because they looked the same—but I barely sent a look his way. Maybe because I was too hyper-aware of Atlas watching me, noticing me, and lighting me on fire from the inside out with his stormy eyes and blown pupils. Even I know what blown pupils mean.
I don’t understand it. I really don’t. I’ve made it twenty-one years on this earth without being hit on, and then I meet a guy who is there to check out my house, not me, and he’s freaking…well, if he were a steak, he’d be triple-A beef. If he were a bee, he’d have extra bumble. If he were ice cream, he’d be one of those sensationally stacked, four scoops high with sprinkles, caramel sauce, and cherry kind of ice cream. And if he were a hot pepper, he’d be a ghost pepper bathed in extra hot sauce style spicy.
And me? I’m just…just me.
I’m just so very me that when I dyed my hair because I’d always wanted the whole white blonde, near granny style hair since it became so popular, my mom told me that I couldn’t make myself hotter by changing my hair color, and I shouldn’t want to be anyone but me. Yeah, she really said it. She was honestly just trying to be nice. My dad gave me a confused look when I came home, and my brother laughed at me the next time he saw me.
But not Atlas. No, he wasn’t anything like what I was expecting. He didn’t drive a beater truck or pick his dusty jeans out of his bottom. He had a nice car, nice jeans, and a rock-solid, ghost-pepper-hot level ass.
I know what my parents will say. They will say that I should suck up my pride and accept help. It’s not every day a smoking hot, glorious god-man offers to fix up your place on your meager budget. If he still wants to, and he really wants the work for his portfolio, I guess I shouldn’t stop him, but I’m going to make sure I pay every cent I can, and I’ll help out as much as possible. I might be small and know nothing about home reno stuff, but I can clean, carry out garbage and debris, and wield a paintbrush. Plus, I can learn with the best of them. I might be small, but I have a mighty brain, and I’m going to put it to good use. I’ll research and learn. I’ll learn how to do things on a budget, how to find and salvage materials if I have to, how to do my own fixing, and how to wallpaper and re-do linoleum flooring. I can look for free furniture and call in favors with people I know who have a truck by offering to pay for their time and gas. I don’t have many good friends, but I have lots of people I know who I do like and who will do me a solid simply because we went to high school or college together.
I helped people out a lot in both of those places. Like, a lot. I was always book smart, and I respected that not everyone was, so when someone came to me for help or even for tutoring, I was always generous with my time because, honestly, I liked it.
I let out a little yelp when I notice a moving cloud of dust coming toward me. It doesn’t take me more than a second to recognize the sleek black sedan. So much for my plans to be presentable.
You probably imagined the whole thing anyway. He was more interested in the house. He just needs your permission to make the magic happen. You’ve never bothered looking pretty for a guy before. You’re also hopeless with makeup and even worse with clothes. Just get dressed, so he doesn’t see you in your pajamas, and for goodness sake, don’t bat your eyelashes or get moony eyes. Your imagination is always too potent. There’s no way in heck ghost peppers find regular peppers attractive or even slightly intriguing. Also, for goodness sake 2.0, don’t check out his fine granite tush.
My internal pep-talk, argument, and slightly mean monologue ends rather abruptly when I rush to step into my jeans, miss, and fall straight onto my face on the hardwood floor. I hear a car door slam in the yard as I yip and roll onto my back, hastily tugging on my jeans. I scramble for the dresser and yank out a black tank top. I get my pajama T-shirt off in record time and quickly throw the tank top on. Then, I grab an elastic and twist my hair into a high, messy bun.
