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Breathe through the pain. It was just a little bump.
“Shoot. I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you all right?”
“Who me? Oh yeah, I’m fine. You look nice this morning. Is that a new shirt?”
He sent her a look like she wasn’t fooling him.
Darn it. Normally, her acting skills were far better.
“Did you bang your knee?”
“Just a little bit.” She held her finger and thumb apart an inch.
“I’ll get you ice. Is it bruised? Do you need a doctor?”
She gaped up at him. Whoa. Way to overreact.
“Uh, no. I just banged it. It’s fine.”
He eyed her like he didn’t believe her.
“Would you like a coffee? Let me get you a coffee.” She wanted to get up, but he’d crouched right in front of her. So if she moved, she was going to brush up against him.
And she was pretty certain that Grady didn’t like to be touched. That was the vibe she got from him after working here for seven weeks now.
Which was totally cool, of course.
She was soo cool with that. Like an ice cube.
Yep, she could live in Antarctica, she was just that damn cool.
Also, she was an idiot.
Because what she really wanted was for him to touch her. And part of her couldn’t help but be upset that she wasn’t likely to get that.
Still, maybe she could squeeze past him. So she started to stand.
“Freeze,” he commanded.
She froze.
“Whoa, you could be in the army or something,” she told him.
“What?”
“Maybe a marine. You bark, ‘drop and give me twenty,’ and everyone in earshot would do that. Although I never saw the point of dropping and giving twenty, you know?”
Sometimes, when she got nervous, she spoke too much.
“You okay, Effie?” he asked in a surprisingly gentle voice.
“I keep embarrassing myself around you. And Steele. It’s just . . .”
“Are you scared of us? I know we’re intimidating, but we won’t hurt you.”
Oh, she knew they wouldn’t hurt her physically. But if she let herself start to think about having them in her life . . . fantasizing about what that would be like . . . then things were going to hurt.
Because she guessed men like the two of them didn’t stay single for long. She wondered what it would be like to have them both? Chardonnay had told her they liked to share, but she guessed that was just for sex.
