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He laughed. “And to add insult to injury, they can’t pronounce the ‘L’ sound, but if you ask Eli to name dinosaurs, he can say half of their names perfectly. At seven a.m., he told me he was a “vewociwaptor” with “fedders” on his arms. I don’t even know what a velociraptor is.”
I paused, hands on a box, and gazed over at him. “It’s a dinosaur,” I said slowly.
He stared back at me flatly. “Shut up. I thought it was a breed of dog.”
I tried to glare at him, but there was a playful glint in his eye that made it impossible not to grin. “Has anyone ever told you you’re pretty sarcastic?”
“It’s how I weed out the idiots from the people worth talking to.” He winked and picked up a pink bike. “The idiots don’t get sarcasm.”
“Huh. That explains why I barely have friends. Most of the people in this town are idiots. Now, I feel better.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Oh no, they really are idiots.”
“Not that part,” he said through gentle laughter. “The part about you not having friends.”
I shuddered. “I spend all my working hours dealing with people. I do not want to have to do that after work, too.”
That gentle laughter got louder. “Then, I’m honored you’re here and talking to me when you shouldn’t be.”
I mock-curtseyed. “As you should be.”
He heaved a large box full of clinking things up and set it on top of another one. He looked over at me, a half-smile creeping onto his face, and shook his head. “How long until that furniture arrives?”
I opened my mouth to answer, only to be interrupted by the sound of something large pulling up outside. “I’m gonna go with right now.”
“Shit,” he muttered, looking at the garage.
***
“You the angry lady who called and demanded we not deliver this today?”
I glared at the delivery driver and held out my hand for a pen.
His eyes widened, and he extracted a pen from his chest pocket, clicked it, and handed it to me.
I scrawled my signature on the bottom of the paper on the clipboard to confirm I’d received the delivery.
“Wasn’t it obvious when she insisted upon checking inside all the boxes to make sure everything was there before she’d do that?” Brantley nodded to the clipboard as I passed it back.
The delivery guy made eye contact with him and gave a quick raise of his eyebrows as if to say, “Yeah, it should have been.”
I shot Brantley a hard look before clicking the delivery guy’s pen and passing it back. “Then your company should pay attention to its customers. I booked the delivery for a certain day, and that’s when I expected it. Not a damn week early.”
Delivery guy shrugged. “Sorry, Miss. I deliver what they give me. Take it up with the manager.”
“I tried. Hence your delivery note.”
Brantley pushed off the side of the garage door where he’d been leaning as I checked all the boxes. “Thank you,” he said to the driver, taking hold of my shoulders and steering me back inside the garage the way he had done with Ellie when I’d arrived an hour earlier.
He jabbed the button to shut the garage door.
“Why are you shutting the door?” I asked, doing my best to ignore the way his fingertips sent tingles across my bare shoulders.
“So, you don’t terrorize the delivery guy anymore.”
“I wasn’t terrorizing him,” I insisted. “I was simply informing him of all the things he does wrong.”
“We can agree to disagree.” He released me and stretched his arms over his head. “Let’s get this furniture stacked against the wall we somehow managed to clear, then you can get on with your weekend.”
I leaned against the wall, folding my arms across my chest with a smirk.
Brantley looked around, then stilled, sighing. “The furniture is outside on the drive, isn’t it?”
My smirk got a little larger. “Yup.”
“Shit.”
Chapter Nine
I’d made a terrible mistake.
Sure, Declan was handsome. He had that dark, brooding look that was the reason so many people were attracted to Ian Somerhalder. He was definitely the kind of guy you’d look at four times in the grocery store and proceed to leave with a tingly clitoris and a hankering for a little time to yourself and Tumblr.
Also, he was perfectly nice. Thirty-two years old, had a great job in accounting, visited his mom once a week, loved to vacation in the mountains, and liked Harry Potter.
Yep, he was perfect.
So, why had I made a terrible mistake?
Simple. He was too perfect. Perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect laugh—even his nose was perfect. Not a freckle or a mole or a blackhead in sight.
And with perfect guys came perfect problems. There had to be something buried deep down inside him, waiting to bubble up.
I watched him as he talked.
I wasn’t listening.
I was thinking about the way Brantley caught me when I tripped earlier.
