Big Dick Energy - Cindi Madsen Page 0,5
much girly shit I was in danger of losing my Y chromosome in all the pink. “While your friends seem fun, I’m more interested in you.”
The woman rolled her ultra-blue eyes. “Do those types of lines usually work for you?”
“Yes,” I said, one hundred percent genuine, too. Rusty or not, I’d never bombed this hard.
“Typical.” She shook her head. “Minimal effort and you expect maximum results. Well, you picked the wrong girl tonight, buddy.”
That was becoming glaringly obvious.
A gruff voice filtered through my brain, one that I hadn’t heard in a while. Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. Dad loved Vince Lombardi and took his football quotes as parenting advice, both on and off the field. I’d always been competitive to a fault, but it was who I was and how I’d gotten to where I was. It irked me to lose, and even now my skin stretched too tight.
Not so much from the woman’s rejection, but because I’d read the situation so wrong. Half of winning was being strategic about shooting your shot.
The bartender returned with her drink. I was no stranger to the gym—like I said, athlete through and through—but I couldn’t compete with Mr. Roids. Luckily, she seemed as uninterested in him as she did in me.
Wait. That last part wasn’t lucky, and how many drinks had I downed between talking to the manager and giving up on my buddy’s arrival? We hadn’t seen one another in a handful of years and had planned to meet up after signing some paperwork and discussing the upcoming project with my new boss. But after some blow up with his fiancée, my buddy texted to say he’d be unable to make it, and that was a good reminder of why it didn’t matter if Blondie wanted to leave alone. I already had two needy females to attend to this month—make that three counting the yappy Yorkie that ruled the roost.
“Well, if you’re sure you don’t want to take a load off…” I tilted my head toward the stool at her side.
She eyed the worn vinyl, inspecting it as if it might be made of spiders. So that was a no. With that over and done, I shrugged a shoulder and tipped back my drink. “Fair enough. Can’t blame me for trying. That way I could pull out my flashy-thingy, make you forget everything I’ve said, and start over.”
Okay, the rambling also meant I should zip my lip, cut myself off, and call it a night.
I did a double take when no snarky comment came from the woman at my side, and fuck me, one corner of her mouth was lifted in… an almost smile? She brought her thumbnail to her mouth and bit at it, and just like that, I was sucked into her orbit all over again. “Is this the part where you admit you’re used to tracking down aliens, so you’ve forgotten how to talk to women?”
I threw my hand to my chest as if she’d wounded me. To be honest, my ego was twitching like a squashed bug, one last leg kicking in case it did any good. “More like I thought you might be an alien.”
A startled sounding hah burst out of her, and with the other half of her mouth getting in on the smile, I almost gave up all pretenses of pride to fish for another line to lure her in. Not that it’d work with someone so hellbent on sass. “FYI, if I see a grumpy dude in a black suit, I’m telling him you’re abusing your flashy thingy.”
I doubted responding that I’d like her to abuse my flashy thingy would earn me any points, although it might be fun to see those big eyes ignite again. Maybe I did have a bit of a hard on for unpredictable women after all.
“Goodbye, Archer. Perhaps you’ll have more luck with the next woman who comes along. If I wasn’t so jaded…” She shook her head, as if she regretted adding that last part, and then she scooped up her drink and practically sprinted to her table.
Was that an opening?
I sure as hell wanted to take it as one. Women who ignited that zing of a challenge with witty retorts didn’t come along every day. Not to mention I was going to be in San Diego for at least a month, and Blondie would be a great way to kill some time.
Considering the long list of tasks Mom had left me to deal with