text from someone, and my brother needed me to do right by him, which undoubtedly would not be right by me.
I did not have the time, or the inclination (that last was a bit of a lie) to be charmed by, become besotted with and put the effort into taming a brokenhearted manwhore who was so pretty, my heart wept just watching him laugh.
But in the end, that heart would just be broken.
Because he’d break it.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“You might have wanted to leave some of the stock of Urban Outfitters for the other nostalgics,” he answered on a grin.
Did he…
Actually…
Say that?
“Some of it’s from Anthropologie,” I sniffed.
He busted out laughing again.
“And some of it is vintage,” I snapped over his hilarity.
Now, he looked like he was fighting bending double with his amusement.
“What do you drive?” I queried.
“F-250,” he answered, still chucking.
“Sorry?”
“Ford F-250. A truck. A big one. And no, it’s not diesel and it absolutely does not plug into anything.”
I felt my lips thin.
He grinned again.
“I see we’re gonna discuss global warming over dinner,” he noted.
“There’s nothing to discuss. The globe is warming. Thus, we all should take some responsibility for turning that around. End of topic,” I retorted.
He was still grinning when he said, “Chill, Evan. I’m teasing you. Your pad is tight. I like it. And cross my heart,” and he did just this with a very long, well-shaped forefinger, “I put all my leftovers in those reusable ziplocks Mac bought all the guys, and as often as I can, I refuse a straw.”
“The end of the world as we know it isn’t funny,” I informed him.
“I’m not kidding.”
I studied his face in an attempt to ascertain if that was a lie.
He was apparently being honest.
Or he was a good liar.
He smiled at me again and said softly, “Your jewelry.”
“Right,” I muttered, turned and walked back to my bedroom.
My mind ran amok (mostly with thoughts about how soft his hair might be, then trying to stop thoughts of how soft his hair might be) as I put my little gold ball studs in my ears and one midi-ring on my left forefinger that had a line of tiny emeralds across the front.
This completed my outfit of army-green crop pants, gray scoop-necked, relax-fit tee (which I’d also given the French tuck), and the sand-colored blazer I was going to don when I got back to the kitchen.
I walked out and I did so carefully because Mag was still standing in my living room, he was watching me, and I was known to be a klutz and I did not want to date this guy, but I also did not want to make a fool of myself in front of him.
I went to the kitchen to shove my phone and lip gloss in my little bag and put on my blazer.
As my kitchen had a huge opening to the living room over a counter delineated by a column at one end, Mag asked through it, “Did you put on your jewelry?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause then, “Did good, babe. As gorgeous as you are, you don’t need much.”
My fingers stilled.
I wanted to be offended he’d called me “babe” and thought I needed his approval of my accessorizing.
All I could hear was the word “gorgeous.”
And this was the charm I needed to guard against.
The problem with that was it felt too nice aimed my way.
I didn’t know what to do, or say, so I looked down to my bag, fumbled my lip gloss, it fell off the counter, I bent to retrieve it…
And then, typical, within minutes of meeting him, I gave him a massive dose of the real Evan Gardiner.
This being, I slammed my forehead into the edge of the counter.
And that hurt.
A lot.
“Shit. Evan,” Mag called.
But I did not reply because I was in the midst of overcompensating the recovery. Staggering back, I slammed into the counter behind me, the edge of it digging painfully into the small of my back, and between the crack on my head making me dizzy and the sting in my back, I went down, flat on my ass.
Fabulous.
Mag was there in what seemed like half a second, crouching beside me, his long, strapping thighs splayed wide, his trousers molded to the curves and dips of his clearly muscular knees, his hand coming toward me.
I started to rear away from it, and he murmured, “Whoa,” and again moved fast so I banged the back of my head into his palm, which cracked against the