Pride and Papercuts (The Austens #5) - Staci Hart Page 0,25

coffee, annoyed that it was still too hot to drink.

With a clink and a sigh, I set it back on its saucer. Wasted Words was bustling with people that morning, but like my overly hot coffee, the crowd annoyed me. The noise annoyed me. The stupid sunshine and the dumb, happy faces annoyed me.

But mostly, men annoyed me.

Darcy and his arrogant, judgmental face. Wyatt and his lying smile. Jett was okay, I supposed, though my other brothers made it their personal mission to badger me and thus could be included by default. Even Greg had gotten the hairy eyeball from me for making my coffee too hot.

Stupid jerks.

I opened my laptop, looking for a distraction, too irritated to even read my book, which irritated me more. But in my inbox was an email from Liam “The Dick” Darcy with a last-minute meeting. Tomorrow. And I had to be there.

With a huff, I slammed my computer shut.

For a brief, blissful moment, I imagined what it would be like to walk away from the project. I daydreamed of a life without Darcy and his know-it-all attitude, his general lack of empathy. His certainty that he was the only person in the entire world with a good idea and the hearing defect he had when it came to listening. What a wonderful world it would be if I could walk away from him forever, forget he ever existed. But then there would be no one to speak for Wasted Words in their meetings, and someone very clearly needed to be there to intervene, lest Darcy make any more moves in the wrong direction.

Typical alpha-jerk stuff. I felt sorry for any girl who would end up with a man unable to do something so simple as to listen and compromise.

There had to be some redeeming quality about him. Georgie was so absolutely lovely that were he truly horrible, she’d never put up with him. I had to admit that for a moment when we were dancing, I’d understood. Beneath that hard, cold shell was a charming and clever man. A man who’d made me laugh, who held me in his arms and spun me around the dance floor with the confident stride of an expert. I could still feel the heat of his body, the strength of his arms, the rumbling of his voice in his chest. I could still imagine the whisper of his elusive smile, one I had only seen in full bloom when he was with his sister.

But that man was a stranger to me, if he was real at all. Maybe I’d only imagined him, fabricated the moment out of denial that anyone could be so merciless as Liam Darcy.

“Bad day?” came a voice from my elbow, a voice that inspired such a deep urge to cringe, I barely caught it in time.

“Hi, Collin.” I tried not to sound bored. I really did.

Not that he noticed. Or had any personal boundaries, nor did he possess the ability to see when someone wanted to be left alone. He hopped up on the stool next to me—actually hopped—flagging Greg for a coffee.

“What are you working on?” He reached in front of me to try to open my laptop, and I intercepted, closing it with force.

“Oh, you know, this and that.” I slid it off the bar and into my bag. “Aren’t you working?” I asked in the hopes he’d leave.

“On my break. I thought I’d come sit next to you.” His brows waggled in a way that I’d think was funny, except that he was serious.

Collin was one of the comic department managers, and from the second he’d started a few months ago, he’d been a constant, harmless buzzing, following me around like a fly that couldn’t stop kamikaze-bombing you in the face or getting itself stuck in your hair.

Harmless. But annoying nonetheless.

The quintessential comic geek, Collin was about my height, weighed less than me, and hadn’t had his hair cut in probably six months.

And here I thought I’d paid my karmic dues on men by enduring my brothers.

When it rains, it pours, I guess.

“I looked for you at the party last night—I wanted to dance, especially with you in that dress.” He whistled. “But every time I saw you, you were with that guy. The angry one. I wanted to save you from him, but”—he shrugged—“I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

I had on the most fake smile in history, but I was just too irritated to even attempt to adjust it.