Rough and Ready (More Than A Cowboy #2) - Vanessa Vale Page 0,11
Reed was all street smarts, I was sure, and this girl would be considered a genius. She knew the game. By putting her forearms on the counter and leaning in, she flaunted her assets. It screamed I’m available. I was always impressed by women who used what they had to get what they wanted. I saw nothing wrong with it, even envied them a bit for the skill, but this time, it only made me mad.
I was standing right next to Reed—we’d even been talking—and she knew I was with him. I was even wearing his damn coat. She didn’t care. I had to wonder if their familiarity extended beyond pizza carry out. I shut that thought down because I didn’t really want to go there.
“Hey, Claire. Yeah, not too much pizza during training.” He patted his flat stomach. I wasn’t sure if he knew her by name because he’d gotten friendly with her for a reason I was trying not to think about or because he actually did eat a lot of pizza and was lying out his ass.
“I’ll be at your next fight.” She flashed him a bright smile then bit her lip.
I barely suppressed an eye roll.
“Yeah? That’s great,” he replied without any feeling.
“Think there are any openings for a ring girl?”
And there it was. She wanted something from him, and it wasn’t his brain. Nor his dick. Well, she probably wanted that, too, but she wanted his connections. She wanted a job as one of the women who, during a fight, walked around the outside of the ring carrying a sign with the round number on it. They wore minimal clothing, and her boobs would look perfect in the skimpy outfit.
She had no interest in him. It was fine to work connections to find a job, but she did it in the wrong way. Flirting with a guy to get a job only pissed me off since it only made her look stupid. Made it so a guy thought a woman could only get a job by flaunting her sexuality not her brains.
“Are the pizzas ready?”
He hadn’t answered her question, and the way her coy smile slipped, she’d noticed, too.
“Yeah, let me check.”
When she turned to grab the two boxes, bending down to retrieve them from a rack, her ass stuck straight out. It was a nice ass, damn her. Even running fifty miles or more a week, I didn’t have an ass like that. If I tossed a coin at it, it would definitely bounce right off.
Reed just sighed and looked away.
We were quiet on the walk back to our building. I was thinking about how he must have girls flinging themselves at him, some, like Claire, wanting him for their own gain. If there hadn’t been a counter separating them, I had no doubt she’d have jumped his bones if there was a chance he’d hook her up with that ring girl job. He didn’t seem all that interested, so maybe he had a girlfriend.
Of course, he did. He was gorgeous and a gentleman, no matter what he thought of himself.
I was a stuffy university professor who studied seven-hundred-year-old cathedrals and was afraid of elevators. I definitely didn’t have a ring girl’s body. I had boobs, but not the right cup size for the job or a guy like Reed.
4
REED
Harper had the sexy librarian thing down. Fuck.
I had no idea that prim shit worked for me. It was eight in the morning, and I was in the gym jumping rope, ten minutes into my stint based on the timer on the wall. She caught my eye through the windows to the parking lot. Yeah, she wore a knee length black coat and only an inch or two of her skirt’s hem showed beneath. Her hair was pulled back into a simple, sleek ponytail, and I saw a glint of diamond at her ears. She was gorgeous in that expensive, elegant way. She didn’t go flashy, no bedazzled shit. No tousled hair. She looked… effortless. It was her shoes that had me practically panting. Damn. She looked all prim and proper except for her four-inch heels.
Were all professors of medieval art this fucking hot? I had to wonder how many college boys filled her classes and had their dicks get hard just listening to her talk about stained glass windows and flying buttresses. Yeah, I’d looked that shit up online before I went to bed.