Very Twisted Things (Briarwood Academy #3) - Ilsa Madden-Mills Page 0,9

you must know. He’s got nice pecs, too, not that you care to hear it. Anyway, I’ve never seen a girl at his house—but this morning there was a white car parked in his drive with Mila on the front tag. I’m guessing this means he has a girlfriend—not that I’m interested.”

“Uh-huh. You thinking of opening a detective agency?” He might have been laughing at me.

I crossed my arms and fake glared at him. He grinned.

“Forget the car thing. Did you get a name? An occupation? Is he dating some chick who wears pink and looks a lot like Charlotte from Sex in the City?” I bit my lips to stop the madness.

He guffawed, looking pleased. “You have a crush,” he teased.

I felt my face redden. Did I? It had been a long time since I’d been genuinely interested in the opposite sex. Not since Geoff.

“Why don’t you bake them some cookies? See what happens,” he said.

“I can’t cook. All I have are Oreos.”

“Then just show up. Smile. Make some new friends, V. I worry about you being alone all the time.”

He was the only one who knew the truth of who I was. In fact, he’d met and worked with my parents on a charity benefit for the Metropolitan Museum in New York several years ago. Somehow out of all the people in LA, I’d ended up being friends with someone who’d had contact with my parents. Here’s the thing, it had felt like fate, and perhaps that was why I was easy with him. Hanging on to the shreds of my past.

Wilson made a funny noise in his throat almost like a choke. His brow shot up and his eyes darted back and forth between me to something behind me. I stifled a grin, figuring it was Mrs. Milano, his fiftyish, widowed neighbor who wore her bathing suit most of the time. She must be watering her lawn again in her sparkly gold bikini. This was LA.

I sighed. “Anyway, back to the neighbor. He’s probably a total wiener. At the very least he’s a Peeping Tom—” I stopped as Wilson shook his head emphatically, eyes flaring.

I froze, except for the leg tapping. “Shit. Tell me he isn’t standing behind me,” I hissed.

Wilson gave me an apologetic smirk. “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

Dammit.

I turned.

Him.

My breath snagged in my throat. My ovaries exploded.

With impossibly broad shoulders and a jawline that could cut glass, Blond Guy grinned, his otherworldly ice-blue eyes raking over me, lingering on my pink running top. My body sizzled in awareness and my hand shot to my chest, trying to hush my heartbeat.

My telescope hadn’t prepared me for the vision he made, tall with skin so sun-kissed beautiful I needed sunglasses just to peer at him.

And his sexy lips. They were way too sensual looking for a white boy.

He stood there, his stance wide and arms crossed, those big biceps mocking me with their tattoos of skulls, music notes and even a Superman emblem. I sucked in a shaky breath. Whoever this man-candy was, he belonged in the limelight where people could gaze at him adoringly.

He was trouble with a capital T and hott with two t’s.

He was everything I didn’t need.

We stared at each other, everything else fading into the background. Seconds ticked by, maybe an entire minute, but I couldn’t let him go, taking in the way he stood there, so effortlessly, so nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t seen me play half-naked.

Wilson cleared his throat, and we both startled.

Blond Guy stepped past me and handed Wilson a letter, his arm brushing against mine, and I hissed at the contact, tingles rushing up my spine.

He stopped momentarily at my intake and tossed me a questioning glance before he turned his gaze to Wilson. “Good morning, Mr. Wilson. This accidentally got put in our mailbox yesterday, sir. Thought I’d return it.”

I stood there tapping as he and Wilson chatted. I confess I have no idea what they spoke of. It could have been as mundane as the humidity; it could have been as titillating as military secrets.

He abruptly turned back to me as if to speak, and the toe of his shoe got tangled up on the curb. He lost his balance, and I watched in fascinated horror as his body lunged toward the concrete, but at the last minute, he caught himself on the gate that led up Wilson’s drive. Not as smooth as I’d thought. A weird laughter burst out of me, and I tried