Dear Roomie (Rookie Rebels #5) - Kate Meader Page 0,1

we’re often drawn to an opposite. Yin and yang, metal to magnet.

She pushed a few stray tresses back, tucking it beneath the ball cap all the staff here wore. Her features were set in granite, yet she seemed to become more grim and annoyed on seeing him. As if he was the source of her problems.

Each time he came in here, his gaze was drawn to her. A couple of times, he had thought about talking to her.

He had wanted to talk to her.

Which was strange because he never wanted to talk to anyone.

Of course, that wanting had made him suspicious, because if he had the desire to do something that would have no immediate benefit for him, if the act of talking with an interesting-looking woman was so appealing, then it was imperative that he shut it down. If it didn’t help his game, he didn’t want to know.

He wasn’t one for feelings or instincts, but he had the strangest sense about this woman. The pull he felt toward her made him want to step outside his zone.

So last week, he had dipped a toe into treacherous waters. He talked to her …

… about his drink (their common ground)

… which he assumed she made wrong (she had recited the drink name differently)

… only she hadn’t (but she found it amusing that he would think so)

… and that was the sum of that.

Sometimes he stayed on his phone so he wouldn’t have to make small talk with retail employees. Better rude than awkward. In this moment, he had a feeling it would only make Coffee Shop Girl’s day worse and something lurched in his chest at the thought.

“I have to go,” he murmured to his brother.

“Okay, I’ll text—” Reid had already hung up.

“Hi, can I interest you in a pumpkin spice latte today?”

This pumpkin spice shit. They were likely obliged to offer this nonsense to everyone regardless, all part of the great American upsell. She should really start with an apology for the length of time she had left him waiting.

“No, I would like an—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Extra shot Americano, right?”

An abrupt response, but she was having a bad day. He knew what that was like. Sometimes he took it out on people at his place of work.

“Yes, that’s it.”

She nodded tersely and rang it up. He paid with a credit card tap and watched as she headed to the sink to wash her hands.

He usually dropped money into the tip jar and today was no exception. He didn’t have a five, so he left a twenty and pushed the tip box back to the edge of the counter because he didn’t trust the next customer not to help himself. The world was filled with greedy assholes.

Coffee Shop Girl dried her hands and stepped up to the bar to make his drink. She kept her head down, the bill of her cap covering her eyes.

No matter. Reid knew their color.

A silver-gray, a mercurial shade that reflected the chrome of the bar and usually made her eyes dance. She told stories with those eyes.

Each time he came in here, she was usually laughing at something, maybe a co-worker or the chatter of a customer. Her eyes would light like silver suns, the eyes of a woman who enjoyed life. But with him, the amusement usually faded—or it was replaced by something else.

Something cooler.

She didn’t like him.

He was used to men not liking him, usually because he made sure to strike first, to establish dominance. Setting a tone with his rivals and opponents on the ice was imperative, even with his teammates so they were assured he was here to play. That he meant business. But with women, he usually encountered a different response. Women enjoyed his surliness. He didn’t go out of his way to hone that aspect of his personality. It just happened that way, and the results usually benefited him in the bedroom.

But this woman was different. Today, she was in a bad mood, not even faking her effort, which was fine. He didn’t care for that phony “customer is always right” business.

He stepped in a little closer, drawn to her forbidding body language, wishing he could do something to alleviate it. With her shoulders tense, she kept her head down, focusing on her task. He remembered the feeling that accompanied that look. Those emotions weren’t easily forgotten.

“Is everything all right?”

Her head snapped back, her shock so sharp that she knocked the cup in her hand sideways. The