But this man, Ty Walker, was something else.
I did not think he was the dregs of the dregs. Or even the dregs.
I just had no idea what he was except downright terrifying.
I made an almost full circle as he cleared my door and walked a half a step in, pinning me between him and the car and I had to tilt my head way, way, way back to look up at him.
It was not an optical illusion, a trick of the heat waves. He was tall and he was huge.
And also, his eyelashes were long and curly.
Extraordinary.
I’d never seen eyes that shape, lashes that thick and curly. I’d never seen any single feature on any living thing as beautiful as his eyes.
He stared down at me with his beautiful but blank eyes and my only thought was that he surely could lift one of his big fists and pound me straight through the asphalt with one blow to the top of my head.
“Uh… hey,” I pushed out between my lips, “I’m Lexie.”
He stared down at me and said not a word.
I swallowed.
Then I said, “Shift wants a call the minute you’re out. I, uh…”
I stopped speaking because he leaned into me with an arm out and I couldn’t stop myself from pressing my back into the car. But he just pulled my cell from my hand, straightened as he flipped it open, his gorgeous eyes staring at it as his thumb moved on the keypad. Then he put it to his ear.
Two seconds later, he said in a deep voice that I felt reverberating in my chest even though he was three feet away, “I’m out.”
Then he flipped the phone closed and tossed it to me.
Automatically, my hands came up and I bobbled it but luckily caught it before it fell to the asphalt at our feet.
“Keys,” he rumbled and I blinked.
“What?”
His big hand came up between us, palm to the sky and I looked down at it to see his black tats and the veins sticking out on his superhumanly muscled forearm.
“Keys,” he repeated.
My eyes went back to his beautiful ones.
“But… it’s my car.”
“Keys,” he said again, same rumble, same tone, no impatience, no nothing and I got the sense he’d stand there all day fencing me in and repeating that word until I complied.
I swallowed.
Hmm.
I was thinking I didn’t want to spend the whole day in the hot sun having a conversation with a mountain of a man where his only contribution was one, one syllable word.
“They’re in the ignition.”
“Passenger seat,” he replied and I wondered if he knew any verbs.
I didn’t think it wise to ask this question. I nodded and noticed he didn’t move. There was a slip of space on either side of him between door and car but only a small slip. He didn’t intend to get out of my way.