hand inside, feeling around for the two cords I have knotted up individually. As I pull one out and zip the bag back up, I reach my closed hand out to him.
“You tied your charger into a bow?” he asks.
“No sense in wasting time untangling it,” I say, matter-of-factly.
“That’s just adorable,” he says, smirking a bit.
For some reason, him calling my charger adorable makes my cheeks heat up, and he wasn’t even talking about me, just this stupid white cord in my hands. Sasha, relax. This man is not even close to being my type, so the word adorable should not have any effect on me…but for some reason, it kinda does.
I reach toward him a little more so he takes the charger and he releases his grip from the wall, stretching his arm out toward me. I drop the cord into his hand, noticing how small my hand looks against his. He’s quick to clasp his fingers closed over the cord, nipping at my fingertips before I can move my hand away fast enough, and I feel my heart do a little—leap? “So then, that date you asked me on…shall we meet at Chet’s in Stanley Park for lunch tomorrow?”
He’s serious? A date? No way. “I can’t go on a date with you, Mr. Jags.” Never. I just escaped life with a psychopath. I am in no position to find myself alone with a man like this—a tattooed, bearded, loud-mouth, and most likely, womanizing sailor.
“Okay, so meet me for some grub,” he says without skipping a beat. His question is serious, and I’m assuming he’s seeking a serious answer. “We have mutual friends. We might as well be friends too, right?”
“It’s not a date?” I question.
“Just grub,” he replies in the same stern manner. “And, so I can return your phone charger.”
I let the thoughts sway around in my head for a minute. I shouldn’t think this man who served our country could be harmful or someone I should be worried about being near, although I do hear those loose cannon stories sometimes too. But, I just told myself “never” and that should be that. I shouldn’t trust anyone. That’s what Cali is diligently planting in my head, anyway. Though, Jags is Tango’s best friend, so I don’t think either of them would tell me to use caution around him. They wouldn’t have had him stay in this house with their five-year-old daughter, who seriously knows how to sleep through a friggin’ earthquake with the racket Cali and Tango make here. Poor little thing.
“Is it really that much to think about, doll-face?”
“Yes,” I retort, folding my arms over my chest. Over my braless chest. Oh, dear God, how did I forget that as I was swinging my arms all over the place?
“Okay, well if you’d like your charger back, I’ll leave it up to you. I’ll be at Chet’s tomorrow at noon. If I see you, I see you. If not, we do have our mutual best friends, so you never know when we might run into each other again,” he says with a smirk.
“Didn’t you just tell me you’d probably never see me again?” I ask with confusion. He just grins in return. Just grins, that’s it. He doesn’t need to say any more, and he knows it. “See, you do lie!”
He takes my words with him and reaches for the bedroom doorknob to leave. As he opens the door a little wider than it was already open, his other hand tosses something into my face. My bra. My bra that was hanging off the back side of the door knob. No! “That’s adorable too,” he says from the hall.
He is infuriating. He’s kind of hot too, but more infuriating than hot. And he lies. That is definitely not hot. I should not be thinking about him like that at all. Listening to Cali and Tango constantly getting busy must be clouding my judgment. I need to just iron my shirt, ignore the love-humping happening next door, and get to work—a place I have called out sick from for an entire week. I might not even have a job when I get there. It’ll be just another fun issue to add to my life right now.
This is what my life has come to. I fall in love with a man who wants to destroy my life and who takes me out to a friggin’ field to have his way with me, then I find myself in the presence