Then his eyes fell back on the cat. His scarred, chipped-toothed cat. “Wayne.”
Lea’s head tilted, and a soft lock of hair brushed his bicep. “Wayne?”
He nodded. “Yeah, after the hockey player Wayne Gretzky. The cat’s kind of . . .” He almost said
scarred
but he remembered Lea’s limp, and he stopped short. “He seems tough. You can take one look at him and see he’s won his fair share of fights.”
Lea pursed those lips, the ones he’d stared at many times, all lush and full with a cupid’s bow. Her eyes searched his and he didn’t know what she was looking for.
Then she hummed in the back of her throat and her hand fluttered at her left thigh. “Guess so,” she said quietly. Then she turned and peered at him from over her shoulder as she left his bedroom. “I’ll leave you two alone, since you have some ‘getting to know you’ to do.”
Then, with a quick smile, she was gone.
Max turned to Wayne, whose eyes shifted from the door back to Max. “What you think of her, buddy?”
Wayne licked his lips, and Max laughed. “Yeah, me too.”
L
EA BALLED HER
fist and kneaded her left quad to ease the soreness out of the overtaxed muscle. Normally she worked behind the desk of the library, where she sat in a comfy chair, but like a dummy she’d volunteered to reshelve these book returns because Nick—who’d just gotten a job at the library with her—wasn’t feeling well. So he sat behind the desk, coughing and infecting everyone with the plague.
She waved to him and he began to wave before he went into a coughing fit.
So maybe he would have been better off in her place.
“Hey Lea,” said a voice, followed by a crunch of teeth sinking into an apple. She turned her head and looked into the bright green eyes of her roommate, Danica Owens.
Bright green, as in almost neon. “New contacts?”
Danica fluttered her eyes. “Yep. Like ’em?”
Lea shrugged. “I like your natural eye color.”
Today—because Danica’s look changed every day—she had a grunge thing going on. Black jeans, motorcycle boots, ripped Guns ’N’ Roses T-shirt under a studded leather jacket.
“Rock on,” Danica said, sticking her tongue out and making the devil horn gesture with her hands.
Lea snorted and went back to shelving books. “How’s Monica?”
Danica toed a tear in the library carpeting with her boot, her gesture unusual. Uncertainty wasn’t a look she normally wore. “Okay,” she answered, that one word saying more than she probably meant it to about her on-again, off-again girlfriend.
Lea stopped what she was doing and turned to Danica. “What’s going on?”
Danica shrugged, the leather of her jacket squeaking where she leaned against a shelf.
“Dan—”
An irritated sigh. “She wants me to go home with her over Thanksgiving break.”
“Okay . . .”
The neon eyes narrowed as they honed in on Lea. “She wants me to meet her parents.”
Lea opened her mouth and then closed it again. She needed to think before she spoke again, because even though Danica munched her apple like she like she was carefree, her eyes hadn’t left Lea’s, clearly gauging her reaction.
Danica was a rare creature. Like an albino deer. Everyone wanted her, but they wanted her to keep. And she didn’t like to be kept. Pinned down. Forced into any sort of consistency.
Her loyalty was unrivaled, but it was hard-earned. Lea still didn’t know how she’d managed to become part of Danica’s inner circle. Which really only consisted of her and Alec.
Lea licked her lips, and even though she knew the answer, she asked anyway. “And how do you feel about that?”
Danica’s black-manicured hand reached up and pushed Lea’s bangs out of her eyes. “Why do I have to do meet them? Why can’t she and I just be together without all . . .” Her hand fluttered as she pulled it away. “ . . . without everyone else.”
Lea took a deep breath. “That’s not really fair to her, Dan. You can’t live your lives in a vacuum.”
“But—”
“You care about her.”
Danica snapped her jaw shut and didn’t deny it.
“She cares about you and if introducing you to her parents is important to her, you need to recognize that, you know?”
Lea liked Monica. And she understood her desire for Danica to meet her parents. Lea hadn’t ever really dated seriously, never cared enough about a boy to want to meet his parents. But she got that it was a big step, the need to introduce your family to the important person in your life.
Danica focused again on that rip in the carpet.
“You’ll think about it?” Lea asked.
She raised her head, a smile tugging at her lips. “Yeah. Yeah, I will.”
A booming laugh caught Lea’s attention. She turned her head toward the sound. Max Payton’s deep voice blasted through the silence of the library as he talked to Cam Ruiz. Students sitting at nearby tables stared at the disruption.
She’d volunteered in libraries since high school, so a loud voice in a quiet room full of books made her react like Pavlov’s dog. So without conscious thought, Lea raised her index finger to her pursed lips. “Shhhhh!”
Max jerked his head up and froze, those chocolate eyes zeroing right in on her finger at her lips. She dropped her hand and gripped her thigh.
And then he strode toward her, all long legs and wide shoulders and big hands. He wore a pair of worn jeans that hung just right on his hips and she clenched her jaw for even noticing. He was a jerk. A jerk with a nice butt and a rip in his jeans that strategically showed an inch of muscular thigh. She hated how the sight of him heated her skin. How his voice rumbled down to her bones.
The asshole.
He stopped a foot away and cocked his head. “Did you just shush me?”
Crap, she did, didn’t she? She shushed him.
“Your voice has a high decibel level.” That was the first brilliant thing that came to mind. She should have said,
I carried a watermelon
.
“Decibel level?” He raised an eyebrow, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
And it irritated her.
“This is a library. Students are studying so would it behoove you to keep your voice down?”
“Behoove?”
“Do you only speak in questions?”
“Do you only speak in SAT words?”
They went into a stare down. Lea glared as Max furrowed his brow. Out of the corner of her eye, Lea saw Danica’s gaze ping-pong between the two of them.
Max took a step forward, resting a hand on the shelf beside her head and leaned forward, smelling infuriatingly good, like soap and man. She resisted breathing him in a like a lunatic and instead placed her hands on his chest to push him back. Except her hands met firm pecs and then she wasn’t pushing at all. Instead her fingers curled into the muscle, and she relished the strength under her palms, surrounding her.
She raised her eyes and met his: long lashes surrounding liquid brown. Screw him and his attractiveness. She stiffened and dug her nails through his T-shirt as he grunted but didn’t step away. “Back up, Max.”
Why did he have to be so hot? With those eyes and long lashes and chin dimple? For God’s sake.
“I don’t know if I should,” he said. “Need saving from anything today? I can get my broom.”
If only he knew just how little Lea needed saving. From anything. “Maybe some other girls are impressed by the size of your . . . broom . . . but I’m not.”
He threw back his head and laughed, then clutched her hand where it pressed against his chest. “Oh doll, you wish you could get a shot at checking out my . . .” he leaned close, his minty breath a promise on his lips “ . . . broom.”
She opened her mouth but before she could say anything, Nick went into another coughing fit at the front desk.
Max’s head snapped up, and he looked in Nick’s direction. Then he jolted away from her as if she were on fire, palms out. His eyes now icy cold to douse the flames.
His whole body radiated tension and discomfort. He ran his tongue over his top teeth, a gesture she’d seen him use before when he was uncertain. His one tell. Then he jerked his head in Nick’s direction. “Never mind, you have Nick, huh?”
She blinked at the rapidity of his mood change. She should correct Max, tell him Nick was her cousin, the closest thing to her brother she had. She knew Max had a history with unavailable women. She knew what he’d done to Alec, almost wrecking a decade-long friendship. If he had learned anything from sleeping with his best friend’s girlfriend, it would be to treat non-single women like the plague.
And the way Max was looking at her, she was infected.
Nick as her imaginary boyfriend was her shield. He kept Max at a distance and was her excuse for keeping Max there. She’d seen Max flirt, flashing his smile at girls and pouring on the charm until they were putty in his hands. But not with her. Oh no. He talked to her with a sneering curl to his lip. Well, screw him. She wasn’t interested anyway.
But in the back of her mind, part of her wanted that challenge. She wanted to see what happened to Max Payton once all that charm had drained to zero and the real Max emerged. She’d caught a glimpse the other day when she saw him crouched outside of his townhouse, coaxing the battered cat to eat.
Max shook his head, and the cocky mask returned. He eyed Danica’s shirt. “Hey Axel.”
Danica ran her tongue over her teeth. “Hey Roid Rage.”
Max smirked as he walked backward and raised his fist beside his head in a bicep curl. Then he laughed and turned around.
So Lea got a nice view of his tight butt in those jeans.
Jerk.
She stared holes in his back until Danica stepped into her line of sight.
“Well, well, well,” she drawled.
Lea tugged on the ends of her hair. “I know, he’s such a jerk, right?” She smoothed her shirt and then brushed her fingertips over her warmed cheeks. “I mean, he can’t just say, ‘Oh, sorry for being a loud jerkoff while people are trying to study.’ Noooo, of course he can’t. He has to get all macho and up in my business with his big hands and minty breath and muscles. And what is up with those jeans? They are, like, molded to his body and stuff. I would be doing a public service buying him a new pair. Ugh!” She dropped her hands to her sides in a huff and stared at Danica.
Who wasn’t rolling her eyes about the big jerk. Who wasn’t commiserating. Nope. Danica was smirking.
“What’s that look for?” Lea demanded.
Danica’s smile grew until she curled her tongue along her front teeth. “I’ve never seen you this worked up.”
Lea narrowed her eyes. “I’m not worked up.”
“Uh, yeah you are.”
“No, I’m –“
“Lea, you’re close to fuming.”
“Fuming?”
Danica tilted her head and raised her eyebrows.
Lea growled in the back of her throat. “Okay, I’m irritated.”
Danica rolled her eyes. “Fine, irritated. I’m just saying. For a guy you profess not to like . . . well . . . the lady doth protest too much.”
“You’re quoting Shakespeare now?”
“If the seventeenth-century playwright fits . . .”
“Oh shut up,” Lea said, turning around and slamming a book onto its shelf.
Danica raised a perfectly curved eyebrow. “That was some weird sexual banter.”
“That was not—”
“You were talking about
his broom
.” Danica practically shouted the last two words on a full-body shudder, and a student walking by jerked his head up and stared at them.
Lea tried to hold in the giggles because they’d already made enough noise, but the laughter couldn’t be contained and burst through her lips. Danica watched Lea dissolve with a grin that proved she struggled holding it in as well.
When Lea composed herself again, Danica sighed. “Look, I just want to say be careful. He’s not boyfriend material.”
Lea bit her lip. Despite Nick’s claim Max was flirting, Lea didn’t believe it. Max wasn’t interested in her. She wouldn’t allow this weird fantasy about getting to know the real Max put her heart in jeopardy.
Danica shifted her weight. “And you know how he treated Kat.”
Lea had heard. He hadn’t been the best or most chivalrous boyfriend to Kat. Sometimes he’d been downright mean. But with help from Alec and Danica, Kat had learned last year she had dyslexia. Thanks to the diagnosis and getting the extra help she needed, Kat’s grades were thriving.
And thanks to Alec’s unconditional love, Kat herself was like a sunbeam.
“And you deserve the absolute best.” Danica was saying. Her expression serious now, those eyes softer. “You know that.”
Lea pursed her lips and nodded. She didn’t want to have this conversation in the middle of the library. “I know, Danica. I . . . I need to get back to work now, though, okay?”
Danica waited a beat, then nodded. With a hug and a last lingering look, she clomped out of the library, the buckles on her motorcycle boots rattling.
Lea took a deep breath and then turned back to shelving books. She ran her fingers over the worn spines, smoothing peeled tape.
She knew she deserved the best. But the problem was she didn’t trust anyone to give her the best. She’d dated, sure, but she was like a cat. Everything always had to be her idea—where they went, what they did, how soon they kissed and slept together.
Which was why she dated . . . meeker men. Beta men. Not alphas or aggressors like Max. She didn’t want to have to fight for control. She wanted it all.
Max challenged her. Made her feel out of control. Not just his size but his domineering personality. And yet that’s what drew her to him, attracted her, made her wonder if she could get her hands on that attitude and that flesh and mold him . . .
oh shit
.
She shook her head and slammed another book on the shelf. Screw Max with those warm eyes and big body and perfect smile. Screw him.
She’d never let him get the upper hand.
Ever.
S
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the returns and leaned heavily on the cart as she wheeled it back to the front desk, where her cousin sat.
As an only child, Lea always looked at Nick Lawrence as her brother. He’d been adopted by her aunt and uncle as a baby, and looked nothing like the rest of her brunette family, with his bright blue eyes and thick mop of honey-blond hair. But she liked to think he was the sweetest of all of them.
Nick was three years younger and had attended a different school district from hers, but they’d always remained close. They hadn’t planned on attending college together but it seemed natural when Nick applied and received his acceptance.
Getting a job together in the library was done on purpose.
Now, Nick sat behind the counter, head propped on his palm. His face was pale and he gave one weak cough.
His eyes narrowed as she approached. “Are you telling me Max still thinks I’m your boyfriend?”
Lea’s steps faltered. “What?”
“I’d really prefer not to be caught in the crossfire between whatever the hell is going on with you two.”