“You lost?”
I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw. “Go. Away.”
“Now what’s your problem?”
I turned around and found Knox watching me intently, holding a to-go coffee cup.
“What’s my problem?” I repeated.
I wanted to kick him in the shins and steal his coffee.
“Nothin’ wrong with my hearing, sweetheart. No need to yell.”
“My problem is while I wasted five minutes of my life getting to know you, my car was towed.”
“You sure?”
“No. I never have any idea where I park my car. I just leave them everywhere and buy new ones when I can’t find them.”
He shot me a look.
I rolled my eyes. “Obviously, I’m being sarcastic.” I reached for my phone only to remember I no longer had a phone.
“Who pissed in your Cheerios?”
“Whoever taught you to express concern for a person did it wrong.” Without another word, I stalked off in what I hoped was the direction of the local police station.
I didn’t make it to the next storefront before a big, hard hand locked around my upper arm.
It was the sleep deprivation, the emotional rawness, I told myself. Those were the only reasons I felt the jittery zing of awareness at his grip.
“Stop,” he ordered, sounding surly.
“Hands. Off.” I flailed my arm awkwardly, but his grip only tightened.
“Then stop walking away from me.”
I paused my evasive flailing. “I’ll stop walking away if you stop being an asshole.”
His nostrils flared as he stared up at the sky, and I thought I heard him counting.
“Are you seriously counting to ten?” I was the one who was wronged. I was the one with a reason to pray to the heavens for patience.
He got all the way to ten and still looked annoyed. “If I stop being an asshole, will you stay and talk for a minute?”
I took another sip of coffee and thought about it. “Maybe.”
“I’m letting go,” he warned.
“Great,” I prompted.
We both looked down at his hand on my arm. Slowly he loosened his grip and released me, but not before his fingertips trailed over the sensitive skin inside my arm.
Goose bumps broke out, and I hoped he wouldn’t notice. Especially because, in my body, goose bumps and pointy nipple reactions were closely related.
“You cold?” His gaze was most definitely not on my arm or shoulders but my chest.
Damn it. “Yes,” I lied.
“It’s eighty-four degrees, and you’re drinking hot coffee.”
“If you’re finished mansplaining internal temperature, I’d like to go find my car,” I said, crossing my free arm over my traitorous boobs. “Perhaps you could point me in the direction of the nearest impound lot or police station?”
He stared at me for a long beat, then shook his head. “Come on then.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll give you a ride.”
“Ha!” I choked out a laugh. He was delusional if he thought I’d willingly get in a car with him.
I was still shaking my head when he spoke again. “Let’s go, Daisy. I don’t have all day.”
TWO
A RELUCTANT HERO
Knox
The woman was staring at me like I’d just suggested she French kiss a rattlesnake.
My day wasn’t even supposed to be started yet, and it had already gone to shit. I blamed her. And her asshole sister, Tina.
I also threw some blame in Agatha’s direction too for good measure, since she’d been the one to text me that Tina had just walked her “trouble-making ass” into the cafe.
Now here I was, at what counted as the asscrack of dawn, playing town bouncer like an idiot and fighting with a woman I’d never met.
Naomi blinked at me like she was coming out of a fog. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Agatha needed to get her fucking eyes checked if she mistook the pissed-off brunette for her bleach-blonde, baked-tan, tattooed pain-in-the-ass sister.
The differences between them were pretty fucking obvious, even without my contacts. Tina’s face was the color and texture of an old-ass leather couch. She had a hard mouth bracketed by deep frown lines from smoking two packs a day and feeling like the world owed her something.
Naomi, on the other hand, was cut from a different cloth. A classier one. She was tall like her sister. But instead of the crispy fried look, she went in the Disney princess direction with thick hair the color of roasted chestnuts. It and the flowers in it were trying to escape some kind of elaborate updo. Her face was softer, skin paler. Full pink lips. Eyes that made me think of forest floors and open fields.