“Holy crap! Thank you!” I screamed, ripping my hands through my tangled mess of hair, brown made black by the liquid coating. The water dripped from my eyes and my rescuer finally filtered into view. “Oh my God.”
It was him.
“You okay?” He hadn’t turned to face me yet, but as he slowly rotated on the heel of his Italian leather loafers, recognition swept over his face and his mouth gaped open an inch. His jaw no longer worked as a hinge, his eyelids no longer kept his eyes from springing out.
“Yeah,” I breathed, wringing a section of my hair into an already soaked towel. For the love of everything good, how on earth did this man get here? Not even here meaning New York City, but here as in my workstation and personal space. Wasn’t this guy supposed to be in Italy? I mean, at least when I fantasized about him daily like he was the star of my own personal romance novel, that was always the scene and location for those very farfetched, yet equally hot, dreams.
I could hardly swallow the saliva in my mouth. My tongue was a useless limp muscle, numbed into ineffectiveness. Against all odds, I managed to work out the words, “Your jacket.”
“Is fine,” he said in a rush, slipping his arms into the sleeves. “Okay.” He pulled them out and instead folded the coat in half over his left forearm. “Maybe it’s a little wet.”
“A little?” I tried not to laugh and tucked my giggle behind my palm. “It’s drenched.”
“Just some hot water.” Oh my lanta, his smile just about turned me into a puddle on the floor and that was the last thing this coffeehouse needed. It already looked like the fire sprinklers had been cranked on full force. Cara and my other coworkers were busy sopping up the inches of groundwater with a mop and a roll of paper towels at our feet. Me melting into that mess would only exacerbate the situation.
“It’s a lot of hot water.”
His eyes slivered with the upward push of a smile. “I’ve been in hot water before—not exactly like this—but I assure you, it’s fine.”
Yes you are, I thought in my head and in my stomach that clenched just like that twisted, wrung out towel.
“Can I at least have it dry cleaned for you?” I hesitated, wanting to ask if he remembered me from the museum, but the desire got trapped in my throat, along with my breath. Even the disheveled way his button up shirt plastered itself across his chest with the weight of water was irresistible. I wanted to offer to have that shirt dry cleaned too, just to have an excuse to peel it off of his slick skin.
“It’s just water. It’ll dry.” A coy grin burst onto his face as he said, “But you owe me a coffee. I was counting on that caffeine to shoot some life into these veins.”
“Late night?” Why did I just say that? Was I seriously implying that this guy had been up doing lordy knows what? And how was that any of my business? I needed to shut my mouth and turn off my inquisitive mind. I had no right to that information.
“Yes. It was.”
Damn. That wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear.
“I’m working on a tight deadline and was at the office until 3:00.” Much better response. I could infer several different scenarios from that, none of which made me too jealous. “You?” He leaned his backside into the bar and crossed his ankles. I wasn’t sure why he was still standing behind the counter with me, but I wasn’t about to complain. He could tell me I had to translate the entire Encyclopedia Britannica into Sanskrit and I wouldn’t complain. I think the only thing that would make me complain would be if he suddenly left his place directly in front of me. “You up all night gawking at naked men?”
Shit. (That was not an example of a good dramatic expletive).
“Um.” My heart thundered violently inside my chest like a jackhammer chiseling through asphalt. “No.” The fiery blush of embarrassment licked my cheeks and I could feel them singe with heat.
This was getting awkward. Or more awkward. The whole wet t-shirt contest thing had already ushered us into the awkward arena.
“Is that just a thing you do while on vacation?”
“N-n-n-o,” I stammered as though I had some sort of speech impediment. Where did my ability to speak coherently go? “Not just on vacation.”
“So you check out naked men in the states, too?” Holy heck his smile was nearly 1,000 watts. How was it possible for someone’s teeth to illuminate like that? I shook my head quickly to regain what little bearings I had left, but he continued challenging me with his devilishly enticing grin.
“I check them out anywhere I can.” Immediately realizing how wrong that sounded, I clenched my eyes tight in an effort to rearrange my thoughts and words, a game of Scrabble played out in my head. “I mean, I look at statues of naked men when given the opportunity.” Well that made me sound like a freak with a fetish for males carved from marble. “Not just statues though,” I tried to backpedal, but it appeared the pedals were not only broken, but had completely fallen off. This had the makings of social suicide written all over it. “I look at the real thing, too.”
I worried if that provoking smile of his stayed on his face any longer, it might end up there permanently like some maniacal clown face with a twisted expression.
“I think I’m no longer the only one in hot water,” he chuckled, crossing his arms over his chest. Even through his white dress shirt, I could see his taught muscles pulling against the fabric.
Wow. He was so much better looking than I’d remembered: all russet hair, plump lips and a solid, toned definition. I completely understood how Michelangelo was able to create someone as gorgeous as David because he wasn’t present when he’d made him, but was an accumulation of all the gorgeousness one could dream up, cut into stone, pulled from imagination.
But this man was real. Not a dream. Damn. I very nearly wanted to pinch myself. Or him. Maybe both.
“So you work at a coffee shop and like to look at naked men.” Tugging his tie back and forth between his fingers, he slid the knot closer up to his throat. The ball of muscle tightened briefly at the back of his jaw and I went into full swooning mode. What was it about that jaw muscle that was so incredibly irresistible? It was a trigger, cocked and ready to shoot a heated current into me with just one blast. Ka-POW! “Anything else I should know about you?”
“I like to draw,” I breathed, feeling the tension in my shoulders start to slip away. “Both in my coffee and of naked men.”
I wasn’t expecting his laugh to be so raspy, sexy, and utterly knee weakening, but I shouldn’t have been surprised because everything else about him was all of those things. “I thought for a moment you were going to say you liked to draw on naked men.”
“That’s a whole other thing,” I laughed, thinking back to my short-lived stint as a tattoo artist in Queens the summer before enrolling at UVA as a freshman. Oh how I’d had some exquisite drawings—and men—back then. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“Oh my God, I was totally joking,” he laughed, his upper body pressing forward so his head leaned my direction. A rush of warmth fell from his mouth onto my forehead and made me shiver all the way to my waterlogged sneakers. When he pulled back, the moist patch of air evaporated. “So, assuming you are able to get this machine fixed, you owe me coffee, which—” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and slid a business card out, flicking it toward me between his index and middle fingers as he continued, “—you can deliver here.”
“Oh.” I reached out to take the card from him, feeling a spark in my gut when our fingers grazed. “We’re not really allowed to deliver. Can’t leave the shop during a shift. Stupid store policy.”
He looked at me with an arched brow. “Okay.” The way he rubbed the pad of his thumb over his full lower lip made me want to do the same, but with my tongue. Sheesh, I didn’t even know this guy’s name and I was already fantasizing about licking him. I needed to get laid. Pronto. This was pathetic.
I glanced down at the business card in my palm.
Leo.
So he had a name. Only three le
tters, but I guessed that still qualified as a name.
“In that case,” he continued. “Please have this dry cleaned and returned to me at the address on my card.”
Oh he was good. I wondered if I’d find out that he worked at some high-powered law firm once I took the time to fully read his information. He had that inherently convincing quality about him.
“And before you come, swing by a coffee shop and grab me a quad shot, iced Americano. That is, if you remember.”
There were million incoherent thoughts hurtling through my brain like the white crash of meteors showering through the night sky. Stardust. Black holes. Alternate universes that I was fairly certain I was currently experienced firsthand. Everything about this felt entirely out of this world.
Yet amid the void of confusion that was my muddled mind, one thought surfaced, bright and clear.
I needed to see this guy again.
If becoming a sort of personal assistant was necessary to ensure this would occur, I’d not only do his laundry and order his drinks, but I’d probably even scrub his toilets and cook him breakfast if he requested it. I’d actually do anything he asked of me, because he had the charm and charisma of all of those damned Disney princes put together. He was Prince Charming and Eric and Phillip and the Beast after he transformed into a human, and Aladdin and even Flynn Rider and Prince Naveen but not when he was a frog because even though people always said you had to kiss a lot of frogs, this girl is not stooping to the level of pressing her lips to anything scaly or remotely amphibian. So yeah, in essence he was every girl’s childhood fantasy.
But don’t get me wrong; he was equally the main character of every woman’s smut novel fodder.
Basically, he was perfect.
“Do you have a specific dry cleaner you prefer?” I jutted my hand into the space between us to claim his jacket. Touching something that he’d warn so close to his body felt intimate on the most basic level. “Like a green cleaner that doesn’t use chemicals or something?” I figured this suit had to be at the very least a few thousands dollars. There must be certain places that cleaned top-notch clothing.
“Honestly, I’ve never dry cleaned anything in my life. I typically just buy a new one if it gets to that point.” Leo’s mouth twisted into a confused smirk. I wondered if he even did laundry, or if he just bought new underwear when he ran out like all the other guys I knew.
For more seconds than I should, I stood there, thinking about him getting down to his last set of chones, and when I realized I was picturing this stranger in front of me in his tighty whities, I seriously contemplated slapping myself to shake away the dazed expression plastered on my face. The pint-sized angel on my shoulder instructed me to snap out of it in a deliberately trained voice, while the two-horned devil licked her lips in desire. Smoke burst from my shoulder as the halo-donning conscience poofed into oblivion.
“Where’d you go?” Leo bent closer toward me, his eyes probing mine and making them instinctually lift to meet his. I’d never seen any like them—well, other than when I’d seen them before back in Italy. Intensely blue with aqua around the edges and golden flecks skirting his pupils, which were much too dilated for the amount of light that filtered into the coffeehouse. Seriously, why were his eyes so dilated? The thought did funny things to my stomach. “You still with me?”
All I could think to say was, ‘My, what big eyes you have!’ so I kept my mouth shut and just nodded.
“Okay. Tomorrow.” He finally slipped out from the counter and back into the main area of coffee shop. “Coffee and my coat.” As he swiveled away, his back to me, he flicked a quick glance over his right shoulder and said, “Just not coffee on my coat. You know, since you apparently like to not only draw naked men, but draw on them, as well. Worth clarifying.”
I sputtered. This guy had officially turned my brain to mush, worthy to be served up in a bowl with a cup of coffee on the side. Maybe that was what happened when a flood of hormones raced into your blood stream. I was no science major, but some chemical effect had obviously just taken place, and I was pretty positive those hormones must’ve dissolved what little I had left of a brain inhabiting my skull. I was all gaping mouth and blank, vacant eyes and fluttering heartbeats.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to reassemble myself before he was out the door.
“Miss Thornton?” Eva raced over to the bar, her hands slamming onto the wooden surface, a clap of excitement. “Who was that?” Her eyes that had appeared so hollow moments earlier were now huge on her tiny face.
“I’m honestly not sure,” I said, my head wobbling on my shoulders as I struggled to put the pieces together from everything that had just happened. But nothing fit. I’d gotten to the end and there was still one piece missing. A gaping hole in the landscape of my thoughts.
With a growing smile, Eva practically giggled, “I think you should go find out.”
“I think I will,” I said, still nodding in a daze as I hugged Leo’s jacket tighter to my chest. I swear I felt the arms of it squeeze back. “Do you know of any one-hour dry cleaners?”
CHAPTER FIVE
“It’s the same dude, Love.”
Ian stood in front of the full-length mirror as he cuffed the sleeves of his periwinkle shirt into three, sleek and precise folds, ever the perfectionist. His eyes held mine in the reflection. Curling my knees up to my chest, I hugged myself tightly and rocked back and forth against the natural dip of the mattress, watching him get ready for his date with Joshua. He was a guy from Ian’s film noir class he’d been flirting with for the past month, but finally worked up the courage to ask out just yesterday. Turns out modeling nude and then gaining quite a large fan base as a result was good for the ego, regardless of what sex you were attracted to.
“You’re wrinkling my sheets.”
I stopped mid sway. “Sorry. I’m just a little out of sorts.”
“And you look like a drowned rat.”
“I said I was out of sorts. Gimme a break. It’s been an eventful day.”
Sympathetically, Ian cocked his head with just enough exasperation present to indicate that he didn’t totally feel sorry for me at all. Eyes, all green and mocking, like a cat laughing at its prey. “Yes, but eventful in an incredible I-just-had-a-wet-t-shirt contest-with-the-hottest-bachelor-in-NYC kind of way.”
“We don’t know he’s a bachelor,” I retorted, not denying the rest of his statement. There were flecks of truth strewn throughout each one of those syllables.
“Yes.” Ian ran his palms down the front of his heather gray slacks. “We do. It’s part of the spread they’re putting together for the magazine. Single, successful, and searching.”
I wasn’t sure why, but that knowledge made me simultaneously nauseous and giddy, like I could laugh and vomit all in one act. Sort of like riding those Tilt-a-Whirls at the fair, both excitement and terror wrapped into one crazy ride. Minus the carnies, though, because they were just plain scary. “Searching?”
“As in looking for someone. Or at least eligible.”
“Is that what your shoot is all about? Trying to find him a soul mate or something?” Though I obviously had no claim on him to speak of, I didn’t like entertaining the idea that maybe this was all part of some widespread matchmaking process. It tempted me just enough to contemplate flicking the television on to see if he was on the other side conducting his very own rose ceremony. If he was, how had I missed out on that screening process?
“Nah, it’s not like that. It’s just that he’s been single for a few years now and there’s gossip that he’s being pushed back into the dating scene by his family.” Ian’s phone buzzed across his immaculate glass nightstand and he raced to snatch it up. Typing with wildly frantic fingers, he shot me a look while he continued texting. “Not sure why he was ever out of the dating scene, but to each his own. Now that their business is successful, maybe it’s time for him to start enjoying the finer things in life.”
I’d fiddled with the business c
ard so much this afternoon that it now lay crumpled and worn at the edges like a well-loved book, the fibers pulling away from themselves. “I think he does plenty of that already. I looked up their wine label and it’s huge in Italy. I’d say he already enjoys the finer things on a daily basis.”
“Fine wines and fine women are two different things, though I suppose they should be enjoyed at the same time.”
“When was the last time you enjoyed a woman, Ian?” I teased, returning his mockery from earlier with my own.
“I enjoy drinking wine with you, Jules. You’re a woman.” I could always count on Ian for my daily feel-good dose. I actually quit taking vitamins when I moved in with Ian. Apparently it was good for your health to be around someone that showered you with compliments and unconditional love. Growing up, I never got that nutrition. Could make for a pretty screwed up adulthood, but I never let that ruin me. “But tonight I plan on drinking wine with Joshua. Lots of it. I might even get drunk enough come back and do a little Rockband. I feel the urge to channel my inner Police.” Curling his fingers around his cell, he microphoned his mouth and crooned, “Roxanne!” at least four octaves higher than his typical baritone.
I cringed and flopped back onto his bed. “If you’re trying to impress this guy, I’d steer clear of the alcohol. And the karaoke.”
“Noted.” Ian smoothed his hands over his golden hair once more before slipping his billfold into one back pocket and tucking his phone in the other. “Don’t wait up.” He tossed a wave over his shoulder as he walked out of his room and toward our front door, flinging it open.
“I won’t.”
“And don’t draw anymore Davids. Believe it or not, I’m actually getting a little tired of looking at that perfectly sculpted body.”
Draw Me In Page 4
