The asshole had a real quiet step, apparently, because I didn’t hear squat. So I counted. To two hundred to be sure enough time had passed. It was a long two hundred, too, because I lost count a couple of times when an image of the sexy scene I’d walked into jumped into my head.
I was definitely adding get laid to my to-do list. This was ridiculous.
Finally, I poked my head around the silo to where I’d last seen him standing.
No one was there. I took a few more steps to be sure. He was nowhere in front of me. I sighed with relief.
“Looking for someone?”
I jumped at the voice behind me. Whirling around, I saw him standing in the shadows where I’d been just a few seconds before.
There was no way he’d known I was there. He couldn’t have. He definitely couldn’t have known I’d watched him. Quickly coming to that conclusion, I played innocent. “I thought I heard an animal. A cat in trouble. I was just looking around.”
Awesome, Tess. That didn’t sound super defensive at all.
“A cat. On a rooftop this high.” He was rightly incredulous.
“It was odd to me too. Hence why I was looking.”
“Huh.”
I was sweating with nervousness. I hadn’t forgotten that I was at this event under false pretenses, and though there was no reason for this guy to question that right now, the fact put me on guard.
And not necessarily on guard in a good way. Because I should have stuck to my story—it was a true story, after all—and been on my way. He was still lingering in the shadows, his face cloaked in the dark. It wasn’t like he was trying to stop me.
But there was a challenge behind that single syllable, an unspoken dare and anyone who knew me knew I wasn’t the type to walk away when the gauntlet was thrown.
I took a step toward him. “Huh? What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t believe me?”
He shrugged, the same couldn’t care less shrug he’d given Eden. “I just meant huh.”
“Oh.” Maybe I’d imagined the dare. This whole adventure was a mistake. Why did I think I could pull this off without freaking out? I might be the kind of person who stood up to a challenge, but I wasn’t an idiot, and coming to this party tonight had been crazy idiotic. And now I was making up drama where there wasn’t any. “Okay, then,” I said, turning away from the mystery man.
The same way he’d reached out with his hand to stop Eden, he reached out with his voice to stop me. “See, I think you did come looking because you heard something. Then you found something else. And instead of walking away...you stayed.”
I pivoted back toward him. “I didn’t—” I cut off abruptly. He’d stepped out of the shadows, and now, for the first time, I saw his face.
And it was stunning.
Take-your-breath-away stunning.
Panty-melting stunning.
No wonder Eden had been gah gah over him. Everyday men didn’t look like that. He was cover-model material. Pressed to describe him in words, I wouldn’t have been able to explain what about him was so attractive. It was the whole package. The way his features knit together. His high cheekbones. The chiseled jaw evident under a well-trimmed beard, some shade of brown. His inset eyes—it was too dark to grasp their color, but the placement was perfection. And while it hid a lot from the backside, the tailored tux he wore showed enough from the front to see that he was very well-defined. Like, the kind of defined that not only owns a home gym but also spends time in it.
I’d been so surprised by him, so unprepared, that the words stumbled out before I had a chance to rein them in. “Oh, wow, you’re hot.”
Heat rushed up my neck into my face. My olive skin didn’t show blush too easily, but the blood still ran upward when I embarrassed myself. And this was super embarrassing. Too embarrassing to even figure out how to fix.
While I was kicking myself and dying of shame, he swept in, smooth as a cucumber. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”
And now he was hitting on me.
After he’d just gotten off another woman. I’d pegged him accurately, that was sure. Player with a capital P.
I laughed, half nerves, half incredulity. “That’s not. No. We’re not. Uh-uh. Thanks, I’ll just be leaving now.”
I was too flustered to get all the way turned around this time before he halted me once again. “No, wait. I apologize. I didn’t mean to come on strong. You said it first, so I took that as an invitation.”
I considered for a beat before I responded—something I knew I should do more often. Okay, right. I had decided he was a playboy, but I didn’t necessarily have proof. I had been the one who’d verbally vomited on a total stranger. I was definitely the one out of line.
“I did do that,” I admitted. “I’m sorry. It just came out.”
“No need to be sorry.” His smile was like gold the way it gleamed. Hypnotic. He could convince a lot of women to do a lot of stupid things by flashing that beauty.
I hoped “a lot of women” didn’t include me. But I was also realistic, so I was on high alert that it probably did.
And yet I was still standing there.
“Add that to the fact that you did stay through what you found up here.” He was determined to make me admit to what I’d seen. It was a guess. He was feeling me out.
Really, though, was there a reason to deny it? I was more curious where he was taking this conversation so I merely said, “And?”
“And that combined with your comment on my appearance gave me a different impression of where this interaction might be going.” He prowled toward me. Literally. Prowled.
It was ridiculous how sexy a man could look just taking a handful of steps.
Even more ridiculous was how affected I was by it.
And, oh my God, it had taken me a beat, but had he really just said that?
“Please,” I said groaning in irritation that was meant for me as much as it was for him. “Because I accidentally walked in on your little sexcapade, you think that means I must want a sexcapade of my own?”
“No, of course not.” That nonchalant shrug again. “It’s the fact that you watched.”
Another rush of blood to my cheeks. His back had been to me the entire time. Eden hadn’t even seen me, and she’d been the one facing me. Was I wrong? Was there something reflective I’d missed on that brick wall. I swiveled to study where he’d been standing. I looked back to where I’d been standing.
Nope. No way. He hadn’t seen me. I turned back to him with a gloating smile. “You couldn’t know that.”
Then it was his turn to gloat, because of course I’d just given away that I had indeed watched. “I was determining consent,” I said on impulse.
“Looking out for your fellow woman.”
“Exactly.” I felt noble about the lie. As though I’d really been a hero instead of a peeping Tom, only concerned with whether or not Eden was being raped.
His smirk called bullshit, but he played along. “I hope you came to the conclusion that there was indeed consent.”
“On her part anyway.” I might have thought it was a dig when I first said it, but after the fact, even I knew it sounded like I was flirting.
Fuck. Maybe I was.