Chapter One
Carmen
“Excuse me, miss,” came a voice from behind me.
I spun around too fast, startled by the sudden noise breaking my silence and concentration in what had otherwise been a quiet spring day in the park. As I spun, my long blonde hair whipped out in a huge arc and smacked the man who’d spoken right in the face.
“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry!” I cried immediately.
He held a hand over his eye where the ends of my hair had hit him. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” he said, wincing but trying to hide it. “That’s what I get for sneaking up on you like that anyway.” He sounded genuinely nice and apologetic, even though I was the one who’d caused his eye to sting and water like it was doing.
“Here,” I said, fumbling in my purse for a tissue, “take this.” I handed it to him. I felt horrible, but he was right, he did sneak up on me. I’d been so fiercely concentrated on my biology textbook that I hadn’t even noticed him approaching me.
The boy dabbed at his eye with the tissue I’d given him. I took the time to look him up and down. He was tall, with broad, muscular shoulders and a deep tan, like he spent a lot of time outdoors. He had the easy gait of an athlete, but whereas most of the athletes I knew had horrible skin from all that time spent sweating and running around in pads and helmets, his face was smooth and unblemished. A light beard covered his cheeks and jaw, trimmed neatly, and his eyes were a glistening green. He was, I had to admit, ridiculously hot.
I saw his mouth move and realized he was talking. I blinked hard and refocused on what he was saying. Listen, Carmen, I told myself. It was way too easy to get lost in how good-looking he was. “I’m sorry, what?” I asked.
“I said, there goes my smooth approach.” He tucked the tissue in his pocket and straightened up. He was well over six feet tall, enough to tower over me. I was only five feet three, so it wasn’t much of an accomplishment, but next to him, I felt tiny and fragile. He could break me in half if he wanted to, I would bet. All I had to do was look at his broad hands to confirm my suspicion.
“I don’t get it,” I said. I immediately regretted my words. In the thirty seconds since he’d walked up to me, I’d hit him in the face, ignored the first thing he said, and completely failed to understand the second thing. This interaction was off to a fantastic start, if I could say so myself.
He grinned, and I felt an immediate lurch in my stomach. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised that he had the world’s most beautiful white teeth and a charming, crooked slant to his smile, the kind that was off-center but all-the-more perfect for its imperfections. I could swear that someone had sculpted this boy out of my dreams and sent him here to interrupt my cramming for exams. Not that I minded, of course.
“Well, I hope I’m not being too forward or cheesy, but I was walking past and I saw you and I thought to myself, ‘Dan, if you don’t ask that beautiful girl out, you’re going to regret it forever.’”
Oh, man, he was really putting on the charm now. His smile was cranked up to full blast, a million megawatts of beautiful man and confidence hotter than the sun. I shifted my weight nervously side to side. Noticing I was wringing my hands in front of me, I clamped down and held them in my lap. “Oh, well, um, thank you, that’s super nice of you. I don’t, uh, really know what to say…” I stuttered. I was fully aware that I sounded like a complete idiot, but the ability to talk like a rational adult human being seemed to have utterly abandoned me. I would have thought that eighteen years of life on this planet would be sufficient to get me through this situation, but it looked like I was dead wrong about that.
Of course, like in most aspects of my life, my father was partly to blame. When a girl was cooped up under a father’s watchful eye and forbidden from dating at all, her social skills tended to suffer a bit as a result. Most girls would probably try to rebel, to carry on secret relationships or whatever they thought they might be able to get away with, but then again, most girls weren’t the daughter of the president of the Wild Kings motorcycle club. Nope, there was only one girl in the world who fit that particular description, and it was the one stammering like a fool while the handsome, ripped boy in the park tried to ask her out on a date.