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.
Where Tina dressed like a biker babe who’d gone through a wood-chipper, Naomi wore high-end athletic shorts and a matching tank over a toned body that promised more than a handful of nice surprises.
She looked like the kind of woman who’d take one look at me and high-tail it to the safety of the first golf shirt-wearing board member she could find.
Lucky for her, I didn’t do drama. Or high maintenance. I didn’t do doe-eyed princesses in need of saving. I didn’t waste time with women who required more than a good time and a handful of orgasms.
But since I’d already stuck my nose into the situation, called her trash, and yelled at her, the least I could do was bring the situation to a fast conclusion. Then I was heading back to bed.
“No. I’m not fucking kidding you,” I stated.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You don’t have a car,” I pointed out.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious. I am aware I don’t have a car.”
“Let me get this straight. You’re a stranger in a new town. Your car disappears. And you’re turning down the offer of a ride because…”
“Because you stormed into a cafe and screamed at me! Then you chased me down and you’re still yelling. I get in a car with you and I’m more likely to get chopped into pieces and scattered about in a desert than end up at my destination.”
“No deserts here. Some mountains though.”
Her expression suggested she didn’t find me helpful or amusing.
I exhaled through my teeth. “Look. I’m tired. I got an alert that Tina was causing trouble at the café again, and that’s what I thought I was walking into.”
She took a long hit of coffee while looking up and down the street like she was debating escape.
“Don’t even think about it,” I told her. “You’d spill your coffee.”
When those pretty hazel eyes went wide, I knew I’d hit the mark.
“Fine. But only because this is the best latte I’ve had in my entire life. And is that your idea of an apology? Because just like the way you ask people if something’s wrong, it sucks.”
“It was an explanation. Take it or leave it.” I didn’t waste time doing things that didn’t matter. Like making small talk or apologizing.
A bike roared up the street with Rob Zombie blaring from the speakers despite the fact that it was barely seven a.m. The guy eyed us and revved his engine. Wraith was knocking on seventy years old, but he still managed to nail an astronomical amount of tail with the whole tattooed, silver fox thing he had going on.
Intrigued, Naomi watched him with her mouth open.