Chapter 6
GARRETT
I’m back to the tongue-tied idiot.
Seeing Alexandria in my home is exactly how I pictured it.
She fits.
I want her to stay.
It’s why I offered her a drink. It was the only thing I could think of to keep her here a little longer. But now she has her drink, and she’s looking at me like she’s never seen me before.
Taking a drink, she watches me over her glass with an intensity that has me wanting to squirm. I don’t move though. It takes a herculean effort, but I remain perfectly still on the opposite side of the island, my gaze locked with hers.
“Yes. A very fascinating man.” Putting her half-empty glass down, she leans against the counter and smiles. “What other fascinating things are there to learn about you?”
I shrug.
“Oh, come on. You own and work at Boyd’s and yet you have a fully equipped garage downstairs that a professional mechanic would drool over.” She waves a hand to indicate my home. “And this is not your typical bachelor pad.”
I grunt. “Who said I was a bachelor?”
“Well…” Her gaze moves around the room. “I will admit this looks like a woman might have been involved at one point. Although there aren’t any signs one lives here.”
“No woman.” It always pisses me off when men are stereotyped. I’m not your typical man. Neither are my brothers. When your only parent dies when your oldest sibling is barely legal you grow up different than the average guy.
“Okay. No woman in your life.” She pulls the bottom right-side of her lip into her mouth, worries it with her teeth, and I have to clench every muscle to stop myself from launching over the island to tug on that lip with my own teeth. “So, you designed this? Decorated it?”
“Yeah.”
“Garrett, can I be honest with you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m more than a little intrigued by you. But, and this isn’t a dig at you or who you are, but are you always this talkative?” she asks with a grin.
I know she’s teasing by the smile on her face and the twinkle in her eyes. “I talk.”
“Yes. You do.” Her grin grows. “What would it take to get you to talk more?”
“Food.” It’s the first thing that pops into my head. If she wants me to talk I will, but she’d have to stick around to listen, and I don’t know if she will without a better reason than me speaking.
“Food?” She looks at her phone. “It’s almost midnight.”
“And?”
“Dinner was hours ago.”
I pat my stomach. “I’m a growing boy.”
“You’re hungry?”
I’m famished. Not for food, but I’ll eat if it means she stays here longer. “I could eat.”
Her head tips to the right, her eyes narrowing as she studies me.
“I’ve got some cheese and crackers.” I turn to the fridge before she can argue.
“Cheese and crackers,” she mumbles. “Yep, a very fascinating man.”
I can’t stop a smile from forming. At this point I don’t care if she finds me interesting because I’m not like any other man she knows. As long as I can keep her interest, I stand a chance of building a deeper connection with her.
With everything I need now on the counter, I close the fridge and open the pantry. I’ve got a few different options for crackers, but you can’t go wrong with Jatz. Grabbing my largest chopping board, I put together a platter of cheese, grapes, nuts, sliced ham, and crackers.
“Wow.” Alexandria leans over and plucks a grape from the stem. “This looks amazing. I might hire you to make me a few of these the next time I have a party.”
Am I pathetic to want to say yes to that? I’d do it without question if it meant spending more time with her. Smiling, I tip my chin up toward the couch. “Let’s get comfortable.”
“Do you want a drink?” She holds up her glass. “Mind if I refill?”
“Yes and no.” I pick up the board and walk over to the living space.
“I’m going to assume you answered in the order I questioned,” she says with a laugh.
After putting the board down, I watch her move around my kitchen. She remembered where I got her glass from and has hers and mine filled in no time. As she makes her way to me, I can’t stop the images of her doing this every night from flooding my head.
What is it about this woman?
I barely know her.
And yet, I’d agree to anything she asks.
“Okay, let’s talk about my car first. When do you think I’ll get it back?” She hands me my drink and puts hers on a coaster on the coffee table. “And what do you charge?”
“I’ll need to work out the problem then let you know.” When she sits down, I lower myself to the couch beside her. “Do you need a car to get around? I can lend you one.”
She arches an eyebrow. “You’ll give me your car to use?”
“Sure. I’ve got more than one.”
“Right. Of course you do.” She laughs. “You fix cars for fun.”
She’s smiling so I don’t think her words are a dig at the number of cars I own. It’s more a jest, like when my brothers tease me about my inability to sell the cars I buy and do up.
“You don’t have to worry about loaning me a car. You aren’t the only with a collection of them.”
“You have more than the Jag?” Maybe she does have the latest Benz or Beemer.
“I do.” She nods and pops a cracker topped with a small chunk of cheese into her mouth.
“Let me guess…”
She swallows and grins at me. “You can try.”
“A Mercedes sedan.”
She shakes her head. “Nope.”
“A BMW.”
“Wrong again.”
I frown. “Okay. Either a VW or Audi.”
“No to both.”
“Huh.” I have to admit, I thought for sure she’d own one of those. “Uncle. What other vehicles do you have?”
“A Ranger and a Jeep.”
I blink. Rapidly for several seconds. “I never would have guessed those.”
She laughs. “The look of confusion on your face is priceless.”
“Well, those are completely unexpected from what I know about you.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“You just proved that.” I turn sideways on the couch. “I’m more interested in you than ever, now.”
“You’re interested in me?”
“Yes. From the minute I saw you.”
“We’ve never met. You saw me across the room at Boyd’s. And you were busy, barely lifted a hand to wave at Olivia.”
“Oh, I might have been busy but there was no missing you.”
She scuffs. “Well, no, I’m sure I looked out of place at the bar.”
“No, you fit. Tonight, you wouldn’t, but then? Yeah, in your tight jeans with frayed hems, green t-shirt that showed the curves of your breasts perfectly and made your eyes pop, to the tiny daisies lining the straps of your flip-flops, you fit right in.”
“Oh, wow.”
“I saw you. I felt you.” Press a hand to my chest. “It was the most surreal moment of my life and then you disappeared. Poof. Until tonight.”
Her eyes are wide and her lips parted. I want to kiss the stunned look off her face. And because I’m me and can’t seem to articulate what I want, I just take it.
Leaning over, I reach out, grip the back of her head, and smash my lips to hers.
It’s fast and brutal and intoxicating.
And instead of a slap to the face, I get her fingers in my hair and her tongue thrust into my mouth.