Chapter 12 Coffee O’clock #2
Wyatt, who until now has watched the proceedings in silence, just gives an appreciative whistle. “The little one’s got a temper, Knox. I like it.”
Knox doesn’t reply. Instead his amused expression slowly begins to change. He turns and reaches for a napkin from one of the holders on the counter before…oh my God. Really.
Rubbing his crotch!
My sense of control is definitely getting shaken. It’s hard for me to keep my angry expression up. It doesn’t matter how angry he makes me… I can’t lie about the fact that Knox is attractive. Normal men only look this good when they’re photoshopped.
I mean, Knox lives in Aspen! A winter wonderland.
Most of the time he’s surrounded by snow.
His skin must be pale. Like Wyatt’s. Like all the others in town.
But no, naturally, his genes got together beforehand and decided unanimously to make an exception.
And now, here he is, standing in front of me with his perfect, bronze tan—goddamn it—rubbing his crotch with a napkin!
Something begins to make my face tingle. It takes me a moment to realize that I’m biting the inside of my cheek. My nerves are prickling and protesting, and when a slight feeling of numbness sets in, I am brought back down to earth.
This is Knox. Knox Winterbottom. He may be an attractive snowboarder, but definitely no sparkling vampire.
Calm down, Paisley.
I clear my throat. “Don’t you know we’re in a public diner. That there,” I say, pointing to his hand that’s still rubbing his pants, “could be considered exhibitionist.”
When he looks at me, I see surprise flash in his eyes.
A small part of me crows because I have the feeling that not a whole lot can throw him off track.
I’m probably the first woman to talk to him that way since his voice broke.
Vaguely I take in the glances of the women at the neighboring table who are staring at Knox as if they were ready to jump him right here and now.
On the counter. The tables. The floor. Everywhere. Here in front of everyone.
But that doesn’t interest me. I don’t care about the throngs of women in Aspen, trying to win him over—even if only for one night. Or an hour.
Even if I was interested in him, it wouldn’t matter. After what I left behind, I wouldn’t let him get near me under any circumstances.
“Just to summarize,” Knox says, tilting his head. “You spill your whole coffee on me and then portray me as an exhibitionist? You know, for me, things are clear. You’re actually concerned with something completely different.”
“Of course,” I respond, talking myself into a rage, hardly aware of how closely Wyatt and Gwen are following our conversation.
“Knox, the superstar. Knox, the know-it-all. Knox, who thinks he can turn every statement around until it suits him.” I waggle my wrist as if he were just an annoying fly. “So, go on and tell me.”
I see something crazy flash in his eyes that makes my body tingle far too strongly to ignore. Knox puts the napkin down on the counter and takes a step toward me
By the time he speaks, his voice has taken on a darker tone. “The next time you want me to take off my clothes…just ask.”
Next to me, I hear Gwen take a sharp breath.
Wyatt grins and keeps on running his hands through his dark hair, and me…
I simply stand there staring at Knox. Everything in me is boiling.
And the thought that from now on I’m going to be living with this dude under one roof is almost enough to make me explode.
“I’m going to have to disappoint you,” I say coolly.
My eyes dart to the fleck on his pants. “I’m not into playing little games in public. ”
Knox opens his mouth to reply, but Wyatt interrupts him with an amused grunt.
“Let it go, Knox. You’re just scaring the little one off.
” His glance flits over to the neighboring table before, with a low voice, he continues, “On top of it, those women are staring at you like they’re waiting for you to do a striptease at any second. ”
Knox follows his gaze and, seeing the two groupies whose eyes are almost sticking together with every blink from all their makeup, falls silent. A strange silence overcomes all of us.
Apparently, Wyatt feels the same way. Suddenly he says to me, “There’s a party tonight at Knox’s. Come on by.”
It’s as if he’s dumped a whole bucket of ice over me. Of all the times to throw a party, Knox has decided to throw one tonight? On my first day of work? He can’t be serious. He truly cannot be serious!
I look back over at Knox, who deliberately avoids my glance and decides to mess around with the cookie tin on the counter. “She’ll be there anyway,” he says to Wyatt. “Paisley’s our new chalet girl.”
For a moment, Wyatt looks like he’s lost the power of speech.
Then he laughs out loud, seemingly unable to get his head around it.
Only after a few seconds does he give Knox a few soft hits to the shoulder, causing his snowboarding bag to slide down a bit.
“Sorry, man. But…you trying to set a record or something? The last one made it two months. This one here hasn’t even started and you’re already coming after her like this?
” Wyatt shakes his head, still laughing. “Crazy, man. Really crazy.”
And right then, Kate walks in. With a harried look on her face she lifts the coffee beans into the air and rushes past us, having no idea what kind of situation she’s just burst into.
Putting the bags behind the counter and standing back up, her glance falls onto the broken cup on the floor and then onto Knox’s pants.
She sighs before looking at Gwen and putting her hands on her hips. “So, what have you done now?”
“It’s all good,” Knox says, walking forward. He looks at me briefly. “My new chalet girl just wanted to show us how nimble she can be.”
The way he speaks about me, as if I wasn’t even there, freezes the blood in my veins. I feel like I’ve been degraded into a meaningless object that Knox Winterbottom possesses. As if he had complete power over me. As if someone, anyone, still had power over me.
Without replying, I crouch down and gather up the pieces.
It’s humiliating because I know Knox is looking down on me.
But it was my mistake, and it would be a lack of respect to expect Kate to clean this up.
Without looking up, I stand up and dump the shards in the trash.
I grab my jacket, toss my training bag over my shoulder, and leave the diner, my cheeks aflame.
Gwen follows me. I can hear her steps in the snow. “Okay,” she says, panting softly as she catches up to me, “either you lied to me and something is definitely going on between you and Knox or…you’ve got to go to the can. I’ve never seen someone take off that quickly.”
“I’ve got to go to the can?” I repeat as we turn the corner and Gwen drags me over to her Jeep.
“Yeah, the can.”
I look at her without understanding.
She rolls her eyes and opens the trunk. “Go to the toilet?”
“Oh, my God. No!” Disgusted, I make a face, throw my things into the back, and go to the passenger side. “Neither of the two. Knox…or the other. Let’s just go to the rink, okay?”
“Fine. But,” she nods in the direction of the diner while opening the door of the Jeep and sinking behind the wheel, “we’ve got to talk about what just happened there. Otherwise, it’s going to go real bad.”
I close the door and look at her. “What do you mean?”
Gwen casts me a sympathetic glance, switches on her turn signal, and reverses. “Let’s just hope I’m wrong. Knox is hot. But he is… I don’t know. Like forbidden fruit. He’s not good for people. Not healthy.”
“That’s clear,” I say. “It doesn’t interest me. I mean,” I point my finger back over my shoulder, “did you not catch any of that back there?”
Gwen purses her lips. “Of course, Paisley. I’m just wondering if we didn’t observe two totally different situations.”
I think about her words for a long time. So long that I am unable to say anything until we reach iSkate. The whole time I have to wonder what I see in Knox. What he triggers in me.
The problem is that I feel two things: affection and distance. Knox could be the lighthouse in the night or the storm over the roaring waves. I’m afraid of trusting the light, of getting closer to it, of feeling safe only, right at the edge of hope, to be torn down into the depths.