Chapter 3
He stepped out of the fitting room, turning one way and then another in front of the store’s three-way mirror. “You think these are too big?”
He was wearing an undershirt, but he’d lifted it up so I could see his waist, which was narrow and had those little divots near his hip bones that might as well have been arrows pointing due south.
His skin was pale, and there was a smattering of hair—a shade darker than the dirty blond on his head—that disappeared beneath his waistband.
If he’d been a woman, I might have yanked at the jeans, trying to ascertain whether he could really go down a size.
Instead, I just blushed and said, “I’ll be right back. ”
I figured I’d have a minute to collect my thoughts while he tried everything on, but he kept talking to me through that curtain, asking how long I’d worked at Condon’s and if it ever got old, giving advice to guys like him with no sense of style.
The question made me smile because, while he didn’t exactly have style, he had swagger, which was almost the same thing.
The jeans were intended to be as tight in the ass as they were wide in the leg, and now that he was wearing the right size, they hugged him in all the right places. I swallowed and said, “Much better.”
He dipped back into the fitting room, and while he was changing, I tried to decide if I wanted him to ask for my number.
He was cute, for sure. And he seemed plenty confident.
But his hair was cut short on the sides, which meant there was a decent chance he was a cadet, and at twenty-three, I was all done with them.
“You over at the Citadel?” I asked as he was finishing up, and he threw back the dressing room curtain like he was mortally offended.
“Do I look like a cadet to you?”
I really studied him then, because by asking the question, he’d granted me permission to give him a good once-over.
I took my time, acting like I was weighing the pink of his ears and the thin scar over his left eye.
He had a straight nose and a strong jaw, and I decided that, in addition to being highly attractive, he had to be a good five years older than me. “So, are you active duty?”
“Lieutenant Paul Archer, United States Navy,” he said, giving me a mock salute, and right then and there, I knew I was sunk.