“Hold up, I’m doing the mermaid walk,” she said.
“You look ridiculous.”
She was walking the way Dottie had taught us, with her upper legs close together, like she was wearing an invisible tight skirt instead of her jean cutoffs with the frayed edges.
Once she finally caught up to me, she said, “Hey, let’s try out our new charms on that hottie over there.” She pointed her chin to a man who was puzzling over a parking meter. “Just for practice,” she said.
I would have agreed, but the very tall, very handsome Nordic-looking man with the broad shoulders and narrow waist was not suitable for practice. He was more like the final exam. He was the man equivalent of a PhD thesis paper.
Shayla abandoned her mermaid walk and dragged me up to Mr. Clearly Not From Around Here.
“They don’t need to be fed on Sundays,” she said.
“Who?”
“The parking meters, silly.”
He turned to her, and I followed his gaze as it travelled from Shayla’s eyes to her lips and then to her fingertips, which were rubbing back and forth along her collarbone and exposed shoulder, where her striped shirt was falling off.
Dottie had recommended wearing high-maintenance clothing that required constant adjustment. Men are attracted women who are constantly correcting their clothing, or so Dottie said. I had a little pebble in my cork-soled sandals, but I didn’t think she meant I should take my shoe off my sweaty foot and shake it around to impress this guy.
“I guess I scrounged up a pocket full of change for nothing,” he said. His voice was deep, but I shouldn’t have been surprised, since it had so far to go, up that long neck of his. How tall was he? Six foot four? At least.
He had a good-sized shoe on him, too. My whole body experienced a naughty, tingling sensation as I drank him in with my eyes, from his hiking boots to his lightweight brown chinos and up. My gaze got stuck briefly around his zipper, pondering exactly what was causing a sizable shadow in that area. A wrinkle in the fabric? A giant python? A tree trunk for one to climb with her bare-naked vagina?
Oh dear. My cheeks flushed with heat, and my nervous hands went to my hair, twirling strands between my fingers.
That had been another one of Dottie’s man-charming tricks: twirl your hair and draw a strand across your mouth, dragging your fingers across your lips to make him think about you touching his naughty business with those lips. (Okay, she didn’t say that last part, but come on.)
Shayla beat me to it, already rubbing one forefinger against her lower lip as she gazed up at the stranger with her golden eyes, artfully peeking through a fringe of eyelashes.
The muscles in his cheeks moved as he clenched his handsome jaw, smooth shaven with just a few specks of his gold-hued beard hair, glowing in the afternoon sun like grains of brown sugar on a cinnamon bun. Heaven help me, but he was one beautiful man, from his dreamy blue eyes to his thick, sun-bleached hair and fair eyebrows.
I hadn’t seen a man so utterly breathtaking since high school, when I’d been the President, Secretary, and only member of the Adrian Storm Appreciation Club. Adrian had been tall as well, but so scrawny that our art teacher joked that the metal lip ring was the only thing keeping him from blowing away in a stiff breeze. Adrian always wore extra-large black T-shirts for his favorite bands—shirts so big you could have fit two Adrians in them—and I’d dutifully note the names of the bands and listen to their music as though Adrian had recommended them to me personally. I didn’t like the same music he did, nor his favorite movies. Our tastes were polar opposites, but I could appreciate the things he liked, and I thought that with enough exposure, I might also like them.
One of his favorite bands, if you believed the T-shirts, was Led Zeppelin. Which was kind of a funny coincidence, given that this handsome, muscular stranger in front of me was also wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt over his broad chest.
Hot buttered noodles, it was him. Adrian Storm.
CHAPTER 6
At the sight of Adrian Storm, my blood did that thing where it turns to iced tea. You’ve got warm blood in you one minute, then iced tea.
Right there, in the sexy indentation below his lower lip, was the tiniest knob of scar tissue from where the stainless steel lip ring had been. The one he’d flicked while waiting for the slow lab computers to load up yearbook photos.
“Looks like you got the wrong size shirt,” he said to Shayla. “This one keeps trying to get away from you.” He reached down and shifted the wide-necked striped shirt so it was centered again and not falling off Shayla’s lovely chocolate milk shoulder.
“It’s supposed to do that,” Shayla said, pulling the shirt to the side again and sweeping her fingertips across her bare skin.
Adrian turned to me, the full force of his gorgeousness nearly knocking me down in my hungover, post-workshop, confused state. “I used to wear shirts that were way too big. Remember that, Peaches?”
“Looks like you grew into your collection, big boy,” I said. “You’re all bumpy now.”
Shayla shot me a look of shock, but she knew as well as anyone that my mouth does not wait for my brain to send orders.
“I’d say the same about you,” he said, those dazzling blue eyes roving down my body slowly, seeking every valley like a summer rainstorm.
“Adrian!” Shayla yelled, recognizing him at last.
He didn’t take his eyes off me. “That dress is the perfect color for you, isn’t it? Take off those sunglasses and let me see your pretty eyes.”
I snatched away the sunglasses and crossed my arms over my chest. “My eyes are up here. Stop eye-groping my peaches.”
Adrian chuckled, his chiseled cheeks taking on a rosy glow.
He said, “What are you up to these days? Are you just visiting, or did you never leave B-town?”
“I went away to college.”
Shayla snorted. “For one and a half semesters.”
I shot her a searing shut-up look. “At least mine’s paid off.”
“I’m a disappointment, too,” Adrian said, lowering his eyes, his long, fair eyelashes nearly brushing his cheeks. “I guess I should just come right out and admit the awful truth.”
Shayla was still rubbing her collarbone, angling her h*ps away from him but her toe pointing at him, as we’d practiced.
“You’re broke,” she said, leaning against the parking meter like it was a stripper pole. I wished I had Shayla’s body confidence, but all mine shoots out of my mouth.