Anyone But Rich (Anyone But..., #1)(31)

“Go,” Rich barked.

She rolled her eyes and finally left.

“What are you smiling about?” Rich asked.

I put my hand over my mouth, as if I didn’t quite believe him when he said I’d been smiling. Sure enough, I was. “Nothing.”

Rich gestured for me to take a seat at one of the barstools in his kitchen. He moved around the island toward the refrigerator and grabbed two frosty glasses. He disappeared under the counter for a few seconds, clinked some heavy bottles together, and then emerged with a blender and some liquor in his hands. The bastard made eye contact with me while he unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves and rolled them up his forearms.

He absolutely knew what he was doing. It was the male equivalent of whipping out a little cleavage, and his forearm cleavage was unfortunately superb. Trying to pull my eyes off his tanned, muscular arms was as futile as trying to open those impenetrable plastic clamshell packages with your bare hands.

“Thirsty?” he asked.

I ripped my eyes off his arms and felt the blood rush to my cheeks. “I was just noticing your scar,” I said. It was total bullshit, but he’d been enough of an ass to call me out on staring, so I didn’t feel bad for fibbing. I scanned my eyes after the fact and noticed he did actually have a scar on the back of his hand like a little white smudge.

He chuckled. “Cocktails,” he said. “I was asking if you were thirsty for cocktails.”

If it was possible, I blushed even harder. “I knew what you meant.” I definitely hadn’t known, and this was already shaping up to be a disaster of an evening.

“The scar is a pretty lame story, actually.”

“Richard King and lame in the same sentence? I’m intrigued.”

I watched him mix the drinks with mild fascination. I’d never been a drinker. When most people said that, they meant they’d had their fun in high school here and there and now they only occasionally had wine with the girls or a beer after dinner. When I said I’d never been a drinker, I meant I’d literally never been drunk. My experience with alcohol was a sip of beer when my family toured a brewery on vacation several years ago, a sip of wine at my cousin’s wedding, and that beer cheese dip you could get with pretzels sometimes.

My avoidance of alcohol had no moral explanation. It started out because I didn’t like the taste, and then I just never saw a reason to start drinking, especially when I had enough money trouble as it was.

And yet here I was, watching Rich mix up some kind of neon-blue drink with ice, lemons, and a few additions of other mysterious substances.

“Are you going to tell me about the scar?” I asked.

“Sorry, I just—” He grabbed a metal cup, flipped some of the drink into it, and shook it over his shoulder a few times. “I’ve never been a good multitasker. One-track mind kind of thing.” He sloshed a portion of the drink into each of the chilled glasses and pushed one toward me. “There. That’s a Rich King special. I call it a slutty grandma.”

I laughed. “I’m sorry. As tempting as that sounds, I’m not really a drinker.”

“What? Why not?”

“Hey, I was the one asking questions. You were supposed to tell me about your scar.” In the back of my mind, I knew I was screwing up. I’d come here with plans to be icy. Bone cold. The cold-eyed killer with a pair of rocks for ovaries. So far, I felt more like the melty-hearted teenager with a raging case of hormones and a brain that was being taken over by a vagina gone rogue. I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea, and I didn’t want to give myself any more bad ideas about Rich. Iris and Miranda would disown me if I decided I wanted to give Rich a second chance. Hell, I’d disown me.

But I was being pulled along by a kind of gravity when I was with him. The right words stuck in my throat and the only ones that would come dug me deeper and deeper into trouble. The worst part was that I was starting to enjoy the kind of trouble Rich brought.

I felt alive.

I wasn’t just some small-town girl when Rich’s eyes were on me. I wasn’t the boring one of my group of friends in his eyes. I was something special. Something to be desired. Rich wanted me. Not just the idea of me. Not some version of me that might exist in the future or that existed in the past. He didn’t want to hang me like a trophy on his shelf or parade me around to further his career. He wanted me. Plain and simple. Every last word of that was true, and I knew it as clear as day when I saw the way he looked at me.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “Try a sip of my slutty grandma. Just give her a taste,” he added, and he was clearly having too much fun with the name he’d given his drink. “You do that, and I’ll tell you about my scar.”

“Fine. I’ll taste your slutty grandma,” I said with a little grin. I wondered if he knew how much I felt like I was betraying everyone and everything with that little grin and the note of playfulness in my voice. Probably. I thought Richard King was the kind of man to know exactly what he was doing at all times.

I sipped the drink and was surprised it didn’t have any of the off-putting alcohol taste that I expected. It was strong and fruity with a kind of kick in the aftertaste. “She’s not bad,” I admitted, even though I was more than tempted to take another sip. “Do I get to ask why you named a drink after your grandma?”