Dark Sexy Knight (A Modern Fairytale)(6)

Or maybe it was because—and this speculation bothered Colt so much that he tried to push it out of his mind almost the second it arrived—Verity Gwynn was exactly the sort of girl that he quietly dreamed of but never attracted.

He refocused on Lynette, tuning back into her diatribe.

“. . . and if you ever pull a stunt like that again, I will have no problem throwing your moody ass out the . . .”

He tugged his bottom lip between his teeth, trying to look contrite as his mind efficiently produced a picture of Verity’s bright, beaming smile for his torment. Light skin. Freckles. Pink lips. Dark lashes. Blue eyes. Deep blue eyes looking up at him with need, with hope, with gratitude.

He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he let it go in a soft hiss.

The women that Colt attracted were nothing like Verity. They were experienced, overconfident, sexed-up huntresses who sought him out at the stables after the show to fulfill a fantasy. They were looking for a dark, sexy knight to throw them down on the hay and have his way, and sometimes—more often than not—he was happy to oblige them, playing up the character of Viking Knight with snarls and growls, flexing his muscles as he pounced on them for meaningless sex.

Afterward, in the awkward farewell that followed, he felt embarrassed by the way they looked at him—like a piece of meat they’d bought at the butcher and sampled for their fleeting pleasure. These quick assignations didn’t ring triumphant. They left him feeling resentful and brittle, used and disposable, and he hated the quiet longing deep inside that cried out for more. He ignored it. He silenced it.

Because petite, pretty, girls next door like Verity Gwynn didn’t look at boys like Colton Lane. Never had. Never would. They were looking for some goody-two-shoes college boy who worked as a banker or lawyer and had never been in any trouble. And it was probably for the best. Hell, he’d probably break her in half with his body alone, and if she somehow survived that, he’d finish off the job by breaking her heart with his taciturn, loner ways. He was better off alone. And a girl like that was definitely better off without a man like him.

“. . . me! I make the hiring decisions for The Legend of Camelot, not you! Do you understand? Colton! Are you hearing me? Do. You. Understand?”

Colt nodded his head. “Yes, ma’am.”

Lynette huffed angrily as she opened her car door and snatched the box of applications, pens, and flyers from his arms. “Never again!”

“No, ma’am,” he said, turning away from her car.

“Stupid muscle-head,” she muttered as she slammed the door shut.

Already several paces away, Colton stopped in his tracks, clenching his jaw with fury as she pulled out of her parking space and headed for the exit.

“Fuck you!” he bellowed as she turned out of the parking lot and onto a busy main street. Pulling the asinine helmet from his head, he chucked it across the lot and watched it bounce over the tops of cars before finally falling to the ground with a clatter. He ripped the fur cape from his throat, hurling it into a puddle of greasy water on the asphalt, where he left it, soiled and abandoned.

Fuck her, he thought again, as he yanked his keys from the pocket of his jeans and strode toward his car. Who the f*ck was she anyway? A recruiter for a shitty, knock-off dinner theater. A dried-up old hag who checked out his body like a slavering bitch in heat, then dressed him down for helping a young girl at the end of her rope.

Scowling as he found his car, he unlocked the door and slipped inside the veritable oven with an angry grunt.

June in Atlanta was relentlessly hot, and it did nothing to soothe his temper. But the thing is? He wasn’t just angry at Lynette. He was furious with himself too.

The last thing he needed was to be on someone’s shit list. His only aim in life was to keep his head down, make money, and live quietly, and he’d just f*cked that up, putting himself on Lynette’s short list of people to can. Why? For a pair of pretty f*cking eyes? Well, screw that. Miss Down-On-Her-Luck and her googly-eyed sidekick could fend for themselves from here on out. He was finished playing the Good Samaritan.

“Don’t stick your neck out, stupid,” he said, shaking his head as he turned the key in the ignition.

He opened the windows to let out the heat and turned the air-conditioning on full blast, feeling beads of sweat slip down the sides of his face as he put the car in reverse and edged out of the parking space. Rolling up the windows, he headed for the exit, but his eyes were pulled to the left as the light turned red. There, at the bus stop, in the blaring late-afternoon sun, Verity and Ryan Gwynn stood side by side in the sweltering heat, waiting for a bus. And because it was a Sunday, Colt knew they could be there for a while.

“Eyes forward. Don’t even think about it,” he muttered aloud. He stared at the red light through the windshield, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel impatiently as he willed it to change.

His lips twitched when his eyes slid to the left again as if they had a mind of their own. And damn it if Verity Gwynn didn’t choose that exact moment to look over, her pretty face splitting into a grin of recognition as she waved at him. And f*ck if his hand didn’t lift from the steering wheel and wave the f*ck back.

That’s all it took for her to sprint over to his window, standing beside his car with a heat-reddened face and sparkling blue eyes as she practically pressed her nose against the glass.

He flicked a look into the rearview mirror as the light turned green, but no one was in line behind him, so he didn’t have an excuse not to roll down the window and see what she wanted.