Once in a Lifetime(45)

Breakfast of champions.

“Hey.”

At the sound of Ben’s voice behind her, she jumped. “Where did you learn to walk so quietly?”

“Work.”

She thought about what that might mean, given that he’d been working in places far more dangerous than she could possibly contemplate. She craned her neck to look at him and gasped. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing gave you a black eye?”

He shrugged.

She went to the freezer beneath the counter and pulled out a small bag of frozen peas.

He looked at the bag. “Why do you have frozen peas in a bookstore?”

“They’re for cramps.” She placed the bag over his eye, smiling when he sucked in a breath at the cold. “Baby,” she said.

His look might have had another man wetting his pants and any woman on the planet licking her lips, but she told herself she was unmoved.

But she wasn’t. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he repeated. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t answer questions for people who answer a question with another question.”

He smiled. “How about we each answer a question?”

She opened her mouth, but he put a finger to her lips. “With a twist,” he said.

Her stomach fluttered. “What’s the twist?”

“If you don’t answer, you get a dare.”

Her brain went off the rails at the thought of what a dare might include. But curiosity won over self-preservation. “Deal. Tell me what happened to you.”

“I went to talk to Pink and Kendra’s dad.”

“So…he punched you?”

“Nah. He’s just a little guy.”

“Then who punched you?”

“Dan and I were having a private little chat and his two linebacker buddies decided they didn’t like me much.”

“So they punched you?”

He shrugged. “One of them got a shot in before.”

“Oh, my God, you are the worst storyteller ever,” she declared, tossing up her hands and making him smile. “Before what?” she demanded.

He watched her, still clearly amused. “Before they decided they were done tangling with me,” he finally said.

“Yeah?” she said, eyes narrowing. “And what made them decide that?”

He just kept looking at her.

“You took them both down?” she asked, horrified.

“Your turn to talk,” he said enigmatically.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I had to dig that story out of you. You owe me a dare by default.”

“Sure,” he agreed too easily in that low, gruff voice that made her nipples harden. “Anything.”

She nearly swallowed her tongue. “You can’t promise me ‘anything,’” she said, annoyed to find she sounded breathless.

He didn’t look worried. “Why? Are you going to take advantage of me?”

Her entire body tightened at the thought of all she could do to take advantage of him and the pleasure they could both get out of it.

He took in her expression and laughed softly. “Hold that thought. Now answer my question or face a dare.”

“I’m hiring a mechanic.”

“Thought you couldn’t afford one.”

“I can’t,” she said, trying not to notice that his hair was still wet from a recent shower, and that he smelled really good. Guy good, like soap and deodorant and Ben. She wanted to press her face to his throat. Especially since he’d clearly skipped shaving that morning—and maybe the day before, too—and had the exact right amount of scruff on his face to make him look hot as hell.

He came closer, giving her a better view of the way his broad shoulders stretched the material of his shirt and how his long legs were encased in denim worn to a buttery softness by myriad washings, lovingly cupping certain parts—

He shut the laptop she still had open on the counter.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hay is for horses.” He hauled her close, making her breath catch in her throat as her gaze drifted to his mouth.

The mouth she’d been dreaming about.

Damn him.

Then she realized that mouth was moving, and the words sank in. “I sabotaged your car,” he said.

She blinked. “What?”

“Yeah. I removed your coil wire. It’s back in now, though. Your car’s fine, Aubrey.”

When this computed, she went from the good kind of hot to the very bad kind of hot in the blink of an eye. She couldn’t even speak. All she did was sputter. A minute ago, she’d wanted to press herself to him like white on rice. She still wanted that. But she wanted to smack him more. She settled on giving him a good shove.

He didn’t budge.

“I wanted to see what you were up to,” he said. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“It was none of your business!”

He shrugged, and that just pissed her off even more. “Why?” she managed. “Why does anything I do even matter to you?”

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. The sound of his palm scrapping over several days’ worth of whisker growth had her belly quivering. Keep it together. “Why, Ben?”