Chapter Nine
While waiting for Reece to arrive, Sloane decided to message with one of the guys she’d matched with a while back on her dating app. Even though she hadn’t been actively pursuing anything on the apps for a couple months, she still logged in every once in a while to see if anyone new had joined in her area. Nope. Pickings were still slim. She’d been in an epic form of phone tag with a guy named Frank. A flurry of messages would be sent over the course of a day, and then complete radio silence for a couple weeks. They’d been in this pattern for a good two months.
Frank: Sorry, sweet cheeks, I can’t meet up tonight. I have to stay late at work.
Frank had an affinity for cutesy nicknames and the unfortunate genetics of a receding hairline.
Sloane blew out a sigh of relief. It saved her the trouble of having to come up with an excuse to text him to get out of meeting tonight. Which was what had happened the last four times. What did it say about her that she couldn’t seem to make it past the texting stage to go on an actual date?
Sloane sat at the kitchen counter, working on her latest cross-stitch of the phrase MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED? She’d started cross-stitch as a way to pass the time after her breakup with Brian. Usually they were snarky sayings that made the sting of being freshly single hurt a little less. Lately, she’d turned to cross-stitching when she was stressed. Like now. What had she been thinking buying Reece at the auction? She should just text him and tell him that he was done and email his chief. There were a lot of adjectives in her arsenal to describe her personality. Petty and vindictive weren’t among those. She sighed and pulled up her disastrous dating profile on her phone. A few new matches. None that really piqued her interest.
She was hoping that the book she’d ordered from Prime would get here sooner than later. E-books weren’t really her thing—they tended to hurt her eyes—so she’d opted for paperbacks. She’d caved and bought one of those self-help books Madison had raved about. Because after being stood up for the twenty-fifth time (not that she was keeping count or anything), she was beginning to think that it was an issue with her instead of the men. Seriously, was she that pathetic that she couldn’t even make it to the first date? Maybe this should be part of her yearly goals, like the ones Erin put in her planner. Sloane wasn’t really the planner type. She’d much rather fly by the seat of her pants. But she was willing to try anything at this point, so she grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper off the counter.
She tapped her pencil on the paper, thought for a minute, and then started scrawling.
Goals for Next Year
Go on an actual date and enjoy it.
Have an insanely hot one-night stand.
Have someone make me breakfast in bed.
Fall in love.
She stared at the last one, frowned, and then erased it. The New Year hadn’t even started yet, and the last one was just too much pressure. Where was she supposed to find someone to fall in love with? Portland should really work on providing a store at the mall that doled out husbands. Yes, I’d like one who is tall and tattooed, has a devilish smile, is smart but not overly cocky about it, and can put his wicked mouth to good use.
Ew, had she just described Reece? She shuddered and scrubbed that from her mind.
A knock came from the door, pulling her out of her thoughts. Sloane set down her pencil and made her way to the door.
Instead of the UPS man, Reece stood in the hallway.
“You’re here quicker than expected.” Not the warmest of welcomes. Then again, being jilted yet another time by Frank didn’t exactly put her in a warm and fuzzy mood. She did feel a little bad, since Reece had gotten the brunt of her bad moods twice in the same week. But after three graveyard shifts in a row at the hospital, her well was depleted.
“Can’t have you dealing with unclogged pipes.” Reece procured a snakelike tool from his toolbox and gave her one of his signature lopsided grins. A single quirk of his lips sent a tingle zipping up her spine. His lips, a dark pink, looked soft. Like they’d feel like silk if they grazed down her body. Holy crap, it was warm in here. She grabbed the bottom of her shirt and pulled it away from her, letting cool air flow across her skin. Seriously, it was not fair that someone who annoyed her so much was so hot.
“Awesome.” She led him to the bathroom. She’d thought about all the ways she could torture him just with bathroom supplies. Organize her tampons, clean the hair out of her hairbrushes, alphabetize her cosmetics. But since she didn’t exactly like standing in an inch of water while she washed her hair, she’d settled on the practical and asked him for this.
He was dressed in faded jeans, a white T-shirt, and—surprise, surprise—a plaid long-sleeve flannel shirt.
“Where’s Peaches?” she asked, perching on the sink area. Her feet dangled, her heels resting on one of the knobs for the drawers. He bent over to unscrew the metal drain thingy from the shower. She really should brush up on her bathroom vernacular.
“She’s at my mom’s house. Mom says it’s like having a grandkid. Lord help us all.”
He shucked off his flannel shirt, hung it on the towel rack, and went back to his spot kneeling in front of her shower. His dark jeans stretched across his legs as he squatted down to assess the damage. Sloane’s throat went dry. Reece had massive thighs, the kind that pushed the fabric of his jeans to the brink. Ones that her fingers itched to squeeze, to feel the muscles jump under her touch.
She blinked away that last thought.
When they’d been growing up, he had always been a head taller than most of the guys at school. He’d sported broad shoulders by the time he’d hit high school, and when Sloane was a freshman and he was a senior, she remembered seeing all the girls fawn over him in the halls.
He’d been with his girlfriend, Amber, since sophomore year. Sloane remembered how he didn’t even look in another girl’s direction. High School Reece and Current Day Reece seemed worlds apart. Now, instead of steady girlfriends, he went on dates as often as she changed her underwear.
“I think it’s sweet that your mom likes the dog.” Reece bent over farther, and the fabric of his shirt rode up, exposing a sliver of tanned skin and two dimples on his lower back. The muscles flexed as he pivoted and grabbed the drain snake. Her fingers curled around the edge of the counter. Holy wow, he was nice to look at.
Reece shoved the tool into the drain and dug around in there. His triceps flexed, along with muscles she swore did not exist in her anatomy and physiology books.
He grunted and reached farther down. “Uh, Sloane. Are you the only person to use your shower?”
“Yes . . . why?”
He pulled out a massive clump of blue gunk. “It looks like you murdered a blue Wookiee and tried to dump the evidence in your shower.” Good thing she’d cleaned off her shower wall. It could have been considered a mini crime scene. Like one of those cartoon birds splatting against a window and—poof! Feathers everywhere. But in her case, it was tufts of blue hair.
“I was getting sick of his yeti calls.” She made a Chewie sound in the back of her throat.
Reece turned and smiled at her, flashing a dimple.
Her brain turned into a discombobulated mess. There were so many options. Too many neurons firing.
Option 1: Tackle him into the shower, tear his shirt off, and take advantage of all those muscles.
Option 2: Turn on the shower, watch his shirt plaster to his skin, and stare at him while puddles of drool trickled out of her mouth and pooled on the floor.
Option 3: Stay put and continue to have no fun.
The third option was obviously the most stupid of the three.
Stop this. You are being persuaded by pesky hormones.
Her legs crossed in response. At least her body knew that it needed to stay away. Her pervy mind was on another wavelength. Though she had to admit she was sick and tired of her dirty Tumblr feeds being the only form of action in her life. She wanted the real thing, damn it.
“You like something you see, Smurfette?”
She cleared her throat. “Package doesn’t matter if the insides are damaged goods.”
She expected him to stick her with a good comeback. Instead, he just shook his head and said, “I’m gonna let you in on a little secret.” He shifted and stood, his huge frame looking so out of place in her tiny bathroom. “We’re all a little damaged on the inside. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise.”
“I—That’s not always true.” She thought about her friends, her family. Everyone she knew had quirks, sure, but she didn’t think they were all broken. But something about the way he said it struck something deep inside her. Because, yeah, maybe she was a little broken. She’d fallen off the wall, and there were a few pieces that didn’t quite fit back in place. Did he see that in her? Was she that obvious?
“You don’t think so?” he asked. “The Sloane I knew wouldn’t waste her time with petty revenge plots on someone who was trying to do the right thing.”
He put down the drain tool, walked over to the sink, and brushed past Sloane to wash his hands.
She swallowed hard. “You want a truth bomb?”
He moved to dry his hands on the towel hanging from the rack next to Sloane, and he had somehow managed to slip in between her legs. Her body went on high alert, blood pulsing at the space between her thighs.
He looked down at her, his sandy hair falling over his forehead, his face inches from her. “Hit me with it,” he said. His hands moved to rest on either side of her hips, his thumbs brushing along her jeans. She swallowed hard.
Nope. Do not get distracted.
“Of course I’m damaged. I dated a guy for almost a decade who turned out to be a complete waste of time. So I’ve come to the conclusion that once a dick, always a dick.”
“Fair enough. I get you’re lumping me into that category. That’s your own cross to bear. But I’m here. Disposing of the blue Wookiee crime scene.”
A message beeped through her phone, tearing her out of the moment. Probably Frank again, apologizing for not meeting up with her. She’d heard it all at this point. The dude had to walk his dog. He forgot to put gas in his car. Got called into work. She couldn’t put all the blame on these men, though. She’d been just as guilty.
She opened it to find a text from him.
Frank: Sorry, I can’t meet up tomorrow either. I have to take my friend to the airport.
She closed down her phone quickly and placed it facedown on the counter.
“What was that?” Reece asked.
“Nothing.”
“I thought we were past the lying stage, Smurfette.”
He grabbed for the phone and turned the screen on.
His lips twisted into something that could be considered a grin. “A dating site? And what’s up with this Frank dude?”
“He’s just a guy I was thinking of seeing. But apparently not.”
Oh God, this was embarrassing. It was one thing to be on the sites, but for people other than Erin and Madison to know? She wasn’t ready for that.
“Why the dating site, though?”
Yeah, she didn’t exactly want to broadcast to the world that she was putting her hat in the online-dating ring. Especially when she was failing. Quite spectacularly. She snatched the phone away.
“I’m busy with work. Where else am I supposed to meet people?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Out and about.” He backed up a step, and she hated to admit that she’d liked the warmth of his body brushing against her skin.
“Great idea. Maybe I’ll come to your work and start dating everyone there.”
Reece’s eyes hardened. Not that he had any right to get possessive over his men. He’d done exactly that to her nursing unit.
“In fact, that Cole guy was pretty cute. Maybe I’ll get his number the next time we see each other.” Ugh. She hated that she was getting defensive again. But it was her automatic response. She’d been defending herself for months with her friends, fielding questions about why she wasn’t getting back into the dating game. She wasn’t even sure she knew how to date. She’d gone from a first date with Brian at the Cheesecake Factory to basically living with him for ten years.
“He has a girlfriend,” he gritted out.
“Oh darn. Guess I’ll just have to find someone else.”
He opened his mouth to say something and then shut it. Then he let out a heavy breath through his nose. “Do you want some help with it?” He pointed to her phone.
Dating advice from someone who didn’t make it past the first? Not exactly the type of help she needed.
“From you? Yeah, I think I’ll pass.” She hopped down from the counter but didn’t realize how close Reece had been standing. Her body rolled down his, one delicious inch at a time, her lady bits screaming, YAS, QUEEN, MORE OF THIS, as she roamed over each morsel of his skin.
Mistake. Big mistake. His hard muscles felt spectacular as they glided across her body.
Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap. Step away from the man candy. She quickly moved out of the bathroom and booked it to the kitchen, Reece trailing behind her.
“I’m serious. What could it hurt for me to take a look?”
He wanted to look at her disaster of a dating life? Fine. Not like he could make it any worse. She sighed and handed over the phone.
His eyes scanned the phone, and she kept her hands from fidgeting. This was like someone reading her diary. Her cousin had done that in fifth grade and had read an excruciating passage of how she’d had a crush on Michael Lamont and how he’d liked Fern Anderson. Oh, fifth-grade angst.
He cleared his throat. “I know we don’t get along on the best of days, but even I can’t let you have an unapproachable online profile.”
She crossed her arms. No way her profile was that bad. Maybe a little too honest, but since when was honesty a bad thing? “What about it is unapproachable?”
“For starters, why are you telling people that you’re an ice queen? I mean, I know that is a fact”—he smirked—“but it’s not something you want to advertise.”
“It was supposed to be a joke.” So maybe her brand of sarcasm didn’t translate to online dating. Why had she even put that in? Was it because, even though she’d been on these sites for a few months, she had yet to really give anyone a chance? Everyone on here seemed so . . . fake. There was the one guy who’d claimed he was thirty-two and then ended up being nineteen. Then there was the guy who’d hid his criminal record. She wanted to find someone, but the whole online thing just didn’t match her style. Then again, where was she supposed to meet someone? She’d never date a doctor. And she didn’t work with many male nurses. Basically, it was slim pickings in the eligible-bachelors department. And now, here was Reece ridiculing her pathetic attempt at a dating profile. Seriously, could this get any more embarrassing?
“It doesn’t come off as a joke. Not when guys are skimming.”
“What is this? A half-assed class assignment?”
He chuckled. “Think of it like a CliffsNotes version of yourself.”
She schooled her features and put on a cool front. “Then what would you put?”
“You like that baking show with the British people, and you like wearing those shirts with the horrible Harry Potter puns. Why not start with that?”
Sloane did a double take. This was Reece she was talking to, right? They’d grown up together, but he was always around in the sense that they shared the same space. Went to the same movies because it was convenient. He’d been on the periphery. She never knew he’d actually bothered to notice stuff about her. And here he was, already creating a better online-dating rap sheet than she could come up with on her own.
She snatched the phone from him and pocketed it. “Thanks. I’ll consider putting those in.”
“Or you could add that you sleep with your mouth open and drool. I’m sure there’s a market for that.”
Yep. There was the Reece she knew. �
�You’ve been so helpful. Thanks again for unclogging my drain. I’ll let you know when I have my third chore.” She’d blazed through the first two and would make sure to drag out the final two a bit more.
But before she could shoo him out the door, he picked up the piece of paper on the kitchen counter that she’d been scribbling on, the one with her goals.
“What’s this?”
A spike of alarm zipped up her spine. That list was for her eyes only. Because, hello, embarrassing. “Reece. Give that to me.” She tried to hide the panic in her voice, but the last word caught in her throat.
She went to make a grab for it, but he was taller and held it higher than she could jump.
“Goals for next year, huh?”
“They’re stupid.”
His playful demeanor shifted. “Why are any of these stupid?” he demanded.
Okay, so she didn’t think they were, but she didn’t want Reece, of all people, knowing just how badly she wanted these things. She practically ached for them. “They just are. Now will you please put it down?”
He relented and set the list on the counter. “Just putting it out there—I’ve heard I’m not a bad date.”
“I’ll take that into consideration. But seeing how the last time with you went, I think I’ll pass.”
His lips pressed into a hard line. “You know why I turned you down, Sloane. And it had nothing to do with whether I wanted you or not.”
“Next time just say that to Drunk Me, okay? Because even while hammered, I still remember, Ew, Sloane.”
His hands went to her arms, cupping them. He moved into her space again, his huge body towering over her. This was a horrible time to think she needed to take up mountain climbing—she’d need a pickax and rope to scale Mount Reece.
His gaze burned into her, heating her blood until it simmered in her veins. “Trust me when I say the last thing that comes to mind when I think of you is Ew. I was stupid and immature, and I’m sorry. And if you were sober that night, I would have taken you back to your bed and fucked you until you couldn’t walk the next day. But you weren’t.”
Up In Flames (Flirting with Fire Book 2) Page 9