Page 33 of The CEO I Hate

“Earl, stop pestering the poor girl,” Mrs. Franklin cut in.

“I’m not pestering her, Nana. I’m shooting my shot.”

More like shooting himself in the foot. If this was how he flirted with all girls, he’d be lucky to get a date sometime this century. “Let’s just focus on the task.”

“I can multitask,” Earl said, popping his head up to waggle his eyebrows at me. We somehow managed to get the couch around the first landing and halfway up the stairs to the next before Earl’s face turned red from the effort. I didn’t even want to think about how I must look. “I can tell you’re playing hard to get, Mia. But that’s okay,” he grunted. “I’m a patient man.”

“Earl, you barely have a driver’s license.”

“Hey, I’m old enough to know a good thing when I see it. And you know what this couch would be good for? Movie nights.Romanticmovie nights.”

As if I needed the clarification. “For you and your grandmother?”

“Ah, come on!” Earl complained. “I’m a total catch.”

Yeah, like the flu. We wrestled the couch up another flight of stairs.

Footsteps carried up the stairs, slowing as a figure popped around the railing…who turned out to be Liam.Oh, great, I thought, huffing, abruptly aware of how red my cheeks probably were and what a sweaty mess I was.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked.

“Just some manual labor, man,” Earl said, clapping him on the shoulder. Liam looked at him like he was a bug he wanted to squish.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

Liam held up a six-pack of beer. “Watching the game with Jake. Can’t get up to his place any other way with the elevator out,” he saidbrusquely, eyeing up the scene. His gaze flicked briefly to Earl, who was shooting me a lopsided grin.

“Oh, right.” I’d forgotten the Lakers were playing tonight. I’d forgotten everything but how cumbersome this stupid couch was.

“Need a hand?” Liam asked, his voice clipped but polite.

Earl puffed up his chest. “My girl and I got it covered. No need to?—”

“I’m not your girl,” I told Earl pointedly for the fifth time.

“Not yet. But just you wait until we get this beauty all set up. Someone’s gonna need to break it in with me.”

There was a long pause.

And then Liam looked at him.

Just looked.

A look so cold, so precise, so lethal, it could’ve frozen the sun.

Move,” he said.

Earl blinked. And shrank.

“Yeah, man. Whatever,” he mumbled. “If you want to give it a go.” He stepped out of the way, and Liam picked up the end of the couch like it was nothing.

“Watch the?—”

“Railing,” I said. “I know.”

When we finally reached the fifth-floor landing, Mrs. Franklin rushed past. “I’ll grab the door.”

Liam and I maneuvered the couch down the hall with Earl walking next to me firing off passes like dollar bills at a stripper. The kid could not take a hint.