Page 2 of Asking for Trouble

He was the hottest man I’d ever seen in my life, andof course, he was seeing me like this, flushed from the effort to breathe without coughing up a lung, anything but cute in my black and blue Evergreen Gas polyester vest.

“You gonna survive, beautiful, or do you need a hand?” he asked, amusement rich in his tone as he swaggered up to the counter on a slow, unbalanced stride that should have been ridiculous but somehow seemed right.

I held up a shaky hand and gave in to the impulse to cough loudly into the crook of my other elbow. When I could finally breathe again, I flipped my thick blue hair over my shoulder and leveled him with a cool look.

“Can I help you with something?”

His full mouth twitched at the corners as he unabashedly checked me out. “Not a question you should ask a man like me without addin’ some caveats.”

“Does a man like you know what ‘caveats’ even means?” I retorted sweetly, batting my lashes.

He laughed and damn him because it was a gorgeous sound, rolling and low. When he finished, he wiped at his mouth as if he could erase his smile. “You aren’t wearin’ a name tag.”

I blinked at him because he hadn’t asked a question.

Another laugh, this one just a rumble through his throat. “What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?”

“Called Boner by my friends,” he said, so straight-faced I wondered if he could actually be serious about it. “But pretty girls call me Aaron until they learn why I earned that nickname for themselves.”

Despite myself, I chuckled. “You’re not serious, are you? This shtick doesn’t actually work on women.”

He shrugged one shoulder, leather jacket creaking. “Whaddya think?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly, enjoying his outrageousness and the perfect symmetry of his face more than I should.

I didn’t have time for boysortrouble.

And this guy was the prettiest boy I’d ever met, so of course, he was trouble with a capital T.

“Tell me your name,” he pressed, knocking his knuckles against the plastic countertop on his side of the partition. “Wanna know what to call you when I ask for your number.”

“You’re pushy.”

Another one-shoulder shrug. “You see somethin’ you like, why wouldn’t you make an effort to make it yours?”

“‘Make it’ implies a lack of consent,” I warned him, half serious and half flirting because I couldn’t help it. He was too damn charming.

“Oh, trust me, you’ll be askin’ me to kiss you minutes into our first date. Beggin’ me to make you come after an hour. Never taken anyone against their will in my life, never had to, and certainly never fuckin’ would.”

“Arrogance isn’t attractive,” I informed him, but really, it was a lie.

He didn’t take himself too seriously despite his obvious confidence. His smile was more goofy than smug, his tone full of humour implied he was laughing at himself as much as he was enjoying our interlude.

“Let me prove you wrong,” he suggested, leaning forward until he was so close to the slightly blurred plexiglass that I could see a faint scar cutting through the inky stubble on his chin. “The only thing I ‘make’ is trouble.” He winked outrageously, a self-mocking smile curving one side of his mouth. “What’s your name?”

I opened my mouth to tell him my name, my number, maybe even to demand he take me out on that first date at the end of my shift because I was curious about him, too curious, when his phone rang. The ringtone was AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell”.

Aaron cursed under his breath, excused himself reluctantly, and answered the call as he walked to the back of the shop. I couldn’t see him beyond the shelves, but I listened to the low murmur of his voice and hated myself for finding even that attractive.

To remind myself that I didn’t need the hassle of a man in my life, I hit a button on my phone to light up the home screen. The photo of a man appeared, heavily doctored by the edits I’d made with an app on my phone so that his eyes were crossed out and devil horns sprouted from his head.

Otto Granger, my ex-boyfriend, the man who stole all my savings six months ago.

We’d been dating for two years, living together in his basement suite in Whistler, on the track to spending the rest of our lives as a team.

And then one morning, I’d gone home to find the space cleared out, nothing but the dented metal lockbox I’d kept my savings in broke open on the kitchen counter. I didn’t care about the money as much as I ached for the disappearance of my mother’s sapphire ring. It was the only thing I had left of her, and I’d gone to dangerous lengths to take it with me when I’d fled home. To have my scumbag boyfriend steal it to pawn it off still made me prickly with rage.