Ever Tempted (28 page)

It was him.

The guy from my dreams, but he had a face.

Was he breathing?

Was I breathing?

My cheeks burned.

Like staring at the sun, it was difficult to look at him for more than a few seconds. So I didn’t.

The maids turned me to face the guy as they pulled mulch from my clothes.

His anger transformed to something else as he scanned the flowerbed, looked to the floors of the house above me, and then back to me. He worked his stubble-covered jaw and balled his fist.

“I’m—I’m so sorry. I must have tripped.” I politely turned Thomas’s hand away. All I needed was to stumble again and pull him down in the flowerbed with me. “I hope I didn’t mess up the flowers.”

I kept the member of the yard maintenance crew in my peripheral. It was sort of hard not to. I turned back to Thomas.

“I’m so sorry. Are you okay? I should have been watching where we were walking. I’m so sorry.” Thomas’s cheeks blazed red as I tried to see around him.

“Who is that?” I asked Thomas.

The guy with the weed eater moved from my sight. He reappeared, standing on the right side of the onlookers as he stared at the fourth floor.

Thomas ignored my question and worked to get me standing in an upright position.

“Your whole backside is covered. I don’t know how you fell from there to here.” Dalton took too much time to dust the back of my pants.

I shoved away his hands.

His mischievous grin returned.

Thomas glared at Dalton and led me out of the flowerbed.

I stomped dirt off my feet and said to Dalton, “I’m going to have to keep an eye on you.”

“You can put whatever you want on me.”

The weed eater guy’s dark red lips pursed, and his strong jaw drew taut. He glared at Dalton.

As if I were the nasty brown stuff dripping from a rusty hole in a dumpster, a clump of gaudy, over-dressed girls close to my age glared at me. As if I were the kind of girl they’d just left with a twenty-dollar bill behind a dumpster, the other guys sneered.

I shuddered.

“What happened exactly?” Thomas asked, his face white now.

“Um, I fell?” Was there a right answer?

“Well, come along, then. Let’s not give them anything else to whisper about.” Thomas tugged me past the crowd. The yard guy sank into the multitude and out of sight.

Odessa Gillespie Black
lives in the beautiful North Carolina foothills with her husband, four children, Chihuahuas Little Bit and Rico, and rescued Lab and Pit mix, Mo. When not chasing dogs around the backyard and tackling the daily duties of mother-and-wife-hood, she enjoys watching horror movies and reading and writing paranormal romance. Readers can visit Odessa’s website at odessablack.wordpress.com, and find her on Facebook.