“A dynamo, sir?Really?”
In retrospect, it likely wasn’t my smartest move to throw gasoline on the fire of his already-raging temper. But my smarts apparently took a hike along with my sense of self-preservation right around the time the fourthbitchshot out of his snarling mouth.
There was a moment of total silence in the aftermath of my soft, incredulous blow. I simply stood there, smiling the placid customer-service smile I’d perfected years ago, watching my words make impact. He physically flinched back, as if I’d hit him, and then began to breathe so heavily he was almost panting. His face and neck mottled. His eyes narrowed to pinpricks. While actual steam was not yet leaking from his ears, I thought there was a solid chance his head was going to explode.
Unfortunately, in lieu of a Chernobyl-level meltdown, he opted for retribution. He lunged at me across the display case, his beefy hands headed directly for my throat, no doubt with firm intentions to wring it. I sucked in a sharp, startled breath. I had to give him credit — for such a large man, he was rather nimble. Even if I’d been prepared for him to follow through on the violent promise in his eyes, I was penned in behind the counter with nowhere to run. He was twice my size, not to mention twice as angry. When he came at me, the only thought in my head was, ‘Thank goodness there are so many people around to witness this ass-whooping, they’ll be able to call the ambulance quickly!’
But the ass-whooping never arrived.
One second, the man was lunging at me across the counter. The next, something tagged him around the collar and yanked him backward with such force, he sailed through the air like a puppet on strings.
What on earth?
It took my reeling mind a moment to realize that thesomethinglocked around the man’s rumpled collar was a large, tanned, masculine hand. And that hand was connected to a thick, equally tanned, muscular forearm. I followed the corded veins of that forearm up past the rolled cuff of a black button-down shirt, over the curves of a bicep straining the fabric, along the broad seam of a shoulder, all the way to the column of a throat that peeked out of a collar with the top two buttons left undone.
As I watched, the Adam’s apple in that throat bobbed up and down in a rough swallow. This bob immediately preceded a deep, rasping voice that made my would-be attacker — who, I couldn’t help but notice, looked just as bewildered as I did by this sudden shift in circumstances — go paler than the nightgown of a sickly Victorian child.
“I believe the lady asked you to leave.”
Chapter Two
Some people fight their inner demons. Mine mostly just want to cuddle.
- Gwen Goode, reflecting inwardly
At the sound of that voice, I went totally still.
Not because he called me a lady — a classification which, even if I’d been wearing my chicest pair of calf leather Louboutin boots with the spiked heel, would require a Gumbi-level stretch of the imagination. Not because he delivered his terse command with such bone-chilling authority, in a rumbling octave that clearly stated,I-am-not-fucking-around-here-so-don’t-test-me-motherfucker.
No.
I went still because I knew that voice. I’d heard it before and, as it did every time, hearing it set my teeth on edge. Because that voice belonged to the one, the only, the insufferable…
Graham Graves.
A man I disliked with a startling amount of vehemence. A man I’d go so far as to say I despised, if you caught me at the wrong moment. (Andthis, it must be said, was about as wrong a moment as you could catch me.)
“Graves,” I managed to bleat after a few seconds of shocked silence.
His green eyes sliced to mine. Goosebumps broke out on my arms as they slid over my face, sharp as a razor blade.
“Miss Goode,” he rumbled back.
Hellfire.
My teeth sank into my bottom lip as the effects of those two little words in that rich timbre stole through me. Annoying as I found Graham, there was something about his voice — that damned, deep, rasping voice — that got under my skin. Pushing away the irrational reaction, I focused instead on the simmering dislike that swelled inside me at the sight of his — it must be said — annoyingly attractive face. Freakishly chiseled jaw, high cheekbones, dark brows, straight nose. He looked like he belonged on the cover of Men’s Health, not standing in an occult shop with his iron-like grip on the collar of a squirming jerk hellbent on exacting revenge against me.
It had been a few months since I’d seen him — mostly because I’d been actively avoiding his presence. Not an altogether easy feat, I might add, seeing as my best friend Florence was currently head over heels in love with his best friend Desmond. This meant, even if I wanted to avoid Graham completely — and, trust me, I wanted to, I really freaking wanted to — I was strong-armed into spending time with the man far more frequently than was ideal. (The ideal frequency beingnever, for the record.)
Our gazes held for a prolonged beat. I wondered if my eyes were as wide as they felt on my face. I wondered if my expression conveyed my shock at seeing him there, in my store, mere feet away from me. He’d never been here, not in the two years since I started running things, and almost certainly not in the three decades my aunt ran it before me.
“Um,” I breathed, swallowing hard. “What are you…”
I trailed off stupidly. I had no idea what to say to him in this situation. Not that I ever had an idea what to say to him inanysituation, seeing as I avoided situations that included him at all costs. With effort, I smoothed my features into a look of composure I’d spent years honing. My patented Ice Queen look. I’d been using it with the customer while he was causing a scene, but it had slipped a bit at Graham’s unexpected interruption.
Graham’s face, I noted, was carefully blank. He didn’t seem to be exerting any effort at all in holding onto the seething man thrashing against his hold like a misbehaving toddler in need of parental restraint.
“Let go of me!” The man hissed. If he’d been angry before, he was full-on enraged now. Teeth snapping with each word, eye whites flashing like a feral animal that knows its been cornered by a far stronger predator. “I mean it! This is harassment! I’ll sue you!”