Page 9 of Nothing to No One

“You’re buff, beau. You must have a strict diet and exercise regime.” She held up a green one. “What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue.”

Bambi laughed. “I don’t have any blue ones. Do they come in blue? I have red…” She set another red one on his jacket. “Orange…” When she offered it to his lips, he accepted it. Next she picked up a white one and set it aside, away from the red ones. “I don’t like the white ones… Yellow.” Bambi showed him one of those and another in the other hand. “And green…” With one between each thumb and forefinger she raised them up and down. “Which do you prefer?”

“What’s wrong with the red ones?”

Pleased, she pushed her shoulders back. “They’re my favorite, we eat those last.”

“You eat your favorite last?”

She nodded, wondering why his lips thinned. “Why is that funny?”

“It isn’t.” The words came out in a rush as he grabbed the side of her head. “It’s adorable.”

“Oh,” she said, popping another between his lips. “I’m not only adorable.”

“No?” He nodded when she held up the white one. “I’ll eat whatever you don’t like.”

Bambi fed him the white one and accepted the yellow one from him. “You think because I’m a small-town girl that I’m naive and innocent. Is that what you like? Is that why you kissed me?”

“I kissed you because it’s been such a long goddamn time since I looked at a woman and saw something…”

“What something?” she asked, taking the rest of the candy from his hand to dump it on the jacket in another pile.

FOUR

“PEOPLE MAKE ASSUMPTIONS,” he said. “You didn’t look like you were making assumptions.”

“Assumptions like the woman upstairs?”

“What woman?”

Lying down, she tucked an arm under her head and adjusted each of the gummy bear piles so she could rest on his jacket.

“The woman, the model, who brought you off stage. What were you whispering about?” He didn’t respond. “Sex… you were making arrangements to sleep with her.” When he didn’t say anything, she tipped her head to peek at him. “I told you I’m not just adorable.”

“You’re a sexpot too?”

“In my head sometimes anyway,” she said, stretching her legs to point her toes. “I know what a woman in heat looks like… She wanted you.”

“Did you see me talk to her?”

No, now that he mentioned it…. “I looked away, I didn’t want to intrude.”

“Well, you didn’t. I don’t have any interest in women like that.”

Oh, now, that was something. “What’s a woman like that? Are you assuming she’s loose because she propositioned you? If a man asked a woman for sex, you’d think he was amazing.”

“Want to have sex with me?”

The question was so abrupt that she stopped organizing her bears to blink up at him. “Right now?”

He laughed. “Babe, I don’t judge anyone for being direct. Games piss me off. I meant I’m not interested in what looks good. I won’t lie, yeah, she invited me to her bed.”

That was just confusing. “And because she’s pretty, you don’t want to be intimate with her?”

“Looks aren’t nothing. How could she know she wanted to sleep with me when we hadn’t exchanged two words?”

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