Page 13 of Back in the Saddle

“What do I do for a living?” he asked in return.

As I suspected…

But worse.

“You investigated me?”

He started folding the paper bags he’d emptied, and there were vegetables and other food-style detritus all over my kitchen bar.

It was a new look for my kitchen, and I would have liked the time to peruse it, but I only had eyes for Eric, and not the usual only-having-eyes-for-him kind.

“We investigated all of you.”

Although this confirmed my suspicions about why he was there last night, such was the drama of being confronted by this confirmation, I took a step back and put my hand to my forehead, crying, “Oh my God! I don’t know what to do with this. It’s so invasive, I can’t even process it.”

“Get over it,” he murmured while moving to my fridge.

Hold on part three.

“How did you know where I was last night?” I demanded. “Preciselywhere I was.”

No hesitation, he answered, “Like I said, we’ve been through this before. We aren’t fucking around since it’s happening again. So we got trackers on all your cars.”

At this information, I waited for my head to explode.

When it didn’t…

“Turner—” I began to tell him to get the hell out of my apartment.

“Right. I get it. You got a breast,” he muttered into the fridge. “Still gonna take longer than an hour.”

“Turner!” I snapped.

He straightened out of my refrigerator and turned to me.

With bad timing, his hot-guyness in my kitchen made its reality known, and since his hot-guyness was off the scales hot, I got flummoxed.

Me.

Jessica Rose Wylde…flummoxed.

That said, he had great hair. So black (my favorite non-color), it seemed unreal. It was also thick and had a lot of wave. He wore it longish and it curled around his ears in a way I could write an entire sub-chapter for the unrequited crush section of the Official Crushing on A Guy Handbook about how to cope with curbing your desire to touch something on a man you were crazy about, who was not crazy about you.

I never understood the concept of bedroom eyes, but the fathomless laziness of his inky black gaze sure as hell defined it for me.

Not to mention, his shoulders were very broad, so everything he wore hung on himjust right. And today, that was a pitch-black thermal that hugged his shoulders and biceps and pecs so lovingly, I was jealous…of a shirt.

To put a fine point on it, there was a lot to be flummoxed about.

Before I could recover, something I didn’t know how to do because I’d never in my life been in that state, there was a knock on the door.

I was still attempting recovery, so Eric sauntered out from around the kitchen bar and went to the door.

His sauntering was detrimental to my recovery, as was the way his jeans highlighted his fantastic ass and thick thighs, so I was still standing there speechless when he opened it.

“Whoa!” I heard cried. Then, shyly, “Uh…hi.”

“Hey,” Eric replied.

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