Page 69 of Dash

“You okay?”

I snap my gaze to him, blinking. “Yeah. Just thinking about carbs.”

He frowns at me. “Okay… why?”

He’s not ready for the explanation of what insanity just went through my head. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

Straightening his back, he comes to stand in front of me, pressing me back against the doorjamb. One hand goes over my head, the other rests on my hip, and I let out a giddy laugh. Holy hotness.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen movies that start this way. Are you going to fix my pipes next?”

He shakes his head at my ridiculousness. Then he tilts his head, giving me a look that makes my spine tingle and my thighs clench. “If I didn’t have a screwdriver in my hand and a half-installed deadbolt, I’d show you exactly what else I can fix.”

Oh, that tingle turns into a full-blooded, hot shiver. I place my hands on his chest, his skin as heated as mine.

I roll to my toes and kiss him. It’s wet and warm, soft and hard. Him and me.

“Babe, you keep kissing me like this and this lock isn’t getting done.”

My sigh is dramatic. “Fine. Do your work. I’ll quit distracting you.”

I watch him, his jaw flexing as if he’s not sure whether he wants to kiss me again or throw me over his shoulder. I really like how that makes me feel. To be wanted by someone like him isn’t something I thought would ever happen.

Men like Dash don’t fall for girls like me.

I’m so busy ogling him that I don’t see the danger before it’s too late. She comes out of nowhere, like a fucking demon crawling out of the shadows. And I don’t have time or chance to defend the most important thing in my life from the one thing guaranteed to destroy it.

“Darling, if you needed something fixed, I could have asked George.” Her voice crawls down my spine like a threat. She looks Dash up and down like he’s a piece of shit on her shoe, and my stomach twists. “Are shirts optional in your workplace?”

My mother’s nose is so high in the air, I don’t know how she’s not hurting her neck. She eyes his tattooed chest like it offends her, and it probably does.

Evelyn fucking Harrington thinks only thugs and criminals have tattoos.

She nearly called the police when I even suggested getting a tattoo when I was sixteen.

Dash straightens, sliding his screwdriver into his tool belt. His eyes are sharp as he takes in my mother with one sweeping glance that would have anyone else trying to become one with the wall.

Evelyn doesn’t so much as flinch.

“I’m not at work,” he says, meeting her judgment and passive aggressive disapproval toe to toe.

She clutches her overpriced designer handbag, like she’s afraid he might snatch it out of her hands.

My brain is short-circuiting. I mean, I knew at some point Dash would meet my mother, but I figured it would be on neutral ground, and in the yearnever.

My breath rushes out of me in panicked pants as I slide between the man who holds my heart in his hand and the woman who will crush it.

“What did I say about calling before you turn up?” My tone is harsher than I mean it to be.

I try to push her back towards the stairwell, but she digs her heels in. “I was in the area. I’ll call George. He can finish fixing whatever that is.”

I bristle. “I don’t want you to call George. I don’t like George. The man has wandering hands and gives off weird uncle vibes. Dash is fixing my door. And we’re in the middle of something, so I’ll call you later.”

“Darling, are you that hard up that you can’t afford a contractor who doesn’t look like he’s been in jail?”

That is the final fucking straw. “He’s not a contractor or a handyman or whatever the fuck else you’ve decided he is in your judgmental brain. He’s my boyfriend.”

My mother recoils as if I’ve told her I’m joining a cult that worships earthworms. The silence that falls is thick enough to cut with the screwdriver in Dash’s hand.

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