Page 3 of Pick Me
It was onlymehe didn’t like, and for no reason I could fathom.
I’d deadass never had that happen to me before. My face was in the dictionary beside the word “delightful,” for fuck’s sake, and nearly a dozen inhabitants of a small Florida island would attest to it. People didn’t justnotlike me. I wasundislikable.
So, fuck him. If he didn’t want to be friends, then we wouldn’t be, obvs.
But it still hurt, damn it. And not in a boo-hoo-the-hot-guy-rejected-me kind of way, because it wasn’t about attraction or the lack thereof, but in a way that made me wonder if I had some big internal flaw that only he could see. Andthat—the fact that Knox Sunday, with his bottle-green eyes and his need to treat me like he was my paid babysitter, made me doubt myself when I’d spent years and years not giving a shit what people thought of me—pissed me off.
Which was why I made it my job to annoy him just a little bit every single day.
I mean, I was being paid to make sureallthe systems at Sunday Orchard worked better, after all. So theoretically, bringing Knox down a peg or two so that he could be a better human waskind ofin my job description. Right?
“Daydreaming,” he repeated in a warning voice, drawing my attention back to our convo.
“Hmm? Oh, oops! Kinda slipped away again for a minute there. Not sure why, but the sound of your voice just makes me zone out,” I lied. “Weird, huh? Maybe ’cause it’s kinda got that vibratey, white-noise thing going on, like a swarm of bees in my ear? You start talking and I just hearbzzzbzzzbzzz, you know? Oh! Oh, dude. Dude!” I gasped and pointed a finger at him. “Have you thought of recording a sleep video? ’Cause you could just sit in front of the camera and be all, ‘Goodman, you need to wash your coffee cup right away and not leave it in the sink for five minutes while you go get dressed,’” I said in a monotonous, robotic voice, “and people would wake up eight hours later feeling super refreshed! And didn’t Webb say you needed to relax more? I’m basically your life coach over here!”
If we were being accurate, Webb had told me privately that Knox left Boston because he needed a slower pace of life. His stressful career in finance had taken a toll on his health, so he’d quit his job, was selling his condo, and had moved home earlier in the summer to focus on his health and happiness.
He seemed perfectly healthy to me—the very fuckable picture of good health—but the man needed some remedial tutoring in being happy.
And that wasnotin my job description.
Knox sat forward, making his chair squeak. A shaft of sunlight coming through the high window burnished his dark hair white. “Goodman, I swear to God—”
Ugh. So unfair.
That deep, growly, commanding voice—the kind that gave me sexy, schmexy vibes—should not be attached to such a patronizing, workaholic, stick-up-his-ass-and-not-in-a-fun-way individual.
“Ooh, hey! Has anyone ever told you the vein in your temple throbs sometimes?” I frowned in mock concern and drew a finger down the center of my own forehead. “You should get that checked out.”
I leaned back in my chair, propped my feet up on the desk, and focused on the fading tan line where my shorts rode up my thigh. God, I needed a hookup. It had been precisely forty-seven days, and if I was going to work with Knox Sunday and not kill him or myself, I needed relief.
“Could you listen to me for two minutes, please? As yourboss, if nothing else?” Knox growled, pushing himself half out of his chair.
“First, you’re not my boss. Webb is. You told me so the first day when I asked you what the timeline for this project was. Second… Like, I can try to listen?” I sighed dubiously. “But also, I’m really hungry. So. Probs gonna be daydreaming about dinner again.”
He frowned, like I’d caught his attention against his will, and sat back down slightly. “Dinner.”
“Yep.”
“You had twoenormousburritos at lunch, plus rice.”
“Awww.” I tilted my head to one side. “Yes, I did! Sweet of you to notice.” Probably keeping an account of all that I ate to make sure he got his money’s worth.
“And a peanut butter banana sandwich two hours ago.”
“For I wither without protein,” I confirmed with a nod.
“So how can you possibly be thinking of eating again?” He folded his arms across his chest.
“Well.” I blinked at him again. “You were talking about coffee cups—yawn—which made me think of coffee. And that made me think about the giant pear muffins with streusel topping over at Panini Jack’s—you know the ones?”
I moved my fingers in the sprinkling gesture that was the universal sign for streusel topping to stress my point and watched in delight as Knox’s nostrils flared in exasperation.
“—because Hawkins brought me some of those muffins last night after his shift. And thinking of Hawk made me thinksweetie pie, because really he is one—”
“If this devolves into your fantasies about my barely legal brother—”
I held up a finger. “Hawk is twenty-three, a year younger than I am. He’s not just legal, he’ssuperlegal. Also,knock knock.”
