Page 10 of Man Cuffed
Dammit! Now he’s in my space. He’s going to leave behind some of the testosterone that rises off of him like a mist.
“Where were you putting this?” he asks.
“Right there,” I snap, pointing at the spot under his feet.
“Really?” he scratches his chin. “The feng shui can be better optimized over here, I think.” He carries the plant to a corner of the living room.
I blink. “What quadrant is that?”
“Health, career, and luck with parking spaces.”
I blink again. My neighbor, the hot cop, knows about feng shui?Swoon!
No! No swooning. Hehas a girlfriend. Of course he does. I think I might cry. “Okay,” I say with a gulp. “Better put ‘er there. Thank you.”
“Anytime,” he says in that gruff, wonderful voice.
I’m doomed.
3She Middle-Named Me
Maguire
What’s wrong with me? I’m actually looking around for reasons to keep standing here in my neighbor’s apartment? She blinks at me, her expression cool. I’ve outstayed my welcome already. “You have a good day, now,” I grunt.
“You too, neighbor.”
Lordy. And here I thought I’d left my teen years behind more than a decade ago. But apparently not. I give her one more longing glance, and an awkward wave. The stunning serving wench from Ye Olde Tavern is my new neighbor?
I am shook.
The effect she has on me is inconvenient, to put it mildly. There’s a naughty sparkle in her dark brown eyes. There’s something about the way she tosses her head, sending her corkscrew curls swinging against the smooth brown skin of her kissable neck…
It’s not easy to make neighborly conversation when your libido is firing up like a 400 horsepower engine. It’s lucky I didn’t mispronounce my own name. All I can think about after I see my new neighbor is ditching my current hookup and taking this woman to bed instead.
Maybe we wouldn’t even make it that far. Her coffee table looked sturdy.
I saw it in her eyes, too, if only for a second. She feels the pull. If we’d met under different circumstances, I might already know how much weight that table could bear.
But I do the sane thing and make myself scarce.
Back in the hallway, I try to shut that shit down.It’s just an impulse, I remind myself. And I can’t afford to live by my impulses. That’s my brother’s strategy. He lives by impulse and nearly destroyed me in the process. I have to be the better man.
It’s just rotten luck that my new neighbor is the unforgettable serving wench from Ye Olde Tavern. The one who within five seconds of meeting me tried to rip my clothes off. What kind of man is immune to that?
Not this kind.
She’ll never know that I’ve been looking for her. My partner Lance and I have a deal. We take turns choosing the bar we go to after work. And I’ve chosen Ye Olde Tavern three times, hoping to run into her. Lance is probably onto me. “What’s with your sudden love of turkey legs?” he asked me last time.
“They’re...meaty,” was all I could think of to say. He’d laughed.
Oh, and I’ve endured a mountain of ribbing over my neighbor’s assumption that I was a stripper. But it was an honest mistake. And after my last turkey leg, I finally asked the waitress if she knew where the dark-eyed beauty with the fake English accent had gone.
“She quit,” I was told.
But here she is again, just as sexy and startling as the first time I saw her.
I still don’t even know her name. Just now, I was too startled to remember to ask her. So I’m just going to call her Trouble, because I can just feel like that’s what she is. For me at least. Because a guy who doesn’t like attachments can’t boink his neighbor. If things go badly, you gotta move out of the building. Maybe even the whole neighborhood. I like this neighborhood. It’s close to work. And the breakfast special at Hot and Crusty is only $3.99.
