Page 8 of Impulsive Saint
She tilted her chin up and glared back at the gorgeous bastard, “First off, stop calling me princess.”
“Stop acting like one.” he taunted back.
“Second.” she continued, ignoring him, “I don’t appreciate being called an idiot. I’ll have you know I’m actually very smart. I was valedictorian of my class and I graduated UT with a degree in…”
“If you’re so smart, you should know better than to take rides from strangers.”
Her jaw clenched and she would have sworn that steam came out of her nose. He had a point but she wasn’t going to admit that. Not when he’d all but called her a spoiled rotten brat with more money than sense.
“In case you didn’t notice, I had a lot going on back there.” She crossed her arms over her chest defiantly and lied, “Besides, you’re dressed for the wedding which means you must have been on the guest list, which means you’ve been vetted by my father and you’re not some sort of deranged stalker. If you’d looked dangerous, I wouldn’t have gotten on the bike with you.”
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t look convinced, not even a little bit but he mimicked her and crossed his own arms over his chest, “My point,princess, is that I got you out of there and I kept you safe. I could have left you in that alley or forced you to go back inside but I didn’t because you seemed seriously freaked out. I got you out of that situation, no questions asked, but now I need some answers. What happened back there to send you running from your own wedding?”
“I just…” She shrugged, looking anywhere but into those piercing blue eyes, “I couldn’t marry him.”
The man looked less than impressed with her answer, “You just couldn’t marry him.”
He repeated her words as if he was trying to make sense of them. The edge of sarcasm she caught in his voice didn’t annoy her this time though, because of course it wouldn’t make sense to a stranger. It barely made any sense to her and she was the one that had run out on the man that everyone had spent years telling her was her perfect match in every way.
He leaned back against his motorcycle, arms still crossed over his broad chest, one eyebrow raised in a look that told her he was running out of patience and he wanted a real answer to his question, “Let’s try that again, why did you run out on your own wedding?”
She huffed, annoyed by his persistence and then realized something, “I don’t even know your name.”
“And?” he drawled.
“And, I’m not going to tell my sob story to a man whose name I don’t even know.” She gave a prim snort but he only rolled his eyes like she was being ridiculous.
“Tyler St. James.” He shrugged one shoulder and his lips curled, “Should I bow or is there some other customary greeting you’d prefer, princess?”
“I told you to stop calling me that!” Her voice came out whiny and she hated it almost as much as his husky laughter that came after.
“And I told you I wanted a straight answer. Let’s see who gives first.”
Ashtyn took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. This man was like nobody she’d ever met. He was coarse and had the oddest sense of humor. He seemed to enjoy needling her just to see her react. She had no idea how he could have been friends with Aaron, who had no sense of humor and couldn’t abide anything outside the strictest of manners and propriety, but she decided that she liked him. Even if he was infuriatingly persistent in his need for answers she didn’t want to give.
“Fine.” She straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin up, “You want to know what happened? Here’s what happened. I decided that I couldn’t marry Aaron today. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. He and I… we make sense on paper but in real life…”
“He’s about as exciting as a cardboard box?” Tyler supplied when she trailed off.
“No!” She jumped to the defense of her fiancé,her ex fiancéshe reminded herself. “Aaron isn’t boring.”
“Uh-huh.” Tyler twirled his finger in a circle, motioning for her to continue and though she really wanted to argue that Aaron wasn’t boring, she knew there was no point. Tyler already knew she was lying if he was friends with the man. Aaronwasboring and she’d basically just been thinking the same thing herself.
“Anyway…” she heaved a dramatic sigh, “I’m not ready to get married and be tied down. I want more out of life than to just be somebody’s wife. I want to be me. I want to figure out who that is and I can’t do that if I’m pretending to be the girl that they all want me to be.”
Tyler was staring at her again when she finished speaking and she bit her lip. She’d said too much from the way his eyes focused on her and those dark brows of his furrowed. Finally, he nodded and the air she hadn’t realized she was holding escaped her in a gush of relief.
“Okay.” He kept nodding. “I get that.”
“You do?” She was the one that looked surprised now and she knew it when he chuckled.
“Yeah, believe it or not, I do. My brothers,” he paused, glancing away, “I have two older brothers. They think I’m getting too old for the life I live but I’m only twenty-five, not fifty. I like to travel. I like being outdoors and doing things other people think are scary or impossible. They think I have a death wish or that I’m just irresponsible. They want me to settle down and make the kind of life for myself they have.”
“Get married you mean?” She found herself asking.
“One of them is married. The other is just a workaholic. The fact that I have no desire to be either of those things frustrates the hell out of them.” He shrugged, “So yeah, I get wanting to be your own person and make your own path, especially if you’ve had those that came before you try to say you should just be happy following theirs.”
Ashtyn stared at him in shocked silence. She hadn’t expected his easy acceptance of why she’d run from what seemed to everyone else to be a perfect match. She wasn’t sure why. Nothing this man had done or said from the moment she approached him in that alleyway had been the thing she’d have expected.
