Page 99 of Story of My Life
“That’s what I thought.” I shot her a smug look, which she returned with a glare.
23
GRAND THEFT BOAT
HAZEL
Twenty minutesof what I considered to be pretty icy passenger-seat silence later, Cam swung his pickup into the Wawa parking lot just outside Story Lake.
I blinked at the glowing-red convenience store sign. “Seriously?”
His smirk made me want to punch him in his chiseled, stubbly jaw.
I had just begun my shoe-style-to-walking-distance-home calculations when he released his seat belt and shrugged out of his sports coat. The tie came next.
“What are you doing?”
His fingers worked their way down the front of his shirt, unbuttoning buttons. I wanted to look away, but every button revealed some new spectacular view. Chest hair. Muscle. A tattoo. More muscle.
Belatedly, I shielded my eyes. “Oh my God. Do you shopnakedat the Wawa?” I screeched.
“It’s just Wawa. There’s nothe.”
“Campbell!”
His chuckle was husky.
I dropped my hands and stared at the gloriously shirtless man before me. “Do you do like a thousand push-ups a day?”
Cam balled up his dress shirt and threw it in the back seat. When he leaned over the console, bringing all that muscly chest and heat and manliness even closer, I forgot how to breathe and move. Jim had always been lean. Long limbs, narrow shoulders, slim hips. The only place he’d put on weight was in the belly. But this Adonis before me looked like he was one bottle of coconut oil away from posing for a calendar.
“No. I’ve never set foot in a gym.”
“Seriously? Because that’s metabolically unfair.”
“Jesus, Hazel. Yes, I work out. Stop objectifying me.”
He was right. I totally was. I did the only thing that came to mind and squeezed my eyes shut.
“Relax, Trouble,” he said on a chuckle, way too close to my ear.
I forced one of my eyelids open and found him not ready to plunder me. Instead he was rooting around in the back seat one-handed.
He came up with an ancient-looking T-shirt and dragged it over his head.
My muscles released their vapor lock all at the same time, and I sagged against my seat. Forget a date. I needed to get laid before my body exploded just looking at a half-naked man. What would happen when I had to sit down and write the first sex scene? I might spontaneously combust at my desk.
“Wh-what just happened?” I asked weakly.
This earned me an honest-to-God grin out of the man. “I go in there in a sports coat and tie, and in about two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, everyone and their grandma is gonna know we went out.”
“You could have warned me before you started taking your clothes off!” What if instead of panicking, I’d thought he wasinviting me to Pound Town and I’d started taking offmyclothes? I immediately filed that away for future book use.
“I didn’t realize you were terrified of shirtless men.”
“I’m not afraid of shirtless men. I was just…surprised.”
“Yeah. Right. Favorite hoagie? Favorite beer?” Cam demanded.
