Page 5 of The Bodyguard Affair
He sees me coming in hot before I can talk myself out of it, his lips parting in surprise.
In my limited experience, guys who look like him are usually the grunting, brooding-in-dark-corners types. But there’s a lightness, a warmth to him that’s strangely comforting. Kind of like holding your frozen, winter-kissed hands over a toasty outdoor bonfire. It takes me off guard. So much so, I let out anahhsound before sayinghi, which comes out like, “Ahoy hoy.”
Jesus.
My greeting hangs in the air for a brutally long moment.
“Ahoy hoy?” he replies, unsure whether to laugh or not.
I decide to push through, not acknowledging it, even though I’ll never forget this moment as long as I live. “I, uh—I realized I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Andi Zeigler.” There’s a pause, like he’s waiting for me to continue. Only, I don’t know what else to say about myself. “And I’m, um, well—I don’t know what I’m doing or saying anymore, so I’m just going to leave now. Bye!” I spin on my heel to make a run for the exit. This was a terrible idea. Falafel platter, here I come!
A few strides away, a hand on my shoulder gently turns me back around. Bathroom guy is smiling at me and I don’t sense pity. He extends his other hand and says, “Nice to meet you, Andi. I’m Nolan Crosby,” without a beat, totally casual, as though I wasn’t fleeing him.
Nolan Crosby. It suits him.
“I don’t do this often,” I decide to inform, as if it weren’t blatantly obvious.
“Approach guys at bars?”
I shrug. “Ask guys to go home with me.”
His right brow flicks up. “Oh? I’m coming home with you?”
“No!” I scream. I’m much worse at this than I ever realized. With Hunter, it was easy, because he did most of the talking and charming. I barely had to say two words. “I mean, unless you want to?”
He watches me for a beat, and I’m certain he’s about to back away slowly, like that GIF of Homer Simpson vanishing into the bushes.
“I have food!” I add, for no good reason.
This must pique his curiosity, because his eyes brighten on the spot. “Food, huh? What kind of food?”
“Well, actually I’ll have to stop at the twenty-four-hour grocery on the way home. I only have cherry tomatoes in my fridge,” I say, racking my brain to take inventory. I might have some old olives from a solo charcuterie night weeks ago. Do olives expire? “But I’ll make you something good. Like…pierogies.”
He tilts his head like he’s trying to assess whether I’m serious. Apparently he decides I am, because he says, “Sure, I could go for pierogies.”
Chapter 2
Nolan
“You really don’t have to make me food,” I assure Andi as we zigzag through the produce aisles in Peevey’s, her neighborhood twenty-four-hour grocery. Bad call on the name, in my opinion.
She peers at me warily over her shopping cart, which is humongous compared to her. “This is the third time you’ve said that. Do you think I’m a bad cook or something?”
“No, not at all.” I mask my hesitation, eyeing the cart, which contains a single bunch of green onions and three loose pears (no bag). And we’ve been here for at least fifteen minutes.
“Then do you not want to hook up?” she asks, pouting those glossy, plump lips. It’s disorienting, the twinge I feel whenever I look at them.
Truthfully, my hesitation is more about my own guilt over being here instead of home, where I should be on my last nightbefore going on a six-month military deployment. “Doyou?” I ask pointedly.
“Yeah. I do.” She doesn’t sound hesitant in the slightest, leveling me with a wide, earnest expression. My stomach free-falls. Under bright grocery store lighting, her eyes are hazel, not brown.
“Okay, then I do, too,” I say, more turned on than appropriate in the middle of the produce aisle.
I hadn’t noticed her in the bar before walking into her stall, but I recognized her when she emerged minutes later. She stood out in the crowd. Her posture was stiff and tense as she fidgeted with the sleeves of the oversized sweater covering her jumpsuit.
She wore her dark hair in a tight bun, which kind of went with her whole vibe of hiding in the back with her friend. Her eyes darted nervously to the door every five seconds, as though searching for an escape. When I went to apologize, she avoided all eye contact and angled herself in the opposite direction, arms folded tightly over her chest.
So when she approached me so brazenly minutes later, I was stunned. Even more so when she asked me to go home with her. I’d misread her, and I don’t misread people, ever.
