Page 13 of Filthy Player
Even prettier as her eyes went soft when she mentioned her dad.
Spectacular as she gritted out her favor like asking for something from someone was worse than getting teeth pulled without Novocain.
“Yeah?” she asked. “That’d be really great. But dinner, I don’t know.”
The pretty little liar. Her blush told me she wanted it. “Tonight, whenever. You make the call, and it’s not payback for the favor or you fixing my truck. I just want to share a meal with you.”
“Why? Because you want in my pants?”
Her tone was snippy and her shoulders tightened. She’d handed me a loaded gun and hell if I was going to shoot myself with it.
I closed the five feet of space between us, making her step backward until she was almost plastered to my truck.
“I do want in your pants, Paige. Any American male who watches you for longer than two seconds probably wants the same. And I’ll take my time getting there if I have to, so I’m not going to be a dick and lie, and I’m not being a dick by being honest. I’m just honest. But dinner is because you’re pretty, and for some reason I can’t explain, I want to know why you look so damn exhausted, why you just asking me for help made you look like you want to puke, and why you did it anyway. So basically, I just want to talk to you. Get to know you. I’m interested and I’m not going to hide that either. It’s not my style.”
“Wow.” Her cheeks had turned pink while I was talking and by the time I was done, her lips were parted. “That’s a lot to discuss at dinner.”
“Then we’ll tack on drinks and dessert at the end.”
She smiled, blinding me with a soft and sweetness she hadn’t yet shown. I took it like a present. Tucked it away so I could jerk off to it later. So maybe I was kind of an asshole.
Her shoulders rose and fell with a heavy breath, and she looked back to the garage. “I’ll think about it. That’s all I can promise.”
“Done.”
A black SUV pulled into the lot with the Uber tag in the windshield. I stepped back before I did something stupid like brush my fingers down her cheek and press my lips to hers. I didn’t need to be slapped before practice.
“I’ll be back at four. Will your dad be here then?”
“Um. He should be. Why?”
Because I wanted to see if she was as sweet and soft around him as she was when she thought about him. “So I can deliver some things to him in person.”
“I can make sure he’s here then, but you don’t have to do that.”
“I know. But I want to anyway.”
She blinked rapidly, pretty brown lashes flickered on her cheeks. I’d surprised her. “Well, thanks then.”
I grinned. “Thanks for your help, Paige, and I gotta tell you, I’m fucking thrilled I ran into you today. You give me a shot at dinner, you won’t regret it.”
The teeth disappeared behind her closed smile, but it was still sweet as hell.
Then I stepped away, grabbed my bags out of the back of my truck and headed to the Uber, climbed inside without looking back, but she was watching.
I could feel her gaze on me as the Uber driver pulled out of the lot. He recognized me and therefore, I spent the next twenty minutes hearing everything our team did wrong last year and how we were lucky to win the Super Bowl.
Awesome. A Monday morning quarterback on top of an already crappy morning.
But even he couldn’t get me down.
Because I was going to get Paige out for dinner with me, and at that thought, nothing would pull me down.
CHAPTER FIVE
PAIGE
The last thing I needed was Beaux Hale walking into my life, and if that wasn’t the last thing, the very last thing I needed was him being so darn nice to me.
