Mike
“Look,MissHarding,”I said through gritted teeth. “If you wouldn’t mind standing back from the doorway, then I can actually do what I came here to do and then get gone and leave you in peace.”
There it was—that beautiful, blank stare again. I tamped down my irritation and decided to just get the fuck on with it whether she was cooperating or not. Once I’d delivered the bloody coffee table, I could bugger off and hopefully go back to avoiding Victoria Harding again.
I turned away from her, jogged down the stone steps of her fancy bloody townhouse, and picked up the bespoke coffee table that I’d poured countless hours into building, then shaping, sanding and varnishing, only to have it wasted on this ice-cold woman.
“I can help you carry it.”
I looked back up the steps at her standing in the doorway. What a bloody waste. The woman was absolutely stunning. Her beauty was almost otherworldly. And today, wearing those fitted jeans with her hair not in its usual severe, scraped-back style, theblonde tendrils framing her face, and her tiny bare feet visible with perfect bright pink nails, she was a knockout.
But it was still a waste because the woman’s personality was, well, non-existent. Her nickname was dead-on accurate; she was the absolutedefinitionof an ice princess. Not my style at all.
Unfortunately, for whatever fucked-up reason, she had gotten it into her head that Iwasher style. Even that day when I’d stormed into Felix’s office to bollock them all for what they’d done to my sister, even then, distracted as I was by my anger, I’d noticed her staring at me. Christ, the woman could stare. It was seriously creepy if you asked me.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
And I could just about manage it if I forced my brain to forget the dreams of her that plagued me at night.
In my dreams, she was anything but cold.
“She’s just a little fixated on you.”
Lucy’s explanation floated back to me.Er, okay. I’m not the kind of guy you develop a fixation with. I’m not like Felix or Ollie—sophisticated, three-piece-suit-wearing pretty boys. I’m rough and ready, with an overgrown beard and questionable dress sense.
Girls like Vicky fixated on men like me for one thing—they wanted a walk on the wild side with a bit of rough.That’swhy she was fixated on me. And now she’d ordered one of my favourite pieces simply to mess with me. There was no way I could have anyone else deliver this, not after I’d spent hours and hours perfecting it. Even if it was going to an automaton who wouldn’t appreciate art if it slapped her in the face, I still didn’t want it to be damaged.
“No offence,” I shouted back up to her, well aware that I was fully intending to cause offence. “But you’d be about as much help as a chocolate teapot. This table would crush you. I’ll carryit in if you could do me a favour and move out of the bloody way.”
Thankfully she did move back in time for me to make it into her fancy fucking house, but then gave no further indication of where she wanted the table to go.
Now, this thing was solid; all my pieces were solid and bloody heavy. It was uncomfortable to stand in the middle of someone’s hallway, holding one up in the air, not knowing where to set it down. But this goddamn ice princess just carried on staring at me.
I opened my mouth to say something, then snapped it shut as I noticed the little cracks in the icy persona showing through. Her pupils dilated, and very briefly, she bit her full, pink bottom lip as her eyes traced the muscles bunched and straining on my chest and arms as I kept this bloody table suspended in midair.
“Eyes up here, princess,” I said, my voice rougher than it should be, but who could blame me? She was a beautiful woman, and she was blatantly checking me out. And the memories of Dream Vicky were increasingly tricky to suppress.
Immediately, her eyes snapped to mine, and then another more human sign peeped through as pink stained her cheeks.
“If you’re quite finished, do you think you could tell me where this is going to go?”
She cleared her throat. “Oh, you can put it down here.”
I frowned. “You’re going to have a massive bloody coffee table sitting in the middle of your hallway?”
She shrugged. “I hadn’t really thought where it would go.”
I grunted with the effort of holding up the table, shifting it slightly in my arms. “I’m no expert on interior design, but most people have coffee tables in their sitting rooms.”
“I already have a coffee table in there.”
“Right.” I drew the word out. We weren’t getting anywhere here, and I needed to set this thing down. “So why the fuck did you order another one?”
“I wanted to see you.”
Bloody hell, she was bold. No pretence. No trying to make any excuses. Just a straight out, fucked-up admission. I had to admire the woman’s balls, at least.
Seeing as we were going to get nowhere with the entirewhere’s the table goingdebate, and given I couldn’t think straight whilst my arms were screaming at me, I decided to put it down between us. Then I shook out my arms and cracked my neck before focusing back on the small woman in front of me.
