“Wouldn’t it need to be holy water? Or do tennis players carry that around in their bags now?”
“I actually just wanted to splash you. Consider it karma for all the little kids you probably stepped on to get out of bed this morning.”
I had to give her credit. She had my attention, and that was an accomplishment in itself. But I also knew better than to give my attention to those who demanded it. I needed to ramp up the asshole factor by a few levels to get her out of my life before she caused me problems.
“I didn’t get your name.”
“It’s Chelsea.”
“Wonderful. I’ll make sure when you eventually decide to take your pathetic career to the next level and get an agent, nobody will work with you. Have a nice day.” I’d already given her more energy and words than I cared to waste on strangers, but she seemed to rile me up more than usual.
“No.” She planted her other fist on her hip, blocking my way completely, unless I wanted to mow over her.
“No?”
“Yeah. ‘No.’ Ever heard that? It’s what people say when they don’t plan to take your shit. It means you don’t get to just talk to me like that and expect me to pretend it’s okay.”
I had to fight back a smile. To tell the truth, I did get tired of all the bowing and scraping. Being a ruthless asshole in a position of power quickly turned people into mindless “yes” people. So, in a way, she was right. The word “no” was foreign, but oddly appealing to my ears. It also made me take another look at her. I also couldn’t resist screwing with her a little.
“I hear ‘no’ all the time. When I’m firing people. When I’m ruining their careers. I’ll probably hear it as much as I want if I ask any other agents if they’ve ever heard of you, too.”
She smiled in a way that wasn’t friendly and bubbly like her unbleached hair and freckled nose would make you expect. It was a challenge. It was a statement that she wasn’t cowed in the slightest by my attitude. If anything, it felt like she looked more and more emboldened every time I tried to piss her off.
Yeah, there was a little bit of the boring Barbie look about her. But the closer I looked, the more I wasn’t so sure that was quite right. She had slightly imperfect teeth—like she’d had braces at one point and been too stubborn or lazy to keep up with wearing a retainer. Yes, I still wore mine at night, but that was only because I wasn’t the sort of dumbass to waste years of orthopedic suffering. Deal with it.
For some reason, she was just standing there, apparently fine with taking my insults and saying nothing.
She also had a little crooked slant to her nose, almost like she’d taken a tennis ball to the face. Or, judging by the way she was insisting on poking the bear at the moment, maybe a fist was more likely.
Whatever it was, I made an executive decision that I’d enjoy knocking her down a peg in a more personal way, especially if she wanted to just stand there looking smug.
“But I have a feeling I could make you say ‘yes.’”
“Excuse me?”
“With a little privacy and a few minutes. I’d practically have you screaming it.” I wasn’t sure if I was even serious, but I knew one thing: her straight back and confidence did things to me. They made me want to push until I found how much it took to make her bend. And damn, I had to admit I was starting to wonder how it’d feel to put my hands on her smooth, sun-bronzed skin and do a little bending.
“Not only are you an asshole, you’re delusional.”
“Suit yourself. I’ve got more important things to do than argue with a B level tennis player.”
She huffed, then hurried after me when I went inside the hotel. I had the room number of the meeting on my phone somewhere but didn’t feel like slowing down to find it. I opted to just charge blindly ahead until little miss Barbie decided to give up.
No, the Barbie thing didn’t work anymore. If she was lucky, she was three inches over five feet tall, and I wasn’t sure how she saw over the net. She was more like Tinkerbell.
Why were the short ones always the most stubborn?
After taking a flight up a random number of stairs and veering through several hallways, I turned to find her trailing behind me. I spread my palms at her, feeling the first signs of my calm beginning to erode away. “What do you want, anyway?”
“I was guessing you knew where you were going if you were so important that you could ruin my career. And I assumed that place was the same place I was going.”
I stared. “You don’t even know where the meeting is?”
She swallowed, then shifted on her feet. “I know where it is. But I wanted to keep my eye on you.”
“I’m sure you did.” I started off in another direction, suddenly wishing I’d just looked at where the damn meeting was. “Would you stop fucking following me, Tinkerbell?”
“Tinkerbell? And no. I said I’m going to keep my eye on you, and I plan to do that. If you try to talk shit about me to some big agent, I want to be there to explain that you’re just the asshole who steals balloons from kids.”
“I didn’t steal it. I let it fly away, and the kid learned a valuable lesson.”
“Yeah. Next time, she should kick grumpy men in expensive suits right in the balls?”
I couldn’t deal with this. I yanked open the first door I saw and went inside, closing it before she could follow.
I shouldn’t have been remotely surprised when she threw her shoulder against the other side of the door and came flying in before I could lock it, sending us both to the ground in a heap.
2
Chelsea
You know those moments in life when time slows down? Those crossroads points where you have a chance to look at your life and wonder how the hell you wound up right here at this particular moment? Where all sounds become a ridiculously deep, slow rumble of hilarity? Like the way he was saying, “Whaaat the fuuuuck” and I was giggling like a madwoman while we hurtled through the air.
This was one of those moments, I thought, as I rode the asshole in the suit through the air like a very expensively dressed toboggan. He braced my fall about as much as a rock, and my knee might’ve slipped between his legs as I came down on top of him. He crunched in on himself, rolling and tossing me to the side. That would teach him to drop the green smoothies and enjoy a little ice cream, next time.
“Hey!” I shouted, giving him a shove as I got to my feet.
He popped up with almost comical quickness. His dark eyebrows were squeezed together like he was already imagining all the ways he wanted to dismantle me piece by piece. For a child kicking, foul mouthed asshole, he was admittedly handsome. Even if I deducted something like ten or twenty points off the attractiveness scale for obvious personality faults, he still clocked in at a ten out of ten, and that made me hate him even more.
He was one of those guys that was obnoxiously blessed by nature. He had the posture of a soldier with a straight back, neck, and the sort of lean muscularity I’d always preferred on men. Basically, if they couldn’t wipe their own asses, they needed to take a break from the gym, and I was fairly sure Mr. Grump could reach his ass just fine with those long… Stop. And please, Chelsea, for the love of God, never picture a hot stranger wiping their own ass again. That’s not good for anybody.