“I have utterly no qualms with the way I live my life,” she returned.
“If that was the case, the two words I said wouldn’t have triggered you into an overblown reaction,” he retorted.
Her chin shot back into her neck. “Overblown?”
“We’re standing here still discussing your reaction to two words.”
“Just because you have one doesn’t mean you get to wander around being one to hapless females,” she shot back.
He one hundred percent caught her drift.
“Now you’ve called me an asshole and a dick over two words,” he rumbled.
“I didn’t call you a dick.”
He used what she’d said earlier against her. “You inferred it.”
With that, she tossed her hair.
The woman tossed her hair.
And her doing that only made him want to sink his fingers into that thick, glossy mane.
For fuck’s sake.
“I call them as I see them,” she sniped.
“Nice,” he bit off.
She got even closer, so close, he could smell her perfume.
Bright and flowery, but also spicy.
Like jasmine and pepper and orange.
Gorgeous.
Expensive.
Shit.
“You wouldn’t know nice if it walked up and rubbed itself all over you,” she declared.
“From that, I’m beginning to get why you intend to draw this conversation out until we reach a new millennium.”
Her eyelashes fluttered irately. “If you’re suggesting I want your attention, you are sadly mistaken.”
“Who’s in whose space, doll?”
“I’m not a doll,” she clipped.
But didn’t get out of his space.
“Just to point out the obvious, I’m not interested,” he lied.
And did not get out of her space.
“Like I would even,” she scoffed.
He’d put money down that she would.
She really would.
And she’d love every minute of it.
He’d see to that.
Which meant he had to end this.
“You tell Duncan what went down, don’t put your drama queen spin on it.”
She was now openly insulted.
“Drama queen?”
“I said nothing about diamonds or school lunches,” he pointed out.
“I can read between the lines.”
“I’m sure. You can also blur them or bold them if it suits your purposes to overexaggerate them.”
“How much more do you think you know about me just because of my fabulous booties?”
He dipped his face so close to hers, he could swear he could feel the tip of her nose.
And then he whispered the god’s honest truth.
“Everything.”
Her eyelashes fluttered again.
Not irate.
Not flirting.
She seemed rattled.
Smelling her.
Having her gorgeous eyes that close.
Her mouth that close.
Her that close.
He finally got smart, turned and got the fuck away from her.
And fast.
If Duncan heard about that incident, he’d be pissed as shit, Judge knew it.
Duncan also knew Judge, and whatever spin she put on, he wouldn’t believe it (not if she embellished it), even if what instigated that incident had been all on him.
As he walked away, Judge ignored their audience and went to Rix’s office. He then ignored Rix rolling his wheelchair into his own office and grinning up at Judge, visibly struggling to keep his mouth shut because, no doubt, he’d been part of that audience.
Judge ignored Rix too, and his grin, finished with his copies and skirted the shoe section when he returned to his desk on the top floor.
Even though what he was doing meant he was going to need the copier a lot that day, and his Volunteer Coordinator Alex was down in Phoenix leading a training session, so he couldn’t ask her to do it, he also made certain he didn’t leave his desk until she had to be long gone.
He did not spend the rest of the morning or the afternoon (and, fuck him, the evening) worrying about her talking to his boss.
Nope.
He did not.
And because he did not, he knew he was screwed.
Because whenever his mind went to that scene—and it did that a lot, too much—it focused on only one thing, and it wasn’t the thing he should be focusing on.
It was on the fact that he wished he’d asked her name.
Chapter 2
The World
Judge
The next afternoon, Judge approached the line in Wild Iris Coffeehouse to get an afternoon jolt of joe.
He also did this to get away from the office because the entire morning he’d been taking shit from everyone about his confrontation with the hot chick in the shoe section.
And that everyone included his buddy, Rix.
It also included River Rain’s CFO, Harvey Evans.
In fact, Judge had started the day walking into his office and seeing a pair of woman’s mountaineering boots on his desk with a note propped on them that said, She forgot these. Next time you see her…
And yeah, that note was in Harvey’s handwriting because Harvey was River Rain’s second in command.
He was also a jokester.
So he was often also a pain in the ass.
In other words, Judge needed a break.
What he did not need was that break to include the gorgeous brunette whose gorgeousness and attitude got his shit in a sling in the first place.
In other words, he really didn’t need her to be standing two people ahead of him in line.
Which she was.
He further didn’t need for her to be wearing a tailored blazer and another pair of jeans. This pair of jeans had the hems cuffed once, and that cuff was thick, so they not only showed her pretty ankles but also the sky-high, spike-heeled nude pumps she wore.
Not to mention, he didn’t need her hair piled on top of her head, long tendrils drifting down, that baby hair that grew under the back hairline acting like neon pointing at the vulnerable beauty of the nape of her neck.
No, he did not need any of that.
But there it was.
Right in front of him.
Fuck.
Him.
She hadn’t even turned around and he knew it was her.
He’d know that hair anywhere.
That neck.
Those legs.
That ass.
Shit.
Disaster struck before he could retreat, find somewhere to kill ten minutes and come back when the coast was clear.
She seemed to sense him (or at least sense his eyes lingering on her neck) and peeked over her shoulder.
When she did, he saw that she was still wearing her mirrored aviators, because, standing in a line inside a coffeehouse, why would she take them off when she killed it by wearing them?
That was, she killed it until she took them off, something she did when she caught sight of him.
Slowly, she lifted one of those amazing hands and removed them from her face only to shove them in her gleaming mound of hair.
Christ, he was jealous of a pair of shades.
Her made-up eyes—including false eyelashes, in the middle of the day, at a coffeehouse in Prescott, Arizona—traveled the length of him, and he was pretty sure when she started, she was going for disdain.
If that was what she was going for, she failed spectacularly.