Was I?
His voice had my body all kinds of mixed up. My breath froze while my heart raced even faster than before. My cheeks roasted despite the cool autumn air around us. How could I answer a question like that when I couldn’t even figure out if I was hot or cold?
I gave all of my body’sconflicting signals the heave-ho and put on my vacation mask, reminding myself that flirty Wren was aloof. Flirty Wren didn’t think in terms of decades, but at the same time, she didn’t want whatever this was with Zane to end any time soon. Most importantly, flirty Wren needed to stop thinking about herself in the third person.
I shook my head. “I’m interested in finding you a shirt. Think fast.” I tossed him the first piece of clothing my fingers landed on. It was mustard-yellow and covered in sequins. The only thing it had going for it was the fact that it was a tank top. Zane would look good in a tank; he’d probably look too good.
“Check it out,” Zane said. “When I rub it this direction, a flower appears.”
I looked over and saw a hot-pink, sequin tulip laid across his chest.
“It’s like magic.” He popped his pecs beneath the shirt with a comical flourish of his arms.
I threw my head back and laughedharder at the bouncing flower than I had at the pineapple disaster that the last shirt had been. “I think it’s a no for magical dancing flower shirts.”
“Um, I think it’s ahardno,” Zane said, hanging the shirt back on the rack.
“Good call.” I pulled out a faded hockey print t-shirt. It had two sticks crossed on the front and a puck flying through the air. I scrunched my nose. “Hockey. Boring.” I shoved it back onto the rack.
“Wait. Let me see that one.”
I came around to his side of the rack and held it up to him. “It’s just not you.”
He grinned down at me. “You do realize that the hoodie you ruined is also a hockey shirt, right?”
I pulled the t-shirt away and looked at his mangled hoodie. “It doesn’t say anything about hockey.”
His jaw dropped and he was speechless for a moment. “You’re kidding, right? It says Bobcats.See the logo?” He pointed at a stylized drawing of a bobcat in the center.
I nodded. “Yeah?”
“The Bobcats are the pro team around here. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.” I went back to my side of the rack. “I still don’t think this t-shirt is you, though.”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “I guess that means we need to keep looking.”
I gazed down the rack, estimating how many more shirts we’d have to look through before we met in the middle. I’d only just met the man, but already, I didn’t like the distance between us.
“This is it.” Zane’s voice boomed with certainty. “I’ve found the winner.”
“Let me see.”
He shook his head. “No, I want you to get the full effect.”
Then he did something that momentarily stopped my heart.
Zane, aka Smoothie King, aka the most beautiful man I’d ever laid my eyes on took hold of the hem of his pitiful hoodie and peeled it off his body. After picking my jaw up off the sidewalk, I counted and then recounted the abs on his stomach. I didn’t know how many abs normal men had, but one glance at his statuesque figure was enough to tell me that he was no normal man.
He even had those muscled ridges that wrapped around uber-buff males’ rib cages. You know, the ones that flex with every twist and turn of their torso? I tried to count those too but lost count, distracted by the spots that started floating around in my peripheral vision.
Breathe, woman!
Had my heart started beating again?
I put a hand on my chest. Yes, it was beating—beating so hard it would be a miracle if Zane didn’t see it pounding beneath my sweater.
Those muscles hugging the sides of his trunk flexed as hepulled his arms out of his sleeves. Talk about a rack of ribs. Yum!
