“Yeah”—hic!—“it gets harder and harder to shock me, unfortunately.”
My mouth pulls into a smile. Those words hold an implicit challenge, and I’m a sucker for a challenge.
She looks at me warily. “What?”
I shake my head and grin. “Nothing. Just logging information away in my—” I grab her mid-sentence and throw her over my shoulder as she sucks in a breath of surprise.
“Austin!” she cries out.
“Surprise!”
“Let me down.” I can hear the smile in her voice, but she pummels my back with her hands and wriggles in my arms. She’s strong. And she smells amazing.
“Fine,” I say, letting her slide through my arms until her feet touch the ground.
I keep my arm around her waist as she regains her balance, her arms pressing against my chest. Once she’s steady, her eyes lock on mine, and her breath hitches.
It’s a split-second that lasts an hour—or at least long enough for her eyes to flit down to my mouth, then right back up.
Whoa.
She thought about it. Mia Sawyer thought about kissing me. Even if the thought only lasted a fraction of a fraction of a second. Shedoesn’thate me. Somewhere down—really, really, really deep down, maybe—she’s attracted enough to have paused in my arms.
She pushes off me, but my arm around her waist stops her.
“Wait,” I say.
She stops, eyes on me.
I let the seconds pass by with our gazes locked, hers searching and uncertain.
Finally, I release her and step back, putting out my hands like a showman. “Hiccup free.”
She lets out a disbelieving laugh.
“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” I wish I knew whether it was picking her up or that split-second when her breath stopped that did the trick.
“See what happens next time you try to pull something like that,” she says.
I want to.
I know what she means, though. It’s a threat to punch me in the face or something. But part of me wonders if that’s actually how it would end. Is there a slight possibility we’d end up kissing? How would that feel? Could she channel some of that passionate dislike into something different?
“I’m gonna get going,” she says, shaking me from my speculation. She reties her sweater around her waist—a nervous tick, I think.
“It’s too late for you to walk back alone,” I say. “You’ll have time to see some of the city tomorrow. I promise. Just ride in the van with us. It’ll only be like fifteen more minutes.”
I can see the cogs turning in her head as she considers what to do. If she insists on walking home, I’ll go with her. Prague is a safe city, but bad things happen in safe cities too, and I need Mia.
As a backup vocalist.
She glances at her watch, then sighs. “Fine.”
7
MIA
Austin is a liar.A big, fat, muscular, toned, extremely attractive liar. Pants on fire, too, which is just as bad as them falling down.
