It had gotten him into trouble a time or two with some less-than-broadminded individuals. She held her breath and waited to see if it would get him into trouble now. Ozzie was an über-alpha male, after all. How would he handle the blatant come-on of another man?
She should have known better than to worry.
Ozzie slung a friendly arm around Donny’s shoulders. “If I leaned that way, you would so be my type. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a killer smile. It’s the kryptonite to my Superman.” Samantha couldn’t help but note that she had dark hair and dark eyes. She wasn’t sure about the killer smile though. The little gap between her two front teeth probably knocked her out of the running on that one. “Unfortunately, my inclinations run strictly not dickly.”
Samantha bit the inside of her cheek.
“Oh. I thought maybe the whole friends with Samantha thing meant you…” Donny shook his head and feigned a windy sigh. “But never mind.”
When Ozzie slapped Donny on the back, it occurred to Samantha that Ozzie hadn’t touched her since last night. Not this morning when they stood side by side in line at the bagel shop. Not when they rode up together in the Tribune Tower’s elevator. And not once in the hours he sat beside her reading the day’s edition while she put the finishing touches on the two stories due to her editor before noon.
He hadn’t shied away from touching everyone else, she recollected with a frown. He’d shaken the hand of her editor. Bro-bumped knuckles with that meathead sports reporter who couldn’t stop using dangling modifiers if his life depended on it. And fiercely hugged the freelancer who’d been diagnosed with breast cancer and who was submitting weekly articles about her battle with the disease and her journey toward recovery.
But when it came to Samantha? Ozzie was back to employing his hands-off strategy. Which didn’t work well with her strategy of getting him into bed at the earliest possible opportunity. In fact, she’d been having trouble thinking of anything else.
Take, for instance, the minor inconvenience of writing the same sentence five times because she’d been distracted by the flex of Ozzie’s triceps when he turned the page of the newspaper. Or when she couldn’t think of the word “accordingly”—accordingly, for shit’s sake!—because her mind had turned to soup the minute he started chewing on his lower lip as he read something particularly interesting. And then there was the embarrassing occasion when she’d typed the word cock instead of cook, and she hadn’t caught it until Ozzie, who’d been reading over her shoulder, pointed it out with a wry twist of his delicious, totally edible mouth.
Jeez. Either she jumped his bones, and jumped them soon, or she’d find herself the butt of all the copy editors’ jokes.
“You hetero types always get the good ones,” Donny lamented in a whisper once he’d drawn even with her in the doorway.
“We do not,” she assured him. “Remember the last disastrous blind date I went on? The high fives the asshole couldn’t stop giving me? The Brut aftershave? The fact that he wore a T-shirt that read: Save a lollipop; suck a dick? Any of that ringing a bell?”
“Are you kidding? I tell that story at parties. It always gets a big laugh.”
“Glad my trip through the seventh circle of dating hell has become fodder for your cocktail conversations.” She jerked her chin toward Ozzie. “He’s the exception, not the rule.”
“Mmm,” Donny hummed. “That he is. Military man, motorcycle hottie, bodyguard bent on guarding your body.” He unnecessarily emphasized the last three words before giving her a once-over that was thick with green-eyed jealousy. “Some girls have all the luck. If I didn’t love you so much, I’d hate you.”
When he whisked by her, nose held firmly in the air, she smiled at his retreating back. Then she turned and made her way into the break room. Cocking a hip against the counter, she crossed her arms and eyed Ozzie as he stirred his coffee.
“What?” he demanded.
“Do you ever feel drained?”
“Drained?” He stopped stirring to frown at her. How the hell does he make wild, every-which-way hair and untrimmed beard stubble look sexy? “From what?”
“From the way men and women alike just drink you in.”
“Ha!” he barked. “Try telling that to your editor. The guy gave me a look that was meaner than Worf on a Wednesday not ten minutes ago.”
“Worf?”
“Star Trek: Next Generation.” He waved a dismissive hand. “What’d I do to piss him off? We seemed to get along just fine when you introduced us this morning.”
Charlie had barely batted a lash when she arrived at work with Ozzie in tow and announced he would be shadowing her for a few days. In fact, she was the one to blink in surprise when Charlie told her, “Yeah. I know. Police Chief Washington called and said you were working on something that might prove dangerous, and he’d assigned you a bodyguard.” More like Ozzie had volunteered, but who was she to split hairs?
“He’s mad because half my coworkers have spent the morning ambling by my desk to get a better look at you, and they’re all likely to miss their deadlines as a consequence.”
“Just half?” The corner of Ozzie’s mouth quirked. “You wound me.”
“The other half are…” She wrinkled her nose. “How did you put it? Strictly not dickly.”
When Ozzie barked out a laugh, she wondered if there was any sweeter sound on earth. She found herself grinning up at him like a fool. “Ozzie,” she began, wanting to tell him…something. She wasn’t sure what, but something. She was thwarted, however, when the angry buzz of his cell phone sounded from his hip pocket.
“Whatever thought that was…” He reached into his jeans pocket. “Hold it for a second.” He glanced at the screen. “It’s Washington.” Thumbing on the device, he pressed it to his ear. “Ozzie here, Chief. What do you know?”
Samantha should have been on tenterhooks waiting to hear what Washington had to say. Instead, she found herself mesmerized by the golden-brown beard that peppered Ozzie’s jaw. Hypnotized by the way his mouth formed words. Completely captivated by the deep rumble of his voice.
