Okay, enough. She didn’t have time to think about armpits. Oliver and Bobbi might already be on the way.
“Sir,” she said, lifting her foot to nudge one of his shoes. Before her sandaled foot connected, he sprang from the bench. Her Birkenstock got caught between his Nikes. She hopped, spun, then found herself getting a taste of the turf.
One of these days she really needed to learn how to close her mouth—or at least scream out loud—when she was getting attacked by pretend snakes and dangerous strangers.
“Ppthhht.”She spit bits of mulch out of her mouth as she rolled onto her side, feeling for the shape of the engagement ring inside her pocket—good, still there—then took aim with the only weapon she had. “Stop it, stop it, stop it,” she yelled, at last finding her voice as she fired off several shots with eachstop it.
“Stop what?” asked the dangerous stranger, who McKenna had to admit was looking less dangerous by the second as he stood frozen, hands raised, with Windex spray dripping off his glasses. “What’s wrong with you?”
Well, there was certainly nothing wrong with her aim. But to address his question more specifically, “You drop-kicked me for no good reason.”
He removed his glasses and began wiping them off with the bottom hem of his shirt. “Pretty sure waking up to find a stranger putting the moves on your armpit is a solid enough reason to drop-kick someone. But for the record, I wasn’t drop-kicking you. I was just trying to defend myself after I’d recovered from my initial shock.”
Tall and lean muscled, he loomed over her with a fierce scowl. But hey, at least he wasn’t slumbering or dead anymore, so they were moving in the right direction.
As he continued drying his glasses, McKenna scrambled to her feet. “Well, if we’re going to be keeping a record, might I add, sir, that nobody was getting amorous with your armpit. I was simply trying to make sure you werebreathingwhen I slipped.”
The scowl on his face dissolved into annoyance. “Well, you sure have a sneaky method for determining someone’s respiratory status,” he said, leaning down to the ground to pick up what looked like an earbud.
“Respiratory status? What are you, a nurse or something? Normal people don’t talk like that.”
“You want to know what normal people don’t do? Sneak up on complete strangers.”
“Right. So sneaky the way I yelledsir!thirty thousand times before I even got to the bench. What was I supposed to do? Throw a pine cone at you from a hundred feet away before I approached?” Besides, she’d apologized, hadn’t she? The least he could do was accept her apology and thank her for cleaning his glasses—and maybe tell her what brand of deodorant he used.
“Let me give you a little friendly advice,” the stranger said, holding his glasses up to the early evening sky, then dropping them back down to the hem of his shirt. “When you see a stranger sleeping on a bench, don’t approach the stranger at all. Just keep on walking.”
“Thank you. Appreciate the advice. Now here’s mine. If you’re going to offer friendly advice, try sounding a little friendly about it. Also, for the record—”
“Oh, you really do want to keep a record, don’t you?”
“—that’s terrible advice. What if the sleeping stranger needed my help?”
“Why on earth would a sleeping stranger need your help?”
“Dozens of reasons.”
“Name one.”
McKenna blew her hair from her eyes—not that her unruly red curls ever obeyed—and began spraying down the bench with the Windex. “Okay. How about if I see some grizzly-looking guy in a prison suit with a rock in his hand, about to smash a sleeping stranger’s head in so he can steal his clothes and identification? What then? Don’t bother the sleeping stranger? Just keep on walking?”
He settled his messenger bag over his right shoulder. “If you come across a grizzly-looking guy in a prison suit about to bash in someone’s head, then yes, by all means, throw a pine cone first.”
McKenna felt the edges of her lips quirk upward. She forced them back flat. This guy wasn’t funny. He was... weird. And annoying. And maybe not completely terrible to look at. Which made him even more annoying.
While he returned to cleaning his glasses—good grief, how clean did those glasses need to be?—McKenna took the opportunity to study his face, capturing it like a photo in her mind the way she often did when taking in something new.
As much as she hated to admit it, he had a nice face even with the scowl. The right sort of angles. Nice jawline. Straight nose. Pleasant lips, the bottom a little more filled out than the top.
His glasses and short brown hair—except for the cowlick sticking up in the back and the windblown look in the front—gave off scholarly vibes. The scripted tattoo on his inner right forearm that she couldn’t see well enough to decipher offered a slight air of mystery. His eyes appeared the type of hazel that change colors depending on the lighting. Green now. More blue in the bright daylight. Probably almost brown once the sun set.
She sucked in a breath.Sunset.Her mission.
She refocused on dousing the bench with Windex. “So all joking aside, I need you to leave.”
“I wasn’t aware we were joking, and... no.”
He settled his glasses back in place as she grabbed the roll of paper towels from her bag. “What do you meanno?”
