Page 10 of Working For Her Curves

My stomach drops. “They need reviewing.”

“Which intake logs, specifically?”

“The…All of them.” My face is on fire.

“All the intake logs. That’s what was so urgent you crossed a crowded bar to talk to me.” Her eyes are bright, and the laugh is right there in the lines around her mouth and I want to kiss every one of them.

“I walked. Casually.”

“I saw you. You walked like a man on a mission. I watched you dodge three people and a waitress.” She’s grinning now, full and open, and it lands between my ribs because I’ve been chasing this expression since the day she walked into that trailer.

“You scared him off,” she says, nodding in the direction the polo shirt guy went. She looks back at me, and the grin goes warm in a way that makes it hard to breathe.

“He left on his own.” Her bare shoulder is six inches from my hand. I can feel the heat coming off her skin from here, and my body is vibrating with a primitive need to pull her body against mine and feel her luscious curves pressing against my body.

“So serious. You look like a bouncer who spotted a fake ID,” she laughs, then squares her own shoulders and puffs her chest, dropping her chin.

“I do not look like a bouncer.” But I’m grinning now too because she throws her whole body into it and it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen and also making it very difficult to think.

“A bouncer who’s also mad about intake logs.” The laughter shifts. Underneath it, her eyes on mine, daring me. “Then why are you over here?”

“Because some guy was talking to you, and I didn’t like it.”

She inhales sharply. Color floods up her neck into her face.

“That’s honest.” Her voice is rougher now, and the sound of it runs down my spine and pools at the base of it and I have to shift my weight so my boner isn’t visible from space.

“You asked.”

“I did.” She holds my gaze. Her chest is rising faster, and she’s close enough that the heat emanating from her bare arms hits my skin. “For the record, I saw you the second I walked in.”

My pulse hammers in my throat, and my hands are fists in my pockets. She was looking for me when she arrived, and the ground under my feet feels less solid than it did five seconds ago.

“Stay,” she says. “Karaoke’s about to start.”

“I can’t sing.”

“Neither can I.” She bumps her shoulder against my arm and the warmth of her bare skin prints itself onto me through my shirt and stays there, pulsing, long after she pulls away. “But that’s not going to stop me.”

I’ll do anything she asks.

A little while later, Poppy comes and sits down next to me. “I did something.”

“What did you do?” I ask carefully, looking at her and wondering if I should be worried or not.

“I signed up.” She nods toward the karaoke screen. “Both of us.”

It takes my mind a moment to catch up with what she said. She said us. “You did what? When?”

“When I ordered my drink.” Her grin is wide and inviting.

“Poppy, I can’t sing.”

“Neither can I.” She grabs my wrist and pulls, her fingers are warm and sure around my wrist, and my feet follow her before my brain has a vote. “But we’re going to!”

The stage is small. Scuffed plywood, duct-taped speakers, the karaoke screen bathing us in blue light. The song title appears on the monitor: “Stayin’ Alive.” Bee Gees.

She looks at me and grins. She’s so fucking beautiful and unexpected.