Garrett(12)

“Olivia,” Stevie practically screams over his shoulder, but without removing his eyes from mine. “Get out here.”

I hear shuffling in the back and I briefly catch a glimpse of Olivia as she walks by a glass window that separates the front of the store from the back. My heart starts thrumming erratically, just in the brief moment I saw her.

When she walks through the door, her eyebrows raise in surprise to see me standing there, but I’m relieved to see a quick grin on her face. She looks even better in the daylight with her multi-streaked hair lying in two loose, pigtail braids over each shoulder, with little wisps that have come free to frame her face. She’s wearing a pair of really faded jeans with a hole in one knee, flip-flops, and a tight white T-shirt that showcases a fantastic set of tits that I didn’t really get to appreciate last night because the blouse she had on was a little baggy.

“What are you doing here?” she asks with pleasant surprise.

“I came by to get you to change your mind about going out with me,” I say confidently, and she gives me a little smirk.

“Her answer is ‘Yes,’ ” Stevie says quickly, and both my head and Olivia’s snap his way.

His gaze flicks back and forth between us, his face all innocent-looking. “What? You want her to say ‘yes’ and trust me, she wants to say ‘yes,’ so I’m just speeding the process up a bit.”

“Get out of my process,” Olivia says with mock offense. “I’m a big girl and I can answer for myself. Now…don’t you have some flowers that need your attention or something?”

Stevie snorts and says to me, “It was nice meeting you, Garrett.”

Spinning on his heel, he starts to flounce toward the back of the shop, but not before stopping beside Olivia and saying, “And I’m going to fire you if you don’t say ‘yes.’ So take your process and stuff it.”

I can’t help but laugh and Olivia darts me a glare, and then levels another harsher one at Stevie, so I figure I’d better cut my laugh short.

Still, can’t hide the smirk—at least someone wants us to go out with each other.

After Stevie disappears from sight, Olivia looks back at me, her eyes chastising me over our humor at her expense.

“So, I guess it’s a ‘yes,’ ” I murmur as I step a foot closer to her.

“I didn’t say ‘yes,’ ” she points out seriously.

“But you’ll get fired if you don’t,” I counter.

“Stevie’s full of hot air. Besides, he can’t function without me,” she says confidently.

“I heard that,” Stevie calls out from the back in a singsong voice. “You are so fired.”

“Come on, Olivia. What do you have to lose?” I urge her. “I promise you a fantastic time.”

She snorts and walks over to a floral arrangement that’s balanced on a tiny round table. It’s pretty…all pinks, blues, and purples. No clue what the flowers are but it’s actually kind of stunning. I watch as Olivia starts messing with the arrangement, pushing some of the stems down a little farther and fluffing others.

“Your idea of fantastic and mine might be two separate things,” she points out, her gaze never leaving the flowers before her.

I step in closer to her, just inches away from her back, and notice the subtle stiffening of her body. Bending down, I whisper in her ear, “But then again…maybe our idea of fantastic is one and the same.”

She lets out a little gust of a breath across her lips and her shoulders relax. Turning on me so I have to lean back a bit, she asks, “So, what did you have in mind?”

Well, shit. I didn’t have anything in mind yet. I hadn’t made it past trying to get a committed “yes” out of her.

“We can do whatever you want,” I tell her, thinking that’s my safest course of action right now. Because I sure as hell bet she won’t appreciate me suggesting we go to her place for some toe-curling orgasms.

“Hmmmm,” she muses, and is it my imagination, or did she just lean in a little closer to me? “So…what you’re saying is if I told you I wanted to just go get a hotel room, and let’s have sex all night, we could do that?”

I take an involuntary step backward, because, holy hell…her words are like a punch in the gut. Surely she’s teasing me. Surely she is not even seriously suggesting that. Because if she is, I’m apt to drag her out of here right now and show her exactly how fantastic of a time we’d have together.

Instead, I swallow hard and say in a teasing tone, “That’s not really appropriate for a first date. I don’t want you to want me just for my body. I want you to want me for my mind as well.”