“Well damn,” he says with that cocksure, arrogant look on his face.
Damn indeed.
Damnation.
Chapter Two
Rowan
Well fuck.
There’s a vague recollection that comes filtering back into my foggy brain of my dad calling me at some fucking ungodly hour this morning — something about the rental house of his I’ve been fixing up for the Ellis family — something about someone stopping by for the key to the place.
The “someone” I was expecting was sure as hell not her.
Soft blue eyes, light blonde hair, just a smattering of freckles across her nose. The white dress, the silver cross on the chain around her neck.
A damn angel, and yet, the last angel in the world to pull shit like this with.
Evangeline Ellis — preacher’s daughter.
And I’m fucking standing in front of her buck-naked with my cock out.
Master of first impressions that I am.
“You’re here for the key.”
“Yes,” she says exasperatedly.
She looks uncomfortable. Well, no, that’s putting it lightly. She looks like something between a scared church mouse and someone who just saw blood for the first time.
“You gonna be okay?”
“Do you mind?”
“Mind what?”
“Clothes. Please,” she says, wrinkling her brow crossly and pointedly looking away from me.
Oh this is good.
This is real good.
You know how they always say people will surprise you in ways you don’t expect? Well, what I love is when someone is exactly who you think they’re going to be. And Ms. Holy Roller here is every fucking inch what I expected when Dad let me know she and her folks were coming to town.
Prim, proper, high-strung. A little fucking cross around her neck, because of course there is.
But then, that’s where the expected stops, and the unexpected comes up to slap me in the face. The uptightness? The prudish behavior? Yeah, those I expected from the daughter of the deep-south Georgia preacher.
The rest of it, I was not.
There’s the fact that she’s stunning. There’s the fact that her white sundress fits probably a bit too well — more than I’m betting she thinks it does. There’s that long blonde hair, glowing around her face from the sun coming in through the dingy hallway window. Pouty lips, big blue eyes that I’m sure are pretty when they aren’t scowling.
Shit.
On the one hand, preacher girl is everything I expected. But on the other?
On the other hand, she’s fucking hot, and that I was not expecting.
Not by a damn mile.
She whirls back away from me, crossing her hands over her chest. But that sunlight coming in also happens to be shining right through that white dress, giving me more of a glimpse than I’m betting she wants to.
I decide to keep the little gem to myself.
“Um, please?”
I shake my head, dragging my eyes up from checking out the way the light comes through that dress between her thighs to the back of her I’m sure still scowling face.
“Yes?”
“Look, I just need the key, and could you please put some clothes on?!” she says with a shrillness to her voice.
I grin. “What’s that? Sorry, you know it’s impolite to talk looking away from someone when you’re addressing them.”
“You aren’t wearing pants,” she says, her voice quavering.
She actually sounds upset.
“It’s just a dick, sweetheart.”
“Mr. Hammond! Please!” she says tightly.
I grin, shaking my head. “Okay, okay, chill.”
I frown, turning and grabbing a pair of jeans off the back of my office chair.
Jesus, fuck.
The pounding in my head that’s been momentarily forgotten by opening my eyes to this angel standing over me comes roaring back. For a minute, I scrunch my face up, trying to remember why the hell I’m naked, and sleeping it off on my damn office sofa instead of my apartment upstairs.
The still-beer-damp jeans remind me as I yank them on.
Right, the bar fight.
The boiling point of townies, the insanely drunk bachelorette party of out-of-towners, and the even more drunk groom that showed up to see his fiancée slow dancing to Whitesnake with Mikey Sullivan who works down on the docks.
Somehow this led to me getting punched in the face, and after that, it’s a bit of a blur.
I vaguely remember the close up of the bar, saying fuck it to cleaning up the place post-fight, and getting rip-shit drunk with Jade instead.
Jade, who’s probably still crashed upstairs in my place actually. One, because no wasted employee of mine is going to take the shitty sofa while I sleep upstairs, and two, because I’m pretty positive I couldn’t make it up the stairs last night if I fucking tried.