Trust Me(3)

Did he seriously just say that?

I cleared my throat and swallowed hard to work up some moisture in my suddenly dry mouth. I should've been offended. If I was a different girl, I'd have clutched my proverbial pearls and gasped. Instead, I found myself biting back a smile. He'd promised honesty, and he'd given it. Hard to be mad about that. He was probably no better than any other guy on the regular, but today? Today, he'd impressed me.

A little.

That didn't mean I was going to let him get away with that excuse, though.

"So you're telling me you're such a novice fighter that you'd let a girl distract you from doing your job? Is that what you're telling me?"

He closed the distance between us until we were toe to toe and shook his head slowly.

"Nope. I’ve been around a lot of girls who’ve wanted to come watch me train. What I'm telling you is that you’re so ridiculously distracting with all that red hair and those curves, that even a seasoned fighter like me would be hard-pressed to stay unaffected with you in the room.” He shrugged, like take it or leave it. “I'm not going to lie, I'm extremely hard-pressed, and very affected right now."

Another honest answer, another statement that made my stomach do a flip.

When he stepped back a tense moment later, I could see the pulse pounding in his neck and I barely suppressed a shiver.

How long had it been? How long since I'd felt a guy's hands on me in an intimate way? Two years? Three? And even then, I'd been left with an empty feeling…a bone-deep knowledge that I was missing something. As I gazed at Matthias McDaniels, all I kept wondering was if I'd feel that way when he was done with me.





Matty



Well, that had been a major crash and burn. I should've just kept walking when she was still swearing at me after we'd bumped into each other. It would’ve given me a chance to let the adrenaline from having just been blackmailed by Mickey Flynn fade, and maybe I could've avoided acting like a giant bag of douche with too much testosterone.

Okay, maybe not that, but at least I could've gotten my filter back in place. Now Mickey's woman —Jesus, I hoped like fuck she wasn't actually Mickey's woman, because that would've made my guts churn— was staring at me like I was some sort of amoeba under a microscope. In my attempt to talk her out of wanting to manage me, all I'd done was catch her attention because I was different than the guys she was used to.

If I was keeping up the whole honesty tact, I had to admit that she was different than girls I was used to as well. Looks wise, she was an absolute dime. No question, but it was more than that. She wasn't trying to flirt or act coy or tease. She was straight up, balls out, letting me know exactly what she thought and why she thought it, and it was kind of nice. If I ever decided to settle down —and I wouldn't— that was the type of girl I'd want. No nonsense.

After twelve long years with my mother Sherri McDaniels as the only woman in my life, I was about done with liars. Women who pretended to be one thing and then, when you least expected it, whipped around like fucking vipers and turned out to be something else. The very idea that this girl was exactly what she seemed was compelling.

Kayla James gazed up at me through sherry colored eyes and I felt myself leaning into her again like an idiot fish on a hook.

Pulling back with a muffled curse, I ran a hand through my hair. "I gotta go. Look, no offense, maybe you're a great manager." Although I doubted it, after all, she looked even younger than me. "But it really would be better if you talked Mickey out of this. I'll talk to him too. If he hears from both of us and neither of us are happy, I’m sure he’ll see what a waste of time it would be to move forward."

I watched as her stance changed before my eyes— her little chin lifted, she cocked a hand on one hip— and I had the sneaking suspicion somehow, between the time we’d bashed skulls and now, something had changed her mind. Maybe she’d hit her head harder than I thought, because this was clearly the worst idea ever. A disaster in the making, and I’d already told her why.

I went to repeat myself and then add to the list of reasons this was a terrible idea, but she was already shaking her head and talking.

"You said yourself, you're not a Neanderthal. You'll get used to having a woman around. I guarantee it.” She gave me what I imagined was supposed to be an encouraging smile, but it only filled me with dread. “It's like working in an ice cream store. You think you'd be eating it left and right, but after the first week, you can't even look at it anymore.”

Wrong. The summer I turned fifteen, I'd gotten a second job at a place called Scoopz. I gained twenty pounds in less than two months. I finally had to quit when I realized it was costing me more in new pants than I was making.