“No.” I shake my head. “It’s not a date.”
“Zeke, if you pick me up tomorrow at eight, it’s a date. If you don’t show, then no, it’s not a date.”
I open my mouth to argue but quickly recognize the quiet. I pull my cell from my ear and look at it. She fucking hung up on me. What the hell.
CHAPTER NINE
When I hear the doorbell ring, my heart starts to race. I’m glad Rayna is still asleep. She’d call me out on my giddy state over the fact that Zeke is here to pick me up.
With the understanding that this is a date, he still came. And like the third grade spelling bee, I’m ready, I’m excited, but most of all, I’m scared. It appears that when I’m around him, like all the other women who encounter the man, I fall victim to his charms. The guy touches me without actually touching me. His presence alone makes my heart pump hard and my body heats up. He gets me so hot in a way that no other guy has.
I shake my arms in hopes that everything will go back to normal, but when I pull the door open, I feel the erogenous spell of Zeke Declan cast over me.
Dressed in a light grey tee and a pair of destroyed jeans, he’s gorgeous. His short messy hair falls perfectly around his gorgeous face, stopping at the nape of his corded neck. Just as my eyes make their way to his, the sun radiates upon his face, enhancing the brilliant color of his gold-speckled eyes. The corner of his mouth lifts into a small lopsided grin, and I can’t help but to respond to that adorable, attention-grabbing dimple. My lips turn up. “Hi,” I manage to push out of my mouth, my smile growing bigger by the second. He’s infectious. You just want to welcome him. You want to keep him smiling, keep him pleased, and keep him close.
God, I’m in trouble here.
Nonetheless, rule number two, broken.
“Just to clarify, sweetheart,” he says, making no effort to hide the fact that beneath those hooded eyes, he’s inspecting my heated body, “this is not a date.”
I grin, shamelessly returning his gesture. I begin at his sneakers and take my time working my way back up to those heavy-lidded boudoir eyes. “I don’t see how it’s not. You and I set a time to meet and here you are. Therefore, it’s a date. Why do you have such a hard time calling it what it is?”
He shrugs. “Dates come with expectations.”
“Expectations? Now, you sound like Token. He doesn’t believe in dating either.”
“Token?” His brow lifts.
“My brother. I have five of them—Token, Steele, Nix, Stone, and Crash. Well, Crash isn’t his real name. It’s Kash, but he’s a stunt car driver. Hence, Crash. He used to be a racecar driver until NASCAR suspended him indefinitely. Anyway,” I say not wanting to get into it about my reckless older brothers with the paramount of bad boys, “what I’m trying to say is that I get the whole macho bullshit you’re trying to give me right now. But honestly, men have such misconceptions about what a woman wants or expects.”
His brows draw together as if I’m a book he’s reading and he just ran into a word that he doesn’t know the meaning. Then his chest lifts and he laughs. “Women,” he shakes his head, “You all have a bit of your own misconceptions. I wasn’t speaking of your expectations, Picasso. I was talking about mine.”
“Yours?” My head pulls back, not foreseeing the response.
“Yeah. See, if we were actually to go out on a date, I’d expect you to be a good girl.” He takes a step toward me. “And those illegitimate feelings you have for me, as wrong as you might think they are—I’d want you to accept that they’re not going away.” He moves in closer with another step. “I’d also expect you to behave yourself and not act on those naughty little impulses, the ones you feel when I get too close.” He’s standing right in front of me, our body heat co-mingles, and those naughty impulses he’s speaking of ignite. His head tilts to the side. He scans my face, slow and deliberate, until our eyes reconnect. “I’d expect you to be a lady. I’d expect you to keep your legs crossed. I’d expect you to make it very difficult for me to get into your pants.”
“Really?” Dammit! My voice squeaks with my astonishment. He can’t be serious, can he? I gaze up at him, now the confused reader.
“Really,” he says, glancing at my flip-flops. “Today, I’m taking you to the farmers’ market. They have the best peaches for making pie.”
“Homemade pie?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” I’ve never made a pie in my life, and the expression on his face tells me that he’s reading right into the lack of my domesticated skills.