“Did it hurt?”
The British accent startled me.
I looked up and found a man leaning against my desk. He looked a bit older than I was—in his early thirties maybe?—and rougher around the edges than most people who came by the office. He had at least a week’s worth of stubble, his cargo pants were old and battered, the fabric of his t-shirt worn thin in places, and his hiking boots looked like they’d seen
more miles than a long-haul bus. A leather chord with a large white tooth hung around the strong tanned column of his throat.
He looked
like an Indiana Jones impersonator who’d got lost on his way to a bachelorette party.
But, despite how out of place he
looked, the handsome stranger grinned down at me with at a twinkle in his denim blue eyes.
It was the kind of twinkle that could steal
the air right out of a girl’s lungs.
“Can I help you?” I asked and was annoyed when my words did come out a little
breathless.
There was something oddly familiar about him.
“You can answer my question.” His grin broadened, white teeth flashing against his deep tan and stubble, and my sense of oxygen deprivation deepened. “Did it hurt?”
“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
I hoped I hadn’t.
“When you fell from heaven?” His wicked, slightly crooked grin remained.
The tight, breathless feeling in my chest dissolved into disappointment and I let out an exasperated sigh. “Seriously?”
He winked. “Can’t blame a man for trying, can you, darling?”
It said something about the general
effect of his muscles, confidence, and twinkle that the wink came out cute, instead of creepy.
But it was close.
