Page 8 of Cockpit
My second thought: holy shit. He is wearing a plain white T-shirt that is a little too tight and stretches around biceps that aren’t too big and aren’t too small, the fabric between just snug enough to showcase every toned, cut inch of what lies beneath. Broad shoulders. A tapered waist.
Please . . . pretty please let this colander-wearing stranger be Grayson Malone because, hello? He just stopped me in my tracks. This is what I’ve been looking for. This is who I’ve been looking for.
A jaw-dropping guy you want to tear your eyes away from because you know you are staring but can’t help yourself.
Let the thigh-clenching commence.
And I haven’t even seen his face yet.
Is it asking too much of the universe for him to be some kind of tortured hero to boot?
Too much? Thought so.
“Can I help you?” His voice is deep and gravelly and scrapes over my skin in a way that makes me want to stand there and wait for him to speak some more.
For the first time, I have chills just from speaking to one of my finalists. Or is that a tingling hot flash? I’m not sure, but the one thing I am certain of is that he’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. Let’s hope that when he hears the news, he’s still the nice guy I vaguely remember him to be and that he’ll be thrilled to be a finalist . . . and maybe the Hot Dad poster child I’m already making him out to be in my mind.
“Um. Yes.” I force my eyes off his torso and back up to the colander, where I can just see the curve of his bottom lip as it turns up into a smile.
“Dad!” a voice calls from somewhere in the house, right before footsteps pound down a hallway and then abruptly stop. “Oh my gosh. You’re so embarrassing.” A belly laugh. “Take that off.” A slink of two small arms around Colander Man’s torso.
“Sorry.” The man turns to face his son and removes the colander. “But I am your father, Luke,” he says in his best Darth Vader impersonation.
The little boy laughs, and I feel like such an outsider standing on the porch as the man ruffles the little boy’s hair I can’t quite see yet.
I clear my throat, and by the way Colander Man whips his head in my direction, it’s as if he had forgotten I was there. I’m struck immediately by the man looking back at me. Light eyes. Messed-up brown hair. A grin that is wide and inviting.
Yep. He definitely has the “it” factor.
When our eyes connect and recognition fires in his expression, that smile that could warm your insides slowly falls, bit by sexy bit.
Oh crap.
“What are you doing here?”
The bite in his voice says it all. He remembers.
“Hi, Grayson. Sidney Thorton.”
“I know who you are.”
For the briefest of seconds, I get a glimpse of the little boy as he tries to step out from behind his father. He’s the perfect mini-me of Grayson—olive complexion, brown eyes, lopsided smile.
And I hate how Grayson pushes his son behind him, almost as if he’s protecting him from me.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” I infuse cheer to bolster my waning bravado.
“Did something happen?” Confusion fleets across his expression. “Is there a reason you’ve come down from your castle on the hill, Princess?”
“What do you mean?”
Memories flash and fade. High school idiosyncrasies every teenager endures. The popular crowd and the wannabes. The cool kids who ran together and the kids on the outside who never were allowed in. Grayson working at Lulu’s diner, kind and courteous but left to pick up after the mess I’m sure we made. Overhearing us planning our next party or get-together but never being invited. The friends who I thought were my world but who I never spoke to after leaving.
Is that what he’s referring to?
“Look, that was a long time ago. We should—”
“What do you want?” He holds his hands up as if to tell me he doesn’t want to talk about it, and it takes me a second to switch mental gears.
