“Yes, actually, I am. Now I know you’re real and not a toy, like I said this morning.” His smile faded. “I was out of line and I am genuinely sorry. You were just trying to help, I know that.”
“But you don’t want my help.” It wasn’t intentional, the slight inflection I’d put on the pronoun. But he detected it anyway.
“I don’t want anybody’s help.” He replied, echoing Ranger’s words. “Look. It’s not some macho thing. It’s the way I was trained. I’m a soldier. I’m supposed to be tough, ready to defend my country at a moment’s notice and I can’t even push myself through a fucking doorway.” He shook his head with a wince, his face losing color for a moment.
I leaned forward. “Are… um,” I faltered, wondering if expressing concern would earn his wrath. “Are you okay?”
He came back to himself from whatever dark placed he’d just been and shrugged. “Yeah, I’m fine. Or I will be, once I get out of this goddamn chair.”
I glanced at his leg. “Were you hurt…over there? You know. Afghanistan?”
His eyebrows climbed and his mouth fell open before his lips curled into a smirk. “Very impressive. Girls who look like you don’t usually know there is a war, let alone where it is.” He clapped his hands softly in a taunt that heated my face.
“Yeah, well, girls who look like me don’t need to know things like that.”
Adam’s jaw clenched and his eyes hardened. “So what kinds of things should girls who look like you know?”
Without hesitation, I fed the assumption I knew he'd made. “The usual. What kind of car do you drive, what do you do for a living, how much money do you make and how much of it are you willing to spend on me.” Adam’s face flushed and he opened his mouth to say something else insulting but I beat him to it. “If you don’t want to talk about it, just say so. There’s no need to insult my intelligence.”
For one stunned moment, he stared at me and then his laugh filled the room. His smile had made me gasp, but hearing him laugh made my belly flip. “Princess, I’ve never met a girl who looked like you and had any intelligence to insult. Looks like I owe you another apology.”
I glared at him and waited.
He cocked his head and stared at me for a moment. “This bugs you more than what I said this morning, doesn’t it?”
I didn’t answer. This time, I would make him work for it.
He grew serious and this time, when he apologized, it filled his eyes. “Then I’m sorry, really sorry. Again.” An uncomfortable silence filled the space between us. “Like I said. I’m not used to girls like you-“
I held up a bandaged hand. “No need to repeat it. It was offensive enough the first time.” Adam opened his mouth to retort but I wasn’t finished. “Do you know how many times narrow-minded people like you run their eyes over me and figure I’m about as deep as a puddle the day after the storm?”
“You telling me you’re more than what I see?” Adam scoffed.
With a wince, I pulled myself up, leaning on one hand. “That depends.”
“Oh, yeah? On what?”
“On how good your vision is. It’s stupid to assume beautiful is all I am – or was.” Yeah, I knew how egotistical that sounded. That was the damn point.
Adam’s eyes bulged but he quickly recovered and smirked at me. “You’re right. Beautiful and modest. My mistake.”
“You forgot the intelligence you just insulted.” I paused, glaring at him. “Any more myths you’d like to dispel or are we done here?”
Chapter 3
Start from the beginning
