Page 4 of Daddy By Design

TWO

Today was a fucking banner day.

I shoved my wet hair out of my face and her eyes—which were already the size of an anime heroine’s—widened. Right now, I was too pissed off to worry about the damn scar on my face.

I was tall and I knew my eyes were a creepy dark blue that looked black in low light. Add in the slash down my eyebrow and cheek from an accident in my workshop and I probably freaked her out. The rain-slickened streets kicked back every single headlight and streetlamp at me, making my eyeballs throb in my head. Just great. Now I was having an optical migraine to add to this exceptional day.

The woman had just gouged the side of my truck with...fuzzy handcuffs?

What. In. The. Fuck.

I stepped closer to her, towering over her even in her ridiculous leopard-printed stilts. The light show going off in my head left light trails all around her. “Wait right there. I’m calling the cops.” I dug my phone out of my now soaked jeans.

“Wait. Can we talk about this?” She tried to brush her wet hair out of her face, and it just kept sticking to more of her.

“No.”

She snatched my phone out of my hand.

Shock had me reeling back a step. That and because her glitter-bomb of a shirt was turning the world into sparkles. “For real, lady?”

“This is a mistake. I thought you were a different guy. I promise.”

“I don’t care.” I reached for my phone, and she shoved it down the front of her shirt. “Don’t make me go for that, Hellcat. Because I will.”

She took an unsteady step back and fumbled into her huge leopard purse for something.

“If you’re reaching for pepper spray, I’m going have the cop add assault to the destruction of property charge.”

She shook her hair back. “Okay, I won’t go for the pepper spray if you back up, Mr?—”

I ignored her. I hadn’t been called mister anything in a damn long time. “Give me my phone back.”

“Just listen for a second. It was a mistake. Haven’t you ever made a mistake?”

Too many to count. I gritted my teeth and when she shrank back again, I realized it was more of an outside snarl. Too damn bad. “Phone,” I demanded again in an even lower voice.

She looked around, craning her neck.

“Think someone’s going to come help you, Hellcat?”

“It’s Dahlia, thank you.”

“Whatever.”

She huffed out a breath. “Look. I’ll pay for the damages. I know a great body shop.” She rummaged in her bag again. “Somehow, I’ll pay for it,” she muttered. She dragged some sort of wallet-looking thing out of her bag, this time in screaming pink. “But you have no idea what kind of day I had today. And then I just caught the guy I was sort of dating with his tongue down some chick’s throat?—”

“Don’t care.”

She huffed out an imperceptible mumble of words.

I honestly didn’t care. I’d been in town for less than a week and this was the third fire I’d had to put out today. My store, Trick or Treat, had dealt with a damn electrical fire in the basement, and then one of my three-hundred-pound metal sculptures got lost in transit. Lost.

Three-hundred pounds. Unreal.

How did you lose anything three hundred pounds in a seven-foot crate?

And now my truck had been vandalized by some Carrie Underwood-wannabe, minus the blond hair.

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