Page 10 of Cherry on Top

There was a man there.

Not just any man.

His back was to Will, as he stood, staring at the side of Will’s building, wearing jeans and a T-shirt that fit him like a glove, hugging his long slender lines.

Will must’ve made a noise, because he turned around.

The front view was even better than the back. Tousled, curly dark hair that was a little too long matched the scruff on his jaw. Dusk had fallen, making it impossible to see the color of his eyes, but Will imagined they were just as dark brown as his hair. A deep, chocolate brown he could willingly drown in.

“Hey,” Will said, wishing that he hadn’t been working for the last twelve hours and probably smelled like it. Or that he didn’t have at least half a banana split smeared across his white T-shirt.

Kate had teased him that he’d picked white for the Cherry’s shirts because he looked hot in them, because they were terribly impractical otherwise.

But from the way the guy’s gaze drifted across the white fabric, stained yes, but also stretched tight across his pecs and his biceps and hugging his stomach, Will decided it hadn’t been such a bad idea, after all.

Then Will’s eyes caught on what was behind the guy. A bag full of stuff. And he’d done something to Will’s wall. There were paint marks on the wall he’d so meticulously cleaned up, scrubbing every bit of ugly graffiti off. Making sure each and every brick was restored. It had been hard, long, back-breaking work, and now this hot guy was doing what . . .painting some kind of bullshit back on it?

He could be hot, but Will wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

He straightened up. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Excuse me?” the guy retorted. With anger flashing in those dark eyes, he was even hotter.

Will ignored the pull of him, the pulse of desire in his belly.

It had just been way too long since he’d been attracted to anyone—and even longer since he’d done something about it.

“I said, what are you doing? You have paint in that bag. I can see it. I can see it on the wall. Are you really gonna graffiti my building right in front of me?”

“Graffiti?” The guy’s jaw dropped in surprise. “I don’t paint graffiti.”

“Well, what the hell are you doing then?” Will crossed his arms over his chest, because he knew how intimidating that could look.

“It doesn’t concern you.”

Except it did. Because what Will thought what he was doing really freaking pissed him off.

“Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better,” Will said. “I spent days in all kinds of shitty weather scrubbing every last bit of paint off this wall. Do you have any idea how long that takes? How much elbow grease I wasted on this? Because I didn’t want to pretend that the inside was all that counted.”

Will craned his head as the hot guy stared at him, confusion pleating the skin between his dark eyebrows. Realized that he hadn’t caught the guy before he’d done it, he’d caught him in the middle of defacing Will’s building.

Anger surged inside him. “I don’t care how hot you are,” he said, “but you can’t just come here and do this to my building.”

“Your building?”

Will gave him a sharp nod. “Yes, this is my building, and I’ll be damned if you paint all over it again, just for me to have to sweat out in the heat of summer to clean your bullshit off.”

“My bullshit?”

Will couldn’t decide what was more annoying; that this asshole had begun to paint all over his building, or that he wouldn’t actually admit it.

Especially when evidence was clear behind him. And not even anything interesting. Just a few swipes of different colors.

What was the point of that? Will decided he didn’t give a crap; he just wanted it gone, and this guy was gonna be the one to remove it.

“Are you just gonna keep repeating every word I say or are you gonna clean this up?” Will asked archly.

The guy’s shrug was mechanical and okay, he looked a little puzzled, too. Which confused Will.

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