Page 3 of The Way We Were(wolf)

“Huh.” She rose from her crouch, her legs tingling from the most amount of exercise her quadriceps had done in months. That was probably something she needed to remedy if the intense burn was any indication. As she shook out her legs, she noticed the power cord coming from the back of the machine. “If unplugging and plugging back in worked on my old computer, why wouldn’t it work on you?” And now she was having a one-way conversation with a machine. That was what her life had come to, apparently.

Not dwelling on how she was straddling the line betweenI’m fineandI’m losing it, she leaned over the vacuum and yanked the black cord from the wall. When she popped it back into the socket, she was just about to celebrate the tiny victory of a little green light blinking to life…until she heard the whir of the machine. And couldn’t breathe.

Wasn’t it enough that she’d lost her job and gotten evicted from her home? Those things hadn’t exactly made her stronger, but they also hadn’t killed her.

No, what was going to kill her was the Electromatic 3000, she thought, as she watched the machine devour the scarf still knotted around her neck as she choked and ran out of air.

ChapterTwo

Eric heard a noise, a cross between a yelp and a wheeze. And before anyone else in the salon knew where the yeeze had come from or what was happening, he was already next to the auto-vac with a woman in his lap, her scarf twisted on the floor like a snake that had met its maker.

Nathan’s glare warmed Eric’s back like a heat-seeking missile. But for the first time, Eric didn’t care if anyone noticed his superhuman agility or his Roadrunner speed. What was he supposed to do? Let this woman die at the hands of this robotic sweeping mechanism? Not a dang chance.

With a trembling hand, he brushed her chocolate-brown hair softly, still feeling the adrenaline coursing through his veins. His mammoth hands weren’t exactly famous for their gentle touch.

The woman peered up at him through a curtain of thick lashes that covered her espresso-colored eyes, a shade much darker than whatever she’d been trying to hide on her shirt with the death-scarf. An autumnal coffee, by the smell of it. Or maybe that was just her natural scent. Either way, it was delicious enough for him to want to eat her up—figuratively, of course.

He tucked the piece of hair behind her ear. Not because it was a necessary part of the rescue mission he’d embarked upon, but because he couldn’t help it. His fingers had a mind of their own, aching to caress the soft skin of her cheek one more time. Who was he to deny them the pleasure? “Are you okay?” He propped her up so she was sitting on his lap. Her eyes sharpened their focus, like the events of the past ninety seconds were coming into view.

Her mouth opened once, twice, and then a third before she spoke, like she was a fish trying to blow a bubble. She squinted as her eyes scanned his face. “You’re new.”

“So are you.”

“I switched shifts to daytime.”

“I work then too.” Eric chuckled softly, the first intake of air since he’d swooped in and pulled her from the unrelenting clutches of the machine that was no longer welcome at Hairy Stylez. It would be serving a lifetime sentence in the dumpster for attempted murder after his shift. “Are we having a meet-Seuss?”

Her brows pulled to the center of her forehead. “A what?”

“Like, not a meet-cute, but a meet-Seuss? Because of the rhyming. Sorry, that was totally lame. My snout is just usually in a romance book.” That was right—lots of men were reading romance these days. He wasn’t ashamed.

“Your snout?”

Uh-oh.

“It’s just an expression. Never mind,” he blurted, attempting to cover his slip.

“I know what you mean. I enjoy reading too. And coffee…and pumpkin rolls, if you couldn’t tell,” she murmured as she looked down at her stained shirt. “It figures…the one day I get to the coffeehouse early enough to get one before they sold out, and I ended up wearing it.”

Okay, at least he hadn’t blown their cover with his little slip. What would Nathan have said? Nothing good, that was for sure. He could have kicked himself for the lapse in judgment. But it wasn’t every day a beautiful woman literally fell into your lap. And besides, he couldn’treallykick himself, not with her lying on top of him like she was. Not like there was anything that would make him move now.

“Whoa, baby!” a voice shrieked from the other end of the hallway.

Well, that did it.

The woman shot off his lap like he’d lit a match beneath her bottom, and he shot off the floor with matching gusto.

“Should I come back later?” Stella suggestively quipped as her brows danced up and down on her forehead.

“I, uh…I was just trying to get that ridiculous machine to work,” the woman stammered, pointing at the vacuum that still had a hold on her scarf like she was accusing it of a crime in a courtroom drama.

“By shoving your scarf into the hole?”

“Nooooo. That beast grabbed my scarf and nearly choked me out. If it hadn’t been for…”

“Eric,” he supplied, only then realizing they hadn’t exchanged names.

“If Eric hadn’t found me when he did, I don’t know what would have happened.” She peered over her shoulder at him, laying a hand on her chest, smack-dab in the middle of the stain. “I’m sorry. I never thanked you.”

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