Page 2 of Taming the Bad Boy

For some reason, he chuckles, as if my answer amuses him. “That’s right. And you are…?”

I can tell by his face that he already knows my name, but he wants to hear me say it. Normally, I wouldn’t play into this little game with anybody, but for some reason, I give him what he wants.

“Ivy.”

His expression shifts, like he’s just taken a sip of the world’s finest whiskey. “Ivy,” he repeats, rolling my name across his tongue as if he’s tasting it for the first time. “I’ve never seen a female mechanic before. Shouldn’t you be answering phones? Working the computers?”

He’s teasing me, goading me into a reaction. But I’m not falling for it. In fact, I just shrug and proudly brandish my wrench. “Bikes don’t fix themselves.”

He slowly nods, eyeing my wrench before very deliberately dragging his eyes up my body, causing my flesh to heat like a revving engine. “You like to get your hands dirty, little mechanic?”

Little mechanic?

His arrogance is overwhelming. It’s also sexy. “Only when there’s work needs doing.”

His smile widens. He likes that answer.

He also very obviously likes some other things about me…

And Lord save me, I like that he does.

“Speaking of work,” I say, fighting to change the subject before I lose myself in his eyes. “Did you need help with something?”

His smirk fades, and his eyes narrow in on me like two rifle scopes. “Yeah. I have a job needs doing.”

Relief floods through me, mixed with a dose if disappointment. So that’s why he’s here. He’s got a job for the shop.

Of course he does. It would be stupid to think he was here because of me.

His dirty-blond hair falls carelessly in unkempt waves from his forehead, just low enough that I’m aching to brush them back and expose those stormy blue eyes without anything in the way. They hang lose, wild and untamed, just like him.

I realize I’m staring again and snap myself out of it. “You need your bike looked at?”

Slate doesn’t answer right away. He just looks at me, studying me, his eyes tracing over my face, my lips, and my cheeks–which are no doubt completely red by now. The intensity he’s able to project with his gaze is overpowering. Almost too much.

Almost.

“Nope. I’m not here about my bike,” he finally says, his voice low. “I’m here aboutyou.”

My breath catches in my throat, like I’ve got a frog in there doing his best to ribbit its way out and embarrass the hell out of me. “M–me?”

I’m stammering. Stuttering. I have to brace myself against the bike as he takes a step closer. So close that I realize how much I have to look up at him. He towers above me like a giant. He’s well over six-feet. An absolute Adonis. Even other men must be intimidated by his presence. “I want to take you out, Ivy.”

His words crash into me like an out of control sport bike. I was not expecting that.

He wants to take me out? I’d believe it more if someone just told me an alien spacecraft had landed out back.

I do my best to ignore my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest as I mutter, “Well…that can’t happen.”

His left eyebrow lifts, and he cocks his head to the side. “No? Why the hell not?”

I’m quivering as I glance through the window into the office where my dad is having a heated phone conversation. If he knew Slate was eventhinkingabout doing what he just did, he’d erupt like a volcano.

“Because…my dad would kill you,” I whisper.

I shouldn’t have said that. You don’t talk like that to one of these guys.

But my dad, Hank Calloway, is different. He’s the kind of man who, when he speaks, people listen. No matter who they are. He’s solid and dependable, like the machines he works on. And although his hair, once dark, is now gray, he can still kick butt like a guy half his age.

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