Page 2 of Branded
But I’d discuss that with her later.
I moved to the desk, leaned a hip against it, and waited until she noticed me. Maybe she’d missed me in the hall. But in an enclosed space, this close to her person, and eventually she would spot me.
And she did.
Five minutes later.
Probably because impatience had gotten the better of me and I was rocking my leg back and forth, shaking her desk.
She stood up, pulled out her earbuds.
I opened my mouth.
“Not interested,” she said.
And then she spun on her heel, pushed out through her office door, and disappeared down the hall.
Two
Kailey
This was my own personal form of hell.
Peopling.
Twinkling lights hung overhead on the warm September evening, woven through the lush greenery of Luc and Lexi (neé Hallbright) Masterson’s house.
It was the annual Breakers Team Bonding Extravaganza.
Which, I was learning, was really an excuse for a team competition.
Team being a group of people that apparently included me.
Not because I played hockey. Hell, I was allergic to sports. I didn’t watch them, didn’t play them. The closest I’d gotten to them before my friend Oliver had convinced me to uproot my life (which, admittedly, wasn’t much of one, but moving to Baltimore had still been the biggest, scariest thing I’d ever done) was in P.E.
And if this was my personal hell now, P.E. was a special brand of hell from my past.
Soccer. Shudder. Track. Double that. Kickball. Basketball. Dodge ball?—
Okay, anything with balls was bad.
Bad for me.
Bad for my glasses.
Bad for?—
My gaze drifted to the right, to the big broad man who’d come into my office a week before, interest in his eyes.
Interest I’d shut down with a sharp statement.
And since then, I hadn’t given him a second look.
Which was what I’d wanted. I knew men like him. I knew what men like him did with girls like me.
That being…nothing.
Maybe I looked okay on the outside.
