Page 20 of Marked By the Pack
“I’m very observant.” I looked back down at my watch. “It’s almost go time.” I peered out the windows to see Otto walking this way. God, there was something about a man in a freshly pressed suit. And his wavy brown hair was just begging for me to sink my fingers into. He was looking down at his phone.Perfect.“Three. Two. One.” I stepped out of the grocery store at exactly the same time as Otto appeared.
I bumped into him. A little harder than I meant to. My bag of produce went flying, but so did his to-go bags.
“Shit,” Otto said. He grabbed one of his bags before it smashed onto the ground, but when he reached out for the other in the air, it tilted forward. Spilling the contents all down the front of my jacket. A bit even splashed onto my neck.
“Fuck that’s hot!” I yelled. The boiling hot soup was everywhere. It started to drip down my neck, slipping beneath my jacket, trailing down the front of my chest. So much for flawless love skin. I was going to have freaking welts. I pulled off my jacket and used it to blot my neck and chest.Ow.
“I’m so, so sorry, Zoey,” he said.
There goes our perfect meet cute.
Otto pulled out some napkins from the bag that hadn’t ended up all over me. I dropped my jacket on the ground and grabbed the napkins from him. I blotted them against my chest, but my shirt was already ruined too. And my boobs were burnt.Fuck me.
“I wasn’t watching where I was going. It was completely my fault.” He grabbed my produce off the ground.
Damn it, I was supposed to be doing that!
He put my phallic veggies back in the bag and then grabbed his phone off the sidewalk. The screen was completely shattered. He cursed under his breath.
The wind blew and I shivered. My hair blew into my face, sticking to the soup on my neck. I was pretty sure some kind of disgusted noise came out of my throat as I pushed my hair out of the mess.
Otto put his phone back in his pocket and looked at me. Like he didn’t actually care about his broken phone. Like maybe he cared if I was okay more.
“And now I’m cold,” I said with a laugh as the wind blew again. “Which doesn’t even make any sense because I’m soaked.” As soon as I said the words, I realized how suggestive they were. I felt his eyes on me. For the first time in my life, I hadn’t been flirting. I was literally covered in hot soup. But I did like the way hewas looking at me. I picked my jacket up off the ground and went to pull it back on.
“Here, take mine.” He shrugged out of his jacket and put it around my shoulders before I could pull my wet one back on.
It was so hot it almost felt like a heated blanket. I practically melted into it. And it smelled like…warmth. Like a roaring fire on a cold night.
“I really am sorry,” he said. He reached out and wiped a little soup off my cheek. His hand paused a beat too long.
And if we weren’t on a crowded sidewalk, I probably would have put his thumb in my mouth. I swallowed hard. “It’s okay, I wasn’t looking either.” Honestly it was all my fault. I’d purposely bumped into him. I just…didn’t plan it out very well. But he didn’t need to know that.
For a second we both just stared at each other. I’d never been this close to him. And his hazel eyes were so distracting.
“I hate to just run off…but I have a meeting in a few minutes. Give me the bill for your dry cleaning, okay?” He threw the ruined food in the trash.
“What about your jacket?”
“Keep it.”
What?I couldn’t keep his jacket. And for a second, I’d completely forgotten about my whole plan. “How about you stop by after work to pick it up? I’ll make you dinner. To make up for wearing your lunch.”
He smiled. But it started to fade as quickly as it had come. “I really shouldn’t.”
I had no idea what he meant by that. He shouldn’t eat dinner? He should eat it with me? He didn’t reallylike his jacket or something? “Come on. It’ll be fun. I promise.”
He looked over his shoulder at the bank and then back at me. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s do it.”
“Does 6 work?”
He nodded. “I gotta run.” He started walking backward. “But I’ll see you tonight, Zoey.” He turned and hurried back off to work.
I watched him run up the stairs of the bank and disappear into the front doors. That had honestly worked out really well. Except for the scalding hot soup. I blotted my chest again.
Emma started laughing.
I turned to see her peering out of the grocery store exit.
