Page 302 of Hell Hath No Fury
“A bit, yeah,” was all he said, but I could see the way he was huffing, like the bottle in my hand had personally offended him.
“Well…” I started, suddenly all kinds of awkward. “I should go. Gotta restock my shitty whiskey for the big emotional crisis happening upstairs.”
The man considered me, his dark brows pulled down over his eyes as he did so, and I suddenly felt the need to squirm under his scrutiny.
And what the hell wasthatall about? I didn’t squirm. I was, for all intents and purposes, very firmlyanti-squirm.
Suddenly wanting to be anywhere else, I took a step back, ready to turn and get the hell outta there.
“Wait,” he called, that low, rough voice filled with urgency. “Come inside.”
“Uh,” I hesitated, looking from his outstretched hand to the door he held open. It was the door directly beside the one that led to my apartment, and at the moment, it was wide open, showing the very empty, very under construction shop space I’d watched him work in earlier. “I don’t know that I particularly want to do that, random stranger with an empty room full of power tools.” His mouth opened, but he said nothing. “This seems like another one of those true crime situations we talked about earlier. If I go in there with you, I may never come out again.” To emphasize my point, I pointed a finger at him. “I don’t even know your name, dude.”
He dropped his gaze to my finger, those dark eyes narrowing even further, before he looked back up at me.
“I’m Asher. Asher Dunn.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Asher
She looked at me like I was nuts.
Hell, maybe I was.
Because who knew what the hell I was thinking.
When I’d first seen her there, staring at me through the window in the pouring rain, I hadn’t been quite sure what to make of her.
I mean, come on. She’d been a bit of a hot mess, standing there, soaking wet, her dark hair plastered to her face and her makeup smudged under her eyes.
I shouldn’t have found it so damn hot.
But, growing up the way I had, I didn’t often see women getting messy like that.
Perfection always seemed to be the name of the game. Didn’t matter if it was noon or midnight, the women I’d known in my life were always more concerned with their appearance than anything else. Because God forbid any one of them bothered to cultivate any kind of personality.
No, they let their push-up bras and their daddy’s bank accounts do all the talking for them.
It was fucking exhausting.
It was also a big part of the reason I’d made the move to the city in the first place. My mother had been mortified when I’d decided to set up in Queens and not the Upper West Side or something, but I was determined to do this my way. Once I’d laid out my idea to Easton, my business partner, he’d been justas excited about it as I was, and we’d spent months drawing up plans and scouting locations.
As soon as we’d settled on Myrtle Avenue, I knew we’d made the right decision; the neighborhood felt like home in a way that my exclusive subdivision in Allentown never did.
Making my way to the back of the building, I reached behind the bar—the only structure in the whole place that was even close to completed—and pulled out one of the bottles I’d stashed there earlier in the week.
“Why don’t you give this a try?” I offered, holding the unopened bottle of premium whiskey out to her.
“What’d you do to it?” she asked skeptically, eyeballing the bottle like it was a bomb.
“Chill, Betty,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It’s perfectly fine. Look—” I pointed to the bottle neck, “—it’s even still sealed.”
“You know, my name’s notactuallyBetty.”
“I figured. But it suits you.”
She made a face.
