Trashed (2 page)

Right.

But his eyes won’t leave my mind as I dump my bag of garbage into the dumpster and put away my can, broom, and dustpan. Those eyes, such a strange shade of green, so pale they were almost pastel in color. And so, so vivid, so piercing. He looked at me like he was actually seeing
me
, like he could read my secrets by looking in my eyes.
 

I clock out, wave goodbye to Phil, the supervisor, and then unzip my jumpsuit the rest of the way, tying the arms around my waist. It’s a hot, humid, sticky day. I stink. I’m dripping sweat, and all I want is to get back to my little room and take a shower. Cold first to cool off, and then hot to get clean. Maybe meet Jimmy and Ruth for some drinks later.
 

I’m out of the shop and through the courtyard at a quick walk, lifting the neck of my wife-beater to wipe the sweat off my face. With the shirt in front of my face, I’m momentarily blinded as I walk, and so I don’t see him. I feel him, though. Or rather, I feel the icy plastic of a water bottle against the back of my neck.
 

Instinct takes over; I’m not the type of chick you want to startle, given the kinds of neighborhoods I grew up in. I pivot and shove, and my hands meet a solid, heavy, hot mass of man, sending him stumbling backward a couple steps.
 

“Fuck, man, I was just trying to cool you off.” He’s laughing, though, not angry.

I’m a tall girl. Strong. And I’ve had to defend myself more than once, so I know I can push pretty damn hard. But this guy? He barely moved. Like, two steps, if that. After a shove that hard, most men would have gone flying.
 

And yet, despite my reaction, he’s laughing, shuffling toward me as if approaching a dangerous dog, the water bottle extended. “Here. Take it. I won’t hurt you, I swear,” he says, using a low, soothing voice. “Take it. It’s all right. Take it.”
 

I shake my head and huff out a laugh, wanting to be irritated, but he’s too fucking gorgeous, and also funny. He’s massive. Only a few inches taller than me, making him maybe six-three or -four, but his body is…solid, sheer muscle. Which makes sense, since Adam Trenton is the biggest action star since The Rock—big in terms of muscle mass and stature as well as fame and popularity.

I take the water bottle, twist the top off, and take a long swig. So cold, so good. I can feel him watching me as I drink, and I pause to glare at him. “What?”
 

He just shrugs and shakes his head. “Nothing.”

I finish the water in two more long swallows. “Thanks,” I say lifting the bottle in gesture.

“No problem.” Awkward silence. “So. Dinner?” He pulls out the box of Ryba’s fudge. “I’ve got dark chocolate, chocolate peanut butter, and chocolate with nuts of some kind.”
 

“Walnuts,” I tell him.

“Walnuts?” He seems puzzled. Is he not good at keeping up with conversation?
 

I point at the fudge. “The nuts in the fudge. They’re
walnuts
.” I draw out and emphasize the word so it drips in sarcasm.

“Oh. Right. Yeah, I knew that.” He peers at me as if assessing something about me. “You look like a dark chocolate girl.”
 

God, if only he knew. I steal another glance at him as he breaks the dark chocolate fudge into huge slices. He has dark skin, as if his heritage is from the South Pacific or somewhere like that, naturally dark, and tanned even darker by the sun. His eyes, though, the pale, pale green, throw me off. I’m not sure what his heritage is, but I’ll take his brand of dark chocolate any day.
 

Not that anything of the sort will be happening. Not with him and certainly not with me. He’s A-list Hollywood. He probably has Natalie Portman’s phone number in his cell or something. And I’m nobody. Less than nobody. A garbage collector.

A distraction for him, if that.
 

My thoughts have soured the moment.
 

But then he hands me a hunk of fudge, and obviously I can’t turn that down.
 

“You still haven’t told me your name.” His voice is close.
 

Too close. I look up, and he’s leaning against a lamppost, mere inches from me. His voice is like the purr of a lion. He has a piece of fudge stuck to his lip, right at the corner, and he doesn’t notice. He takes three more bites, and still doesn’t notice, and then wipes his hands and his mouth, and somehow misses the bit of chocolate. I want to reach out with my thumb and wipe it way, maybe even lick it off my thumb.
 

What the hell am I thinking?
 

But my hand clearly doesn’t have any common sense or restraint, because I’m touching his mouth, his actual real mouth and I’m wiping the dark spot away. He’s frozen, tensed, and both of us are watching my hand and wondering what I’m doing.
 

It only gets crazier.
 

I feel something huge and rough wrap around my wrist, look down, and realize that he has my hand pinioned in his, and even though I don’t exactly have dainty little hands, his are paws, actual paws. The spread of his hand from pinky to thumb could easily engulf both of my hands together, and his palms are callused, his fingers gentle on my wrist but implacably powerful.

“I’m sorry, I—I’m not sure why I did that,” I admit, realizing he has to be pissed that I would touch him like that. “You just had something—” I’m not sure where I’m going with that, so I stop talking abruptly.
 

He doesn’t respond, his leaf-hued eyes boring into mine, bright and intense and inscrutable. I can’t fathom what he’s thinking. Can’t even begin to wonder.
 

And then, absurdly, he brings my hand toward his face. My hand is splayed out, fingers spread apart. He twists my hand so my thumb is pointing toward his mouth.
 

No.
 

No way he’s going to—

Yep. He is.

My heart actually literally and totally stops beating, just freezes solid in my chest, and my lungs seize, and his mouth is hot and wet and warm around my thumb, his tongue sliding over the pad of my thumb, licking the chocolate away. His eyes never leave mine, and now I have to breathe, have to suck in a gasping breath, and his eyes flick down to my tits, which, admittedly, are fairly prominent at the moment, even in my sports bra and tank top. But his gaze doesn’t linger, just notices and appreciates and returns to my eyes, and my thumb is
still
in his mouth. He’s pulling it out, his lips wrapping around my knuckle and then my thumb is free.

And he still has my wrist in his hand, not letting go, just holding, gently but firmly.

I swallow hard, blink, and then jerk my hand free. I step away from him before I combust, or do something utterly idiotic, like agree to whatever he’s about to ask me.

“Have real dinner with me.”
 

“No.”

“Yes.”
 

I stare at him. “Um. Not sure you’re getting how this yes and no thing works.”
 

He just grins at me. No, it’s not a grin. It’s…a
smolder
.
 

I remember sitting in the living room of my last foster home in Southfield, visiting with my favorite foster-sister. She insisted that I watch
Tangled
with her, so I did, and the main character, Flynn Ryder, has this moment where he goes, “I didn’t want to have to do this, but you leave me no choice.” Then he looks at Rapunzel with this meaningful look in his eyes and says, “Here comes…
the smolder
.” And he does this cute little grin that’s obviously meant to be knock-em-dead sexy.
 

This is that kind of smile.

But, unlike Flynn, this one works for him. Like,
really
works. The way his lips just slightly curl at the corners, the way his eyes narrow to intense, piercing slits, the press of his lips against each other, those lips, just begging to be kissed…it works. God, does it work. I can’t look away. I’m trying, but I can’t.
 

He’s just so fucking
hot
.
 

And it works, because I want to say yes. I want to have real dinner with him. I want to pretend that this ripped, famous, gorgeous hunk of a man could actually like me, and want to spend time with
me
.

He starts walking, pulling me with him, and again he’s gentle but totally and irresistibly powerful. I’m pulled into motion behind him, and somehow my hand is in his, clasped palm to palm. Our fingers aren’t tangled together in that intimate way of holding hands, he’s just holding my hand and pulling me behind him, and I can’t help but follow, watching his long, tree-trunk thick legs move in his khaki board shorts, his sculpted calves rippling. Even his calves are muscular. It’s totally ridiculous. I didn’t think guys this built actually existed in real life.
 

Yet here he is, pulling me, walking ahead of me, larger than life and holding
my
hand.

What the actual fuck is going on? What’s happening?

“Where are we going?” I manage to get intelligible English words out, arranged into a grammatically correct sentence.

“Dinner.” He’s leading me, and I’m wondering if he knows where we’re going, since he’s got us headed in a direction away from the restaurants.

“But I said no.”

He glances back at me. “Yeah, so?”

“Which means I don’t want to have dinner with you,” I say, sounding reasonably firm.
 

That’s a damned dirty lie, but he doesn’t need to know that, and I’m not going to admit it to him. Or to myself. Because going to dinner with Adam Trenton is a bad idea.
 

He’s going to expect something from me that I won’t be willing to give.
 

He stops, and then somehow he has
both
of my hands in his, and his eyes are sliding down to mine and searching me and reading the lie in my heart. “Do too.”

I may be many things, but I’m not a liar. “I’m in my work uniform. And I’ve been outside all day, sweating.”

He leans toward me. “Sweaty is sexy.” He says this in that leonine purr of his, and manages to make it sound promising and dirty all at once.

It’s hard to swallow or even breathe, because he’s so close to me you couldn’t fit a piece of paper between my chest and his, and his presence is overwhelming, dominating, blocking out the island and the
clip-clop
of a horse-and-carriage trotting past us and the caw of a seagull overhead.

“Nice line, asshole.” That was good. That sounded like I’m unaffected.

He ignores that. “It’s just dinner. I’m only here for the weekend, okay? What can it hurt?”

“
Just
dinner?”

He nods. “Just dinner. Promise.”
 

“Okay. But let me shower and change first.”
 

He grins, and follows me as I lead the way to the co-op dorms I stay in for the summer.
 

Did I just agree to have dinner with Adam Trenton?
 

This is a bad idea.
 

I know it is, but for reasons I can’t fathom, I’m ignoring my gut.

Chapter 2

I sit on the front step of her building, wasting time on my phone while she gets ready.
 

I still don’t know her name. That’s kinda fucked up, actually. I’ve licked fudge off her thumb. I’ve been so close to her that I could almost feel her heart beating, I could see her pulse drumming in the strong curve of her throat. I’ve gotten her to agree to go to dinner with me, yet I don’t know her name.
 

I expect to be sitting here for a while because, in my experience, chicks invariably take hours to get ready. Yet, barely twenty minutes later she’s coming out the door wearing a pair of tight, faded blue jeans with rips in the thigh. They don’t look like the type of expensive designer jeans that come pre-ripped; rather, they seem to be actually that old and worn and faded that the rips are from age and wear. I hear her before I see her, so the first thing I see is her feet, in a pair of Chucks. The white stripe of rubber around the base of the shoes on both feet have been colored with a black marker into a checkered design. These, as well, are the kind of shoes you just know she’s had for a long time. My eyes travel up her legs, encased in those tight, faded jeans, and
Jesus
the girl’s legs are absolutely fucking killer. She’s got mile-long legs, but not the skinny tall-girl legs. These are curvy with muscle and flesh.

God, I look up at those legs and in that moment I want nothing more than to feel her wrap those legs around me and hold on tight. It’s a hot, hard, intense thought, and I can’t shake it.

I’m staring.
 

And then my gaze travels farther, up to the plain black V-neck T-shirt she’s wearing. My mouth goes dry, and I’ve got to stand up and turn away and adjust myself discreetly, because the image of those powerful legs wrapped around my waist is only the beginning.
 

Tits. Jesus, just…Jesus. I can’t look away. The shirt is molded to her body, the V-neck baring an expanse of deep, tanned cleavage that hints at a glorious pair of breasts. And then I force myself to make actual eye contact, because I’ve been ogling her far too openly for far too long.
 

And I’m stunned into a breathless, speechless stupor.

Let’s be clear about one thing: I’ve been on set with some
hot
women. I’ve been to parties with some of the most beautiful and famous women on earth. I dated Emma Hayes for nearly two years, which is an eternity by Hollywood standards. And Emma is…stunning. I can’t take that away from her, no matter how big a bitch she is.
 

But this girl, in old ripped jeans, inked-up Chucks, and a cheap black V-neck…she’s drop-dead gorgeous. I don’t think she knows it, either. She can’t have any clue how intensely, heart-stoppingly beautiful she is. She wouldn’t be sweeping up fucking trash on Mackinac Island if she did.
 

She’s put on makeup sparingly, just a hint of eye shadow and mascara to highlight those big brown eyes, some color on her cheeks and lips.