Jerk. Total jerk.
"I'm not stupid and I'm not a friggin' idiot," I snapped, wiggling my arm again but he didn’t let go.
He also didn't say anything. The only noise that came out of his body was a sharp inhale that was impossible to miss.
"Can you please let go of my arm now?" Why the hell was I saying please? I tried jerking out of his grasp, feeling like an idiot for asking permission to get control back of my body. I should have just… demanded it, damn it.
"No."
His simple, curt answer grated on me.
“Not till you’re in the car,” Dex explained.
I pulled at his hold. “Let. Go. Of. My. Arm.” I lowered my voice into a whisper. “Or else.”
He didn’t need to know that the or else depended on me slapping his tiny nuts with the back of my hand.
Dex didn’t respond and he didn’t say anything either as he pulled us to a stop in front of my Focus. I was fishing through my purse the minute my arm was free.
“Thanks for walking me over,” I murmured to him, still indignant. Still pissed. Still keeping my eyes a million miles away from Dex The Dick’s face.
You need the job.
You need the job.
You need the job.
But that didn't mean I completely shut up. My dumb mouth kept going. "I'm not stupid enough to not pay attention to my surroundings, by the way."
Well, that could have been a lot worse.
Normally, I would have been shocked by how angry I felt all of a sudden. It was as if the two days of working with this asshole and the last ten years of my life had suddenly joined together in a tsunami of pissed-offness that threatened to drown everything in the world. Normal Iris would have and should have just continued to ignore Dex Locke. Pretend like his words hadn't bothered me but that Iris was a victim of the tsunami, apparently.
He didn’t say anything for a long minute, an ink covered hand pulled at the sleeve of his crew neck shirt. His tight gray crewneck shirt. Guh. It seemed so friggin' unfair. It should be a standard that attractive men be just as nice on the inside as they were on the outside. But they weren’t and it sucked big time.
“Ritz?” he asked in a softer tone than I’d ever imagined hearing from him. The dry, bored tone seemed to be a staple in his vocal cord usage.
I groaned. “My name’s—“
“Ritz.”
“No,” I told him—well, his neck.
“Look at me,” he said but it sounded more like an order.
I didn’t want to, and I knew he knew it too.
“Babe, look at me,” he repeated the command, still in that lax, casual voice.
Slowly, like a snail making a long trek, I rolled my eyes over to his face, taking in the flawless bone structure staring back at me from over demon flesh incarnate.
When my eyes landed on his bluest of blues, he frowned. That handsome, angled face shifted in uncomfortable displeasure. Should it have been a surprise that a look that resembled guilt seemed so foreign to him? No. “Chill out, yeah?”
I forced that same look he'd copyrighted onto my face. Flat, plain, and emotionless. “Sure.”
He blinked. “You’re lyin’.”
I tried to take a step back. “Goodnight.”
Dex's hand whipped forward to grab the hem of my shirt, stopping me. “Ritz.” His tone was insistent.
“That’s not my name.”
He chose to ignore that. “Will you look at me?” he growled, exasperation dripping from his words. That soft voice disappearing in an instant.
I looked at him but felt a million miles away.
Dex cut the distance between us, towering over me. His brilliant eyes searched over my face, resting on my mouth for a brief moment before looping back up to my eyes. "Son already bitched me out."
I tugged on my arm. "Goodnight."
“Babe," he said, tugging on my button-down. "I got a bad temper and that was a crap day for me. I say shitty things when I'm pissed."
Sure, because it was that friggin’ easy. He had a shitty day so he could call me names behind my back. Right. Made total sense. Not.
Dick.
I just stared back at him.
“Just let it go, 'kay? It drives me fuckin' crazy you won't look me in the eye,” he breathed. "I don't do this awkward shit, babe."
“If I look at you from now on will you leave me alone?” I asked him in a whisper.
Something shuttered across his eyes. “You’re not gonna let this go?”
My chest flared with white hot anger. Getting fired would be better than quitting if I was standing up for myself, wouldn’t it? Sonny was my brother, he’d understand in a heartbeat if I explained. Then afterward, some kneecaps would be busted.
There was always the job at the damn strip club. Lord.
Schooling my features, I leaned forward to close the short distance between us to a microscopic one despite the near foot in height difference.
“It’s not everyday someone I don’t know calls me a fucking idiot, then insults my clothes and my time management.” I looked him right in the eye, not caring that he winced. “I’d say I’m sorry that I had to ask you for help, and that I can’t pretend you didn’t hurt my feelings, but I won't. If you would've showed me what to do slower or not rolled your eyes each time I wrote something down in my notebook, I wouldn't have had to. I'm not stupid or an idiot or a moron or whatever else you've called me.” In all honesty, I hadn’t intended to tell him he’d hurt my feelings but once the words were out in the universe it was a done deal. Whatever. I couldn’t take them back so I had to stand by them. “And now, I’m just pissed off, and I want to go home.”
And Dex, Dex just looked at me with those irises the same shade as a crayon. “You don’t know what it’s like to have a shit day, princess?”
Princess?
Princess?
This dickwad had no clue.
I sucked in another breath, steeling myself. I wasn’t going to be a pushover again. No. Friggin’. Way. I was done. If I could get fired, it’d be better than leaving on my own. So I laid it out on him as politely as I could. “When I have bad days, princess,” I whispered, opting at the last minute to leave out the Duke Dickface teasing my tongue, “I cry. I read. I clean. I eat crappy things. I swim or do the yard. I don’t make people feel like crap, your royal highness.”
Chapter Six
“Are you sure this won’t get you into trouble?”
Sonny’s upper body had disappeared beneath the car minutes ago with tools and a pan. I plopped down on top of a tire that was sitting off to the side of the bay at the body shop he worked at, watching him because I had no idea how to help. “It’s fine, Ris. Trust me.”
Well, shit.
The shop was closed on Saturdays; there was a very clear sign by the gate that we’d come through. Personally, I’d rather not get arrested for trespassing but Sonny didn’t look worried even a hundredth of a fraction. Plus, I’d spotted three bikes and two cars parked alongside the big adjacent building to the bays, so I figured we either weren’t alone or somebody was using the space as a parking lot.
Only I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.
“You trust me, don’t you?” he asked in a teasing voice when I didn’t respond.
"No." I extended my leg out to nudge his knee with my toes. “Yes.”