Master in Shining Armor (Masters Unleashed 4)

“I’m hardly drunk. An hour from now I’ll be completely sober.” Shit. Had that sounded like a come-on?

“Good, then you have no excuse not to come by.”

Why was he in such a rush? Maybe he’d been thinking about her, too?

“I’m impatient to get this over with,” he continued, making her roll her eyes at herself. This was business, not some guy being pushy about a date. “Ever since we decided to do these renos it’s been like living in limbo, and I don’t like not knowing what the plan is.”

“Fine. I guess I can come by for a little while tonight. I’m not making headway with my research here anyway. Just let me find something to wear and I’ll call a cab.”

“Where are you? I’ll come pick you up. It’ll be faster.”

Tell him where she lived? That seemed as safe as a bunny giving a wolf a map to the warren. Besides, even if he didn’t come up to her condo, just the thought of getting in a car with him made her nervous.

“I’m not in the habit of giving out my home address to strange men.”

“Oh, come on now, Ms. Callahan. I’m not exactly a stranger. Lord knows if I had nefarious plans for you I could have acted on them earlier today. We were all alone in the club, which would have been a hell of a lot more convenient than trying to seduce you in my truck.”

The asshole did have a point.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re pushy?”

“That tends to be a given, considering. Dominants tend to be assertive.”

“‘Assertive’. Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?”

His chuckle made her smile. Damn it. It was really important that she remembered not to like this guy.

Before she could chicken out, she gave him her address and hung up. She ran to the bathroom and stripped off her T-shirt and track pants then took the fastest shower in history. Within minutes, she was tearing her closet apart, trying to find something to bridge the gap between “I’m just here for research” and “I’m not actually a nun.”

By the time he buzzed her condo, she was wearing a relatively modest little black dress and strappy, low-key silver sandals. Sexy, but not too sexy. Casual, but not too casual.

He was out front, leaning against a partially mud-splattered pickup when she got downstairs. Although he was wearing pretty much the same thing as earlier, this time both the T-shirt and jeans were more fitted. Damn. Somehow she’d seriously underestimated how sexy he was.

“You know, you can’t just call me and expect me to drop my plans whenever you feel like it.”

“Apparently, I can.” The corner of his mouth curled upward, but even though his smug satisfaction was irritating, it was hard not to check him out.

He opened the passenger-side door of his truck and helped her in, not even trying to hide his appreciation for the flash of her bare thighs as she got into her seat. Once she was settled, he shut the door and went around to his own side and slid behind the wheel with a grace that seemed almost impossible, considering the size of him.

“You’re pretty full of yourself for a guy whose office looks like the place where office supplies go to die. With all of those rulers, you’d think the plans you drew up would have had a few more straight lines.”

“My office is definitely the place that rulers go to die. Strangely, I can’t recall ever having used one to draw a straight line.”

After doing research for most of the evening, she was now able to deduce exactly what all those broken rulers were about. Classy.

“If you’re bringing women in there that often, maybe you should try tidying up.”

“I’m either too busy or too tired to clean my office on any given day. People who clean without getting paid for it are wasting their lives.”

“I can’t imagine how gross your house must be.”

“I usually have someone to take care of that.”

Girlfriends? Probably. For some reason she regretted that idea, even though she shouldn’t care.

He pulled out of the parking lot, driving with an easy self-confidence that let her focus on things she shouldn’t be, like the fact that he had really big hands and sexy, muscular forearms under all of his tattoos.

“So you got some research done tonight?”