I pressed my lips together against a laugh. My fall would be a bit more intense, but the kid was quick, I had to give her that.
She wasn’t so bad. Maybe there was just the one. A high-pitched squall had me wincing. I’d never had any luck, why would today be any different?
Before I could back down the path, the little girl stepped up to me and took my hand.
“It’s okay. It’s just Gus. He cries a lot because he has a toof that won’t come in. Drools a lot too.” The loud whisper shouldn’t have been adorable, but it was.
“Is that right?”
“Yeah, he’s chewing on everything. It’s ‘esgusting. Misty, our cat, won’t come out from under my bed.”
“I wouldn’t either, kid.”
She laughed. “You’re funny. I like your voice too. It’s so…different.”
Smoking like an asshole through the better part of my teens and early twenties had deepened my already husky voice. “Different is good, right?”
“Yeah!” She dragged me behind her as she headed for the backyard. “Mom! We have a vis—vis…” She glanced back at me with a furrowed brow.
“Visitor?”
“Right. That. Visitor!”
Bethany and a slightly harassed looking brunette were on the deck. Three other women were sitting at the table with Brewed Awakening cups scattered around with a bakery box from Vee’s part of the café.
They didn’t seem to care about my appearance in the least. Then again, their attention had zeroed in on a certain long-haired construction worker.
Lucky had lost his plaid shirt, leaving his shoulders glistening with exertion. A white ribbed tank stretched across his back, smeared with dirt and cement debris. His arms were a grid of flexing muscles as he used the hand-mixer in a large white bucket.
His hair was up in a messy man-bun with his aviator sunglasses perched on the blade of his sharp nose. A red bandana was wrapped around one wrist and a leather cuff draped over the
other.
He was outrageously fit. I had to fight not to do some staring of my own.
Make that a lot of staring.
My first instinct was to head for the gate and jump on my bike. I could totally find another builder. Maybe even hire Gideon without Lucky.
I definitely shouldn’t have come.
But then he switched the mixer off and turned to put it on the flatbed cart with his tools. The cart was splattered with old cement and his discarded red plaid shirt fluttered in the breeze like a flag.
He spotted me and put his sunglasses on top of his head. His gaze skimmed down my body without a single hint of remorse. His mouth went from a grinning slash to a wide smile. His eyetooth was slightly crooked, and I had the most ridiculous urge to lick it.
Where the hell had that come from?
Maybe escape really was the answer.
Possibly a lobotomy.
He hauled a large piece of wood off the pile on his cart and muscles I didn’t know the name of shifted under his bronzed skin. Objectification station had one more gawking female.
Checking him out was one thing. That was natural, and hell, it had been a damn long time since I’d even looked up from my fabricator. I was human, after all. Much to my consternation sometimes.
But Lucky Roberts was definitely not going to be added to my already full slate of complications.
Look but don’t lick was officially my new motto.