I pick up a saltshaker from the table. If nothing else, I could wield it at him and give myself a couple of seconds to run if this goes awry.
“You know what else would be a scary place?” I ask.
“Inside one of your boxes?”
“Very funny. I was thinking something more like …” I toss the shaker in the air. Surprisingly, I catch it with the same hand. But I have no time to celebrate how cool that probably looked. I have work to do. “Soundproof rooms. Trunks of cars. Barns with power tools.”
His brows pull together.
He’s even cuter when he’s serious.
Damn it.
“You got something you wanna tell me, Dylan?”
“Not if you don’t have anything you wanna tell me, Peck. If that’s even your real name.”
A light bulb goes off over his head, and he begins to laugh. Humor dances across his face, his hand dragging the jawline that’s speckled with the day’s stubble.
“You’re having second thoughts, aren’t you?” he asks.
“No,” I say too quickly. “I mean, not really. You know … totally am.”
My lips smack together. I toss the shaker again, but this time it lands on the floor in front of me. “Shit,” I mumble as I bend to scoop it up.
“You don’t think I pressured you into this, right? Because I’m not that guy, and if I did or said something that made you—”
“No.” I shake my head fervently. Heat tinges my cheeks as I feel very, very silly. “I’m just nervous, I guess. I’m sorry for acting like a weirdo.”
“Why are you nervous?”
It’s an honest question. He stands tall, facing me completely as if to demonstrate his openness.
A lump settles in my throat. “I just get a little enthusiastic sometimes and was worried that maybe I jumped into this too soon. I mean, I don’t really even know you.”
“You were kind of quick to accept my offer.” He tosses me a wink. “I’m kidding.”
“I’m not. One time, I told someone I liked kids and, the next thing I knew, I had a part-time job at a daycare watching a bunch of babies for minimum wage. And then I tried to quit, and they wouldn’t let me and …” I sigh. “I can get in over my head fast.”
He walks across the kitchen, his jeans showing off a set of thighs that were probably crafted by the hands of God, if I were guessing, and picks up his lemonade. The longer it takes him to down the lemonade, the antsier I get.
Finally, he drops his glass in the sinks and smiles. “If you don’t want to stay here, I get it. Although I might bitch—meaning I will—about packing your shit up again, I’ll do it. A woman should never stay anywhere she’s not comfortable.”
“It’s not that, Peck, I am comfortable with you—here, I mean,” I say, correcting my misspeak. Because although the first part is true, it sounds weird. Like I mean it more than I do.
“Good.”
“Everything just happened so fast that when I had a second to look up, I realized you could be a serial killer, and all I had was this saltshaker.” I set it on the counter.
“And what were you gonna do with that?”
“Hit you in the eyeball.”
His laugh is quick and loud and, even though I know it’s at me, I laugh too.
“I might just cancel my home security with you around, Hawkeye,” he chuckles. “A saltshaker? Really?”
“It’s all I had.”
“Just a helpful hint—knives are in that drawer,” he says, pointing behind me. “Unless you have some super skill I don’t know about, they’ll come in handier than a damn saltshaker.”
He crosses his arms over his chest. The veins flex in his forearms beneath nicks and scrapes and scars. I look away before I get distracted in a very real way.
“Tell you what,” he says. “I’ll give you two minutes to ask me anything you want before we leave.”
“Leave? What do you mean, leave? Where are we going?”
“One minute, fifty seconds.”
I grin. “What’s your name?”
“Wesley.”
“Aha! I knew it!”
“You knew what?” He laughs.
“Your name wasn’t Peck.”
“I told you it wasn’t Peck, genius,” he teases. “I just didn’t tell you what it was.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “No one calls me that. Sometimes, I forget my name isn’t Peck.”
“Wesley, huh? What’s your middle name?”
“Chapman. Wesley Chapman Ward.”
I ponder that. It’s a very strong name and reminds me of a pastor in the Old West that would shoot you with his six-shooter if you acted up.
“I like it,” I say.
“Well, good, because there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.” He looks at his watch. “Anything else? Or are you sure I’m not a murderer?”
I raise a brow. “Well, I’m fairly certain you’re not. Wesley sounds much more good guy than bad buy.”
“And you’re pinning your safety on that? My name?”
No, I’m pinning it on that smile.
“Yeah. You got a problem with that?”