Right now, seeing her wide blue eyes on me, I was even more adamant that fucking awesome should be the terminology used to describe her. The center of her eyes were a medium blue color, but they had an even darker blue ring around the edge of them and were framed with long dark brown lashes, the same color as her hair.
Jerking to look at something in front of her, she then glanced back at me. “Hey, sorry, I didn’t hear you coming up the steps.”
I was a big guy – six foot seven inches tall – but I’d learned to tread lightly as a kid so that I could either get the drop on one of my brothers, or sneak out the house without waking my parents up. I didn’t see the point in stomping or treading heavily as an adult, regardless of where I was, because that expended energy that I didn’t want to waste. Noise also drew attention to you, and I hated doing that, so I tried to minimize anything that would get people’s focus on me unless it was necessary.
I’d always been tall, even in kindergarten, and it had drawn people’s attention. I also had greeny hazel eyes that had a dark ring of blue around my pupils, so they got people’s attention, too, because being half Jamaican they stood out even more. In high school I’d bought colored contacts to hide them, but once I got them in my eyes the first time I couldn’t get them back out again. It took my brothers holding my head still for Dad to get them out, after which he’d flushed them down the toilet. My brothers had similarly colored eyes, so they’d got it, but Dad had sat us down and lectured us about loving what the good Lord had given us and how we were to use it to make us who we were going to be through life.
That advice had stuck with me and on the whole that’s what I did, but I still tried to fade into the background as much as I could. Part of that fading included walking softly, and I’d managed to scare Katy just now without meaning to. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I came up to get some coffee and get away from that,” I pointed over my shoulder at where the men - who were now arguing - were.
The side of her mouth tilted up slightly when we heard Tom yell something, the noise echoing inside the garage. “Yeah, I saw that. I’m not going to ask what they did because it’s Hurst. That man is a law unto himself.” With her back still facing me, she took a couple of steps sideways away from the coffee machine. “Help yourself, I just opened a new box of pods for it.”
Moving to where she’d just been, I reached for a cup and saw a puddle of coffee on the counter as I placed it in the machine. That wasn’t unusual, and she’d probably been about to clean it up, so I wiped it with paper towels while my cup filled so she had one less thing to do. The guys here were slobs, that’s the only way to put it. They spilled, they dropped, they did whatever, and rarely did they go back to try to clean up after themselves unless it was to put tools back. Hell, most of the paperwork was covered in oily fingerprints because they didn’t wipe their hands off first. I was guilty of that myself, but I wasn’t guilty of not picking up my shit, and I knew Katy had OCD tendencies so it had to drive her crazy.
Once the coffee was done, I threw the towels in the trash, grabbed my cup and gave her a chin lift as I turned back to the door. I wasn’t immune to Katy Crew, in fact far from it, but because she always left me feeling off center, I tried to keep our interactions quick and casual. It wasn’t because I was shy, I just didn’t know what to say or do around her, so it was easier this way.
Closing the door quietly behind me, I blew out a breath and made my way back down the steps toward the car I’d been working on before Hurst and Bill had arrived. The Townsends were still arguing it out, so I resigned myself as I got back to work to the fact that it was going to be another eventful day. Fucking joy!
KatyAs soon as the door shut behind Jarrod, I pulled my coffee drenched top away from my boobs and let out the little squeal I’d done my best to smother when I’d jumped and tipped the hot coffee on them as he’d said yo.