Take Me Home Tonight (Welcome to Paradise #2)
Elle Kennedy
Dedication
To Lindsey Faber, a top-notch editor who decorates my manuscripts with smiley faces and solid advice
Chapter One
Owen’s butt looked good in a pair of jeans. Crazy good. He didn’t have one of those pancake backsides that a lot of men had, where their pants just sort of hung over their rear ends and made them look flat. Nope, Owen Bishop’s ass was round enough that the denim had something to cling to, but not big enough to give him man booty. The rest of his body was pretty damn perfect too. Long legs, broad shoulders, muscles rippling all over the place. She wondered if he had muscles on his butt—was that even possible? Probably not, but she wouldn’t be surprised if—
“Maddie,” came a harsh male voice. “For fuck’s sake, did you write down those measurements?”
Maddie Wilson’s head jerked away from the delectable vision she’d gotten lost in and she found a pair of dark eyes glaring at her. Shocking. Since Cooper Grady didn’t seem to have any other expressions in his facial repertoire, she decided to do what she always did—pretend he was smiling at her and give a big, beaming grin in return.
“Sorry,” she said, grabbing the pencil she’d stuck behind her ear. “What were they?”
“Ten and a quarter by fifteen and a half,” Cooper muttered as he shoved his measuring tape into the brown leather tool belt strapped around his trim waist. “I called it out three times, though I can understand why the boss’s ass might be distracting. I’ve been tempted to give it a squeeze numerous times myself.”
He was making fun of her, using that lazy, insolent tone that never failed to annoy the crap out of her. “I was not looking at his ass,” she lied.
“Sure you were.” Rolling his eyes, Cooper reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pack of Camels. He extracted one cigarette, lit up, and blew a plume of smoke in her direction.
Oh sweet mother of darkness. Maddie immediately held her breath, refusing to let the tantalizing scent of smoke fill her lungs. She’d quit cold turkey two years ago, yet the stupid cravings refused to go away. Now she understood why her older brother Luke had freaked out when he’d caught her smoking at the side of their house when she was sixteen. Luke had been twenty-four at the time and already a longtime smoker, and he’d proceeded to lecture her for two hours about how she was making the biggest mistake of her life. Back then, she’d scoffed and told him to stop being a hypocrite.
Now she wished she’d listened to her annoying big brother. Smoking was the devil, and no matter how long she’d been cigarette-free, that devil hopped onto her shoulder every time she was around another smoker.
“You want this, don’t you?” Cooper taunted, his dark eyes twinkling. He drew the cigarette to his lips again and inhaled with an exaggerated moan. “Come on, Maddie, take a drag. Just one…”
“I hate you,” she said between clenched teeth, promptly taking a couple of steps to the side and focusing her gaze on something else. Anything else.
Unfortunately, her eyes found their way right back to Owen Bishop, who was laughing at something Ann Hastings had said. An instant jolt of heat shuddered through her. She loved his laugh—deep, husky, melodic in a masculine sort of way. Heck, she loved everything about that infuriating man. His dark, unruly hair, always covered by that beat-up Broncos cap. His cloudy gray eyes. The tiny cleft in his chin. His biting sarcasm, dry humor. The way his eyes blazed when she pissed him off—which she did a lot.
Every day she added a new item to her Why I Love Owen list.
And every day she also added one to her Why Owen Won’t Give Me The Time Of Day list.
Ex-smoker was on the latter list. So was tomboy. Confrontational. Daredevil.
Yep, it was no surprise Owen didn’t even know she existed—as a woman, anyway.
She was getting so damn tired of lusting over this man. She’d been working at his construction company as his assistant for three years now, and although he was her boss, he was also her best friend. Sure, the two of them argued like cats and dogs, but they definitely had a connection. Just not a carnal one. For three years, she’d watched him drift from one woman to another, those airhead blondes with big boobs he tended to gravitate towards. Not once had he gravitated towards her. Maybe they existed in separate sexual solar systems or something.
Or maybe he’s just not attracted to you.
That too.