Pull

I kept my eyes focused on Demetri as he took a bow to the gathering crowd and began tossing taffy out. Idiot. Our business wasn’t doing horrible, but it’s not like he was helping our sales any.

If people had the choice between Demetri Daniels or a depressed girl with a permanent scowl, they’d choose Demetri every single time.

As if he could hear my every thought, Demetri’s head turned and our eyes locked. At least that’s what it felt like. His stare was so pensive, my palms began to sweat. Slowly, I sank behind the counter until it was just my eyes peeking over the edge.

My dad chuckled. “What are we doing?” He joined me by the counter and seemed to be more curious than alarmed. Great.

Now I looked like a crazy person.

“Uh…” I licked my lips and frantically tried to search for an excuse. “I dropped the rag.” My fingers released the rag onto the floor. I offered a small smile.

“You sure you’re doing okay?” Dad felt my forehead. “You feel hot.”

“She does look hot, doesn’t she?” I knew that irritating, beautiful, ridiculous voice. I closed my eyes and prayed I was imagining things.

My dad shot onto his feet and laughed. “You wouldn’t happen to be the person my daughter’s been staring at for the past few minutes, would you?”

“Probably not,” came Demetri’s voice. I opened my eyes to glare. He was staring at me, and then he winked. Crap. “She doesn’t like rock stars. In fact, she verbally assaulted me yesterday about working her corner.”

“Alyssa,” Dad scolded.

“Dad,” I said back in a warning voice as I rose to my feet.

“Did you need anything, Demetri?”

His eyes crinkled as he attacked me with one of the most gorgeous smiles I’d ever seen in real life. “I did… I do.”

Insert long and awkward pause here where my dad looked between the two of us, chuckled, and walked off. Well, at least he was laughing. I hadn’t heard his laugh in what felt like years.

“What?” I snapped.

Demetri shrugged. “I saw you staring at me.”

“Did not!” My nostrils flared. “There’s no way you could see me through the windows from that far away.”

“So you were staring.” Demetri folded his muscled arms across his chest.

“No.” I swallowed and looked at the ground. Looking anywhere but at him seemed like a good idea.

“I felt it.” He placed his hands on the counter and leaned forward so our faces were mere inches apart. “Not that I mind. I just thought I’d come over and say hi, since you seemed to be beckoning me over with your lustful glances.”

“Lustful glances?” My head jerked up. I was half-tempted to bang his head against the counter, but I had spent the entire morning cleaning up that exact spot where he was leaning. Damn him.

“Yeah, they look like this.” His heavy-lidded eyes blazed a hot trail up and down my body as he very thoroughly checked me out, and then without another word, tucked a piece of fallen hair behind my ear, and left.

I was still frozen in place when my mom came rushing in.

“Is he still here? Where did he go? Did he talk to you? What was he like?”

“Mom.” I held up my hands. “Just… don’t.”

She sighed like a teenager and giggled. She’d lost her freaking mind. “I just love Demetri Daniels, and I don’t believe a word they say about his rehab or drugs. He’s just a nice boy who—”

“—is doing community service.” I pointed across the street and sighed. “He’s…” I couldn’t think of the right word, so I just shrugged and said, “Cocky.”

Mom, clearly not caring that she was scarring me for life, sighed and watched Demetri cross the street and grab his bucket from a large guy with a shaved head. Body guard. It had to be.

Demetri continued singing the stupid taffy song and dancing around the corner like a drunken chicken. And I grabbed the rag again and pretended to keep cleaning, while out of the corner of my eye I watched. I hated that he made me feel warm inside. I hadn’t had that feeling in two years, and I wasn’t about to let it get the best of me again. It was all his fault. If Demetri hadn’t spoken to me that first day, if he had just left everything alone, then I wouldn’t be stripping him naked with my eyes. I wouldn’t be longing to touch that perfectly sculpted face. Frustrated, I threw the rag against the counter and stomped off, leaving my mom to watch him all by herself.

Chapter Eight

Demetri

Four days. I watched her for four days. What kind of stalker did that make me? I mean she had the ugliest clothes I’d ever seen.

She was so small, she practically swam in them, and I’m sorry, but there’s a reason guys don’t dig Uggs. They gave her legs no shape, and I couldn’t figure out if she had really nice ones or cankles, and then it pissed me off that I was thinking about cankles in the first place.

Ever since Tuesday when I ran in to the competition’s store and tried to find any excuse to talk to her, I’d been out of sorts. Not the out of sorts that just leaves you when you fall asleep at night.

No, the type that had me eating so much taffy that I was convinced I was going to have ten cavities by the end of the year.

I shook the bucket, but my heart wasn’t in it, not that it had ever been truly in it, but still. I felt off. Clearly, I needed another hobby, or friends, or something, because my behavior was bordering on stalker-ish. Yesterday I’d even gone in her parents’ taffy store and asked about her schedule.