I hadn’t been thinking about it like that, though. If I was being honest, I didn’t even really know what I had been trying to accomplish.
One minute, we’d just been talking, and the next, he got all pissed off and stormed away. I’d been so taken aback that I’d just let him go. It wasn’t like I needed drama in my life, but I still liked him. I should have at least tried to explain myself, but he’d been gone before I’d come to that conclusion.
Our morning had started off so damn well. Then my naturally inquisitive—and slightly tactless—nature had bubbled to the surface. I probably should have run him over instead of stopping to help when I saw his truck with its flat tire, but I couldn’t just leave him there on the side of the road.
Also, the fact that he might need my help after having pulled such an asshole stunt not ten minutes ago was too good to pass up. Smiling as I thought about the irony of it all, I got out of my car.
“What seems to be the problem there, sailor?”
Slowly, he lifted his head away from the midnight-black frame of his cab. A scowl that would have been frightening if I didn’t know him contorted his handsome features.
“There’s no problem. I’m fine. You can go now.”
I took a few steps closer to him, my gaze taking stock of the tools lying at his feet on the blazing-hot blacktop. “If that’s true, how are you going to get your truck up? Unless you’re hiding a jack in your ass next to that stick that seems to have gotten wedged up there. Are you?”
Lincoln’s vibrant, reddish-golden eyes narrowed as his thick arms crossed over his bare chest. “I just need to make a call. I’ll be fine.”
I mirrored his stance but jerked my head toward my car after folding my arms. “I have a jack if you’d like to use it. I know you guys are strong and all, but I doubt you could lift the truck, hold it, and change the tire all without help.”
He didn’t answer but released his arms to shove his hands into his short hair. It was clear that he was quickly realizing that the fastest way to get rid of me was to take me up on my offer to help, but he didn’t like it.
I, on the other hand, was really enjoying that he needed my help. After that display of alpha-hole behavior earlier, I found it highly amusing that Mother Universe herself had decided to knock him down a peg.
You go, girl.
My lips curved of their own accord, but I kept my arms tightly crossed as I tried to hold back laughter. Lincoln noticed, his jaw tightening as those intense eyes swept across my features.
He vented his frustration in a series of mumbled curses but walked up to me and held out his hand. I glanced down at it, unable to resist giving him just a little bit of a hard time even as I turned to retrieve my jack from my trunk.
“This kind of ruins your very grownup, ‘we shouldn’t see each other again’ tantrum, doesn’t it?” I asked as I popped the lid.
“It wasn’t a tantrum,” he grumbled. “You insulted me, Sofia. Last I checked, people aren’t forced to spend time with people if they don’t want to.”
“It wasn’t meant to be an insult,” I said, softening my tone. Maybe it wasn’t the best time to keep giving him shit. Despite my intentions of not meaning to do it, I had insulted him. “I was just trying to get to know you. Sometimes, my mouth forms words before my brain can catch up, and my questions come out sounding like I have the tact of a leaky teaspoon.”
A chuckle rumbled in his broad chest, and I didn’t know who was more surprised by it. He recovered first, though. “That’s a very accurate description but an exceptionally shitty apology.”
“It wasn’t an apology.” I shrugged, grabbed the jack, and kept it in my hands as I brought my eyes up to meet his. “I was just explaining why I said what I did in the way that I did.”
He lifted his hand wordlessly. I pursed my lips, sighing as I handed it over. Once the heavy object was in his hands, he spun around and marched back to his truck.
I followed him, admiring the stretching and rippling of the strong muscles in his back and arms as he worked. It probably wasn’t polite to ogle him when we were technically in the middle of a fight, but I couldn’t help it.
The guy really was too damn hot for his own good. His bright blue swimming trunks and shirtless torso displayed far too much of his golden skin to simply ignore it.
“Stop staring at me,” he snapped as he loosened a nut. I didn’t know how he’d known, since his gaze was narrowed in on the work he was doing, but he answered my unspoken question next. “I can feel you watching me.”
“How did you know that’s what I was wondering?”
His shoulders rose and dropped as he let out a heavy breath but then started shaking as he laughed quietly. “I don’t know. Intuition, common sense, predictability? Take your pick.”
“I’m not predictable,” I objected. “But okay. I guess that question was kind of predictable.”
When he said nothing more, I leaned against the side of his truck and did my best to keep my eyes on the lush greenery of the empty lot on our side of the road. Surely, I couldn’t ogle when he knew what I was doing and had told me to stop.
I kept sneaking glances at him while I spoke, though. Just to check this so-called intuition of his.
“About earlier, I really didn’t mean to offend or insult you. It felt like we were getting to
