There were no thoughts of curses, no butterflies fluttering through my belly at the sight of his cheekbones and facial hair.
I almost had a real, true smile on my face, when he opened his mouth.
"Well now, you're not having a very good day, are you? Couldn't've picked a prettier spot though."
Folks, if I could properly explain what happened to my body the moment his voice hit my eardrums, I would do it. Any descriptions, any clever analogies would fall woefully short to the skin-shriveling, heart-pinching, pursed-lip, narrow-eyed hatred that I felt when that deep, slow voice tickled the insides of my ears.
I'll tell you this much, not once in my twenty-six years on this beautiful earth had I experienced the phenomenon of hate at first sight. I didn't even know it existed until that moment.
Not until him.
And because it was so strong, so real, so tangible, I felt insane. Like that voice reached into my head and flipped the off-switch to my sanity.
Most days, I was a nice person. I smiled at strangers, I held doors open for the people behind me, and on occasion, I’d helped little old ladies in the grocery store.
So this—whatever took over my body at the sound of his voice—was not normal.
My eyes narrowed dangerously, even as I couldn’t fully understand why. "Excuse me?" I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him the full weight of my glare. "My car broke down and I don't have any cell service, and you're talking about how pretty it is?"
The glare was wasted on him, because a wide, white-toothed smile spread over his face. "No need to get up in arms, miss, just meant that it's an awfully pretty place to be broken down, isn't it? I've always loved this stretch of road."
Had I been hot before?
Scratch that.
An icy tidal wave of hatred cooled my blood posthaste, and I cocked a hip out to the side. "It's simply divine. Now could I please use your phone to call my aunt? I want off this awfully pretty road, if you don't mind."
The words, acidic and rude, poured out of my mouth so quickly, I couldn't even stop to analyze how terrible I sounded. This wasn't me! I was nice to strangers! one part of my brain screamed, but the overwhelming vitriol I felt toward him and his handsome face muted that shit pretty fast.
His truck door popped open, and when he unfolded out of his seat, to his full height, I swallowed heavily. Captain America was easily six-five, and as broad as a tree trunk. Bearded though he was, his hair was immaculate, same as his truck, which gleamed like it'd been freshly waxed.
His thick legs were covered in dark denim, and the simple white T-shirt stretched over his broad chest was as blinding as his poster boy grin.
"I'm Tucker, pleasure to meet you." He held out his hand and I narrowed my eyes at that too.
A bitchy-faced alien had taken over my body because every part of me was responding without a single conscious thought on my end.
I’d never narrowed my eyes this frequently in my entire friggin’ life.
"Uh-huh. Can I borrow your phone, please?"
With a rueful grin, he pulled his hand back. "You can try to get through to your aunt," he said, pulling his phone from his front pocket, "but pretty as this stretch is, it doesn't get much in the way of service, no matter which carrier you have."
"Great," I mumbled, pulling up Aunt Fran's number on my phone so I could dial it into his. While I did that, he ambled over to the opened hood of my car and braced his arms in the same way I had.
Except I didn't have bulging forearm muscles or veins that popped.
Not that I was looking.
I screwed my lips up when his phone wouldn't connect the call either, finally punching the red button on his screen a little bit harder than I needed to.
The way my body was reacting to his presence could only be described as weird. Really, really weird.
Have you played with magnets? You flip one of them the wrong way, and they instantly repel each other. No matter what you do, you’ll never get them to snap in place.
There’s a force field between those incorrectly flipped magnets—invisible and impenetrable—that you’ll never be able to overcome with your mind.
I wanted to take a step closer, see what he was looking at in my car, and try to start over.
But my body wouldn’t. A steel wall between us couldn’t have been more effective, because when my brain screamed at my feet to move, at my tongue to say something nicer, sweeter, with a bucket-load more gratitude, I couldn’t do any of those things.
The signals being sent to my hands and arms and feet and facial expressions was an all caps command that WE DO NOT LIKE THIS PERSON.
Maybe this was a really extreme case of hangry. I rubbed my forehead and tried to remember the last time I ate. Was the apple an hour ago? Or two?
Was I hallucinating this entire exchange? Because that would be a loss of sanity I could accept.
"Where's your aunt from?" he asked, eyes down while his large hand checked a few knobs or belts or whatever.
I held my snort at his question, because this was the south. In California, we went out of our way not to ask stranger's questions for fear that they might engage us in conversation.
"Can you see what's wrong?" I asked in lieu of an answer.
He wasn't fooled, judging by the way his cheeks lifted, as if he was smiling.
"Not yet." He glanced up, eyes dark, dark brown in his face. "Might be your alternator, or your distributor sensor, if it just died while you were driving."
"Dead as a fucking doornail," I muttered, resisting the urge to kick the back tire of
