Tangling With Ty. Jill Shalvis

at his hip. It looked as if it had been roughly stuffed in and out of a pocket on a regular basis.

      Apparently she hesitated a hair too long, because he pushed up to his elbows and turned his head, giving her a glimpse of jet-black hair cut so short it stuck up in spikes, hitting her with the lightest, most crystal-clear blue eyes she’d ever seen.

      He took one look at her with her fists still up, her legs slightly bent and let out another sigh, rubbing his jaw. “We going to duke it out over a notepad then?”

      She dropped her fists to her sides, and, keeping her eyes on the most gorgeous stranger she’d ever seen, she bent for her Taco Bell bag. “Who are you and why were you swearing in my hallway?”

      “Heard that, did you?” He flashed a grin. “I don’t suppose you’d not repeat any of it to the owner? She specifically said no swearing in her hallways.”

      Hmm. Nicole was surprised Taylor hadn’t put this man under lock and key in her bedroom, given her fondness for horizontal gymnastics, and the fact that sexuality rolled off this man in waves.

      With one smooth motion, he came to his feet, startling her anew because, granted, she was on the shrimpy side of average height, but he and his hard-as-granite body had to top six feet by several inches.

      Which meant her head, if she lifted her nose to nosebleed height, maybe came to his broad shoulder. Between their height discrepancy and her sudden, startling attraction to him, she felt defensive. She hated feeling defensive. It tended to put her on the offensive. Taking one step back, she balanced her weight on the balls of her feet, once again ready for anything.

      “Wouldn’t have used that language if I’d have heard you coming.” A bit chagrined now, he cocked his head and scratched his jaw, which, judging by the dark shadow there, he hadn’t shaved in a few days. “Went and startled you, I see.”

      She narrowed her eyes. Yep, his accent was gone, but there was something stilted about how he sounded now, as if he were hiding something.

      She knew well enough about hiding secrets, but didn’t like it when others did the same. “Answer my questions, please.”

      As she’d raised an accusatory finger directed toward his very fine chest, he lifted his hands in surrender. “No need to shoot, I’m just the architect. Ty Patrick O’Grady at your service.”

      “You’re the…architect.”

      “For the building here. It’s going to be renovated.” As if to prove he was harmless—harmless, ha!—he propped up the wall with his shoulder and gave her a disarming little half smile that sent sparks of awareness shivering down her spine. “Needs an architect before anything else, you know,” he said. “Turns out this place is a historical monument, and is in desperate need of some serious structural repair.”

      As the place was smack dab in the middle of elegant, sophisticated South Village, where the rich came to play, and everyone else came to pretend to be rich, Nicole decided she could buy that. Especially since this particular building was the current eyesore of the entire block.

      Taylor had been having one expert or another through here for weeks in anticipation of a major renovation. “So you’re working up a bid for the owner? Suzanne?” she asked, watching him carefully.

      Now he smiled, slow and sure. “No, not Suzanne. Taylor, but good try. It’d take more than a peewee to trip me up, darlin’.”

      A peewee? He’d just called her a peewee? She’d give him peewee.

      He lifted one jet-black brow at the narrowing of her eyes, and dared to smile at her obvious temper. “Want to see my ID or are you just going to clobber me with that lovely smelling Taco Bell bag?”

      “What happened to your accent?”

      His face went curiously blank. “What accent?”

      “You had an Irish accent. Are you an immigrant?”

      “Yep, just got off the boat from Australia, mate.” He grinned. “Or maybe that was…” His accent went from Aussie to Austrian in a heartbeat. “From another continent entirely.”

      A smart-ass. “It’s awfully late to be working on a bid.”

      “You mean early, don’t you?”

      That might be; she had no idea whether she was coming or going. “Whichever. Why are you here now?”

      “I’m what you’d call a busy man…now, darlin’, you’ve got me so flustered, I’ve gone and missed your name.”

      Nicole crossed her arms. “It’s not darlin’, I’ll tell you that.”

      He let out another smile, which she had to admit could melt bones at fifty paces. “Do I have to guess then?”

      “Dr. Mann,” she grudgingly gave him. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got tacos to eat.” And a date with a bed.

      Alone.

      Where that thought came from, she had no earthly clue. She always slept alone.

      Always.

      She stared at him still staring at her with a little, knowing smile that made her want to grind her teeth for some reason. “What? You going to make a crack about me being far too young to be a doctor? I get a lot of little-girl jokes. Go ahead, give me your best shot.”

      He took a good, long look down her body, then slowly, slowly back up again, stopping at the points that seemed to be connected to her loins, since they all came alive with a little flutter that annoyed her even more. “You look all woman to me.”

      Oh, definitely, she was too tired for this. She brushed past him and stopped at her door, slapping her myriad of pockets, looking for the keys she could never quite remember where she’d left.

      “Problem?”

      Scowling, she ignored him and switched her Taco Bell bag to the other arm to check her back pocket. No go. Damn, that was the trouble with cargo pants. Comfortable, yes. Practical, with their twelve million pockets to lose things in, no.

      “Dr. Mann—”

      “Please,” she said to that quiet, outrageously sexy voice as she closed her eyes. “Just…go away.” If she didn’t gobble the food and hit the bed, she’d fall asleep right here on her feet.

      She could do it, too. She’d slept on her feet before, during med school, during the long nights of residency….

      A sharp click had her blinking rapidly at her…opened door? Ty Patrick O’Grady, architect, sometimes owner of a sexy Irish lilt, man of a thousand curses and one incredible smile, held up a credit card. “Handy, these things, aren’t they now?”

      “You…broke in?”

      “Easily.”

      “Are you a criminal?”

      He laughed, low and sexily, damn him. “Let’s just say I’ve been around. You need a better lock.”

      “You can’t just—”

      “Did you find your keys?”

      “No, but—”

      “Just get inside, darlin’.” He gave her a gentle shove as he took the Taco Bell bag from her fingers just before the thing would have dropped to the ground. “Before you fall down.”

      She stepped over the threshold, reaching back to slam the door. Unfortunately he was on the wrong side of that door and ended up inside her very small place, which seemed that much smaller with his huge presence in it. “And I’m not your darling,” she said, turning away.

      “Nope, you’re Dr. Mann.”

      She sighed and faced him again. “Okay, so I’m stuffy when I’m tired. Sue me.”

      “I’d rather call you by your first name.”