THE BRAVO BOYS - SNAKE EATER [book three]

Chapter ELEVEN

Logan Nash

My fingers drum a repetitive and troubled rhythm on the cedar surface of the desk as Shelby steps out of my office to receive her phone call.. Deprived of her delectable perfume and freed from her intoxicating presence I am left wondering just what the hell is wrong with me..

There had been a moment, something heady, lingering yet fleeting had passed between us, a kind of unwelcome attraction that, try as I might to ignore, continues to force its way to the surface..

This job is dangerous enough without Shelby getting in my head.. I can't let this woman crawl under my skin, the risk she poses is too powerful and she has the potential to destroy my life as I know it with her meddlesome mentality.. Sure she's a beautiful sight, whip smart with the face of an angel.. It's obvious to me that she's everything a man like me could hope to get his hands on.. But she is also egotistical, judgemental and frigid.. She can be argumentative, impatient and headstrong to a fault.. Shelby Quinn is all the things that I find lovely and somehow loathsome both at once..

No.. I won't let her win me over.. Not now, not ever.. I won't be entrapped by a pretty face and a not so hidden agenda.. I'm smarter than the Beauty Queen gives me credit for, she thinks she can smile sweetly, distract me with false flattery and smooth over our differences to get what she wants out of me before she no doubt returns to thinking of me as less than the mud on the bottom of her boots.. But I won't be swayed so easily, I know my place, even if she wants to pretend otherwise for the sake of compromise, we are like opposite ends of a magnet, pushing one against the other to be met by a willful resistance..

A flustered frustration ebbs away at my squirming internals, causing an uneasy conflict to catch alight at at my core.. Why did she have to go and change her tune? Her attitude adjustment caught me completely off guard once again, going from cold to cute in a split second so that I couldn't maintain that distance I am constantly working to keep between us..

Is she sincere when she says that she is sorry and gazes up at me with that soft starry eyed sympathy, or is she simply playing with me, manipulating me?

Goddamnit.. It was so much easier to dislike her while she wore her worst behaviour..

The Army Barbie paces in a stiff shouldered, militant fashion just outside my office doorway before she pauses to glance over at me with a conciliatory smile.. All the while I make a failed and dishonorable attempt to overhear any part of her conversation, unable to control my craven curiosity.

Who is she talking to?

The curiosity alone is enough to drive me mad.. Sure, I could hack into her phone, force my way into her device and find out for myself.. I could even listen in on her conversation if I were so inclined.. But as I watch her worried expression and the anxious jitter to the way she fingers the ends of her glossy blonde hair, I decide against the invasion of privacy.. That kind of betrayal would only make her hate me even more and now that I've glimpsed her softer side, I'm resistant to return to the heat of her scorn..

After several slow agonising minutes pass Shelby wanders back into the room, her pretty features pulled into a pensive purse and her mood dampened to a distracted darkness.. In the short time it took for her to answer her call, her entire demeanor has shifted back into that familiar uppity manner I am accustomed to and now an obvious apprehension wears on her face..

"Y'alright, Shelby?" I query, making an attempt to sound casual and indifferent, barely able to convince myself..

"I'm fine.." She mutters, sinking back down into the chair beside me, clearly regretting our moment just as much as me..