World's Worst Boyfriend: A Romantic Comedy Adventure (Fake It Book 3), Carina Taylor [ebook reader online txt] 📗

hugged the box to her chest and continued to glare at him as she stepped onto the sidewalk. She stared at the van as the mailman pulled slowly down the street—almost as though he were afraid she might run after him at a moment’s notice.

I cleared my throat. She spun around. “Oh, thank you so much! I forgot you were here!”

She shifted the box to one arm and reached to retrieve the coffee cup.

Taking it from my hands, she leaned back, trying to shake her long, dark hair from her face.

It was the first clear look I’d had.

This was not a run-down suburbia mom. This woman was beautiful. Possibly slightly unhinged, if I were being honest. She wore shorts and a tank top beneath her now-open robe. And she was young, maybe a year or two younger than me. Somewhere in her mid-to-late-twenties. Her hair was in direct contrast against her fluffy, cream-colored robe.

She smiled and I completely forgot about the ‘possibly unhinged’ part. “I’m so sorry you had to see that. My mailman refuses to get out of his van and deliver my mail, so if I want my packages, I have to chase him down.”

Her big, hazel eyes sparkled as she nodded, like it was the most natural thing to sprint down an alleyway after a delinquent, and obviously lazy, mailman.

Her face dipped down to my shirt, and she gasped. “Oh no! Did I do that?”

I glanced down at the big coffee stain on the front. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal.” I shrugged.

“No! This is all my fault. I was so focused on getting that package, I spilled coffee all over a stranger. Come on, let me take care of that for you.” She gestured for me to follow her back the way that she came.

In my line of work, ‘let me take care of that for you’ had all types of double meaning. It usually involved a form of bribery. But since I wasn’t in uniform, and she seemed to think I was an innocent bystander, I was curious what her manner of ‘care’ was. Curious enough that I put one foot in front of the other, this time at a more casual pace.

“How is this not killing your feet?” I asked as she tiptoed across the gravel.

She laughed, “Oh, I’m feeling it this time. When I was running earlier, I was more focused on the package.”

What I wanted to do was offer to carry her across the gravel. That would only make this situation even more strange than it already was. I also didn’t want to scare her or risk her turning me down for a date when I asked. Because I would be asking. It wasn’t every day you met a woman capable of sprinting on gravel barefoot without spilling a drop of coffee—at least until she slammed it into your chest. “What’s in a package that you would run barefoot on gravel for and almost get yourself killed stepping in front of a moving vehicle? Nothing could be that important.”

We stepped out of the alleyway and she hugged the box tighter to her chest. “Shhh! Don’t let it hear you say that! This is a limited edition.”

I followed her to where my van was parked. “Limited edition what?”

She glanced over her shoulder as though there were thieves lurking everywhere, waiting to snatch her limited edition. She leaned closer and said quietly, “It’s a limited-edition wallpaper sampler.”

I blinked. Wallpaper. Sampler. Then, I laughed. And laughed. Until my eyes watered.

She stood there and grinned at me, not offended in the least.

“I thought someone had stolen your child. And there you are running after something as mundane as wallpaper.”

“Sampler,” she corrected. “And, well, I don’t have kids, so it’d be hard to steal them.”

I swiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, trying to compose myself. It’d been a good while since I’d had a reason to laugh that hard. It felt good. The last time was when a friend had asked me out on a date, just to prove that she had some semblance of a dating life. Trailer park life usually lent itself to some humor, though. “I hope that wallpaper lives up to its expectations.”

She laughed with me this time. “I know it sounds crazy, but I needed it before tomorrow.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek, trying to stop the laughter that was working its way out. “You’re right. I mean, those walls aren’t going to paper themselves.”

“Stop making me laugh!” She gasped. “I know I look insane! But this really is my life.”

“How so?”

“I’m an interior designer, and I’m meeting with a client tomorrow.”

“Ah, okay, well, if it makes you feel better, that makes you seem slightly less crazy.” I grinned at her.

She smiled back, and we stood there like two fools grinning away at each other. I didn’t want to go. But there was no reason for me to be standing there any longer, especially since she wasn’t actually in danger—now that the wallpaper sampler was safe, and the coffee was back in her hand.

I shrugged a shoulder toward my Exploratory Solutions tech van. “I guess I’d better get back to work, or I’ll be late for my appointment.”

“You stopped just to help me?” she asked in awe. “That’s so sweet. And then I went and spilled coffee all over you. Oh, wait, don’t leave yet!” She hurried up the sidewalk to the house I was parked in front of.

I watched as she juggled her coffee cup around so that she could open the door.

She disappeared inside, only to return a moment later without the coffee cup and package. She must have had enough time to secure the sampler in her laser-protected vault.

“Here!” She stopped in front of me and opened a pack of wipes. “They’re stain-removing wipes,” she explained as she began to wipe away at the coffee stain on my shirt. I stared in awe at her hands as she made quick