“She’s gorgeous.” The words slipped from my mouth. I hadn’t meant to say them out loud, but fuck it; it was the truth.

“Smart too,” Kayla added, reaching for her phone, and I handed it back, hesitating slightly.

I wanted to text myself that photo so I could look at it later, study it more, or use the way those lips to jerk off to. The image of her holding a lighter toward my nether regions flashed in my mind, and I realized that no sane man jerked off to a chick who wanted to dismember his ... well, member.

“Once again, I beg to differ. A lighter, Kayla. She had a lighter aimed at my balls,” I explained.

“Yeah, yeah. I remember.” She waved me off like this sort of thing could happen to anyone. “She never told me what you two were fighting about. Care to fill me in?”

Fighting? We’d been fighting? I barely knew the woman.

“I have no idea. I was hammered that night, remember?”

She threw her head back slightly. “That’s right.” She snapped her fingers. “That was the double-shot bartender party.”

Apparently, one of the bartenders had had some sort of grudge against a rival company of mine. He thought it would be funny to give all the executives and higher-ups double and triple shots of their orders without telling them. Almost everyone was off their rocker before dinner was even served. The only people who had been spared the humiliation were the ones who didn’t drink.

“This might be our only option, Joseph. At least tell me you’ll think about it.”

“Is she taller than you? I can’t run around with a sprite on my arm.” I wasn’t trying to be a dick, but my six-foot-four frame always looked silly in company pictures, standing next to Kayla.

“I’m not a sprite,” she growled, her face looking like a cartoon character, and I couldn’t stop laughing. “But she’s a normal height, gargantuan.”

“How tall is normal to people like you?” I teased, and her eyes pulled together.

“She’s five-six.”

That worked for me. But I still wasn’t sure that I should be taking an evil troll to these events. “What if she does something crazy again?”

“She won’t,” Kayla pushed. “The next morning, she was mortified about how she’d acted and the things she’d said.”

God, I wish I could remember any of that.

“I bet she was.”

“Sutton doesn’t normally act like that,” Kayla added, and I shook my head, not sure what to believe. “You pushed her buttons.”

“And neither one of us knows how I did it or what I apparently said?” I wasn’t going to take the blame for something I wasn’t sure I’d even done. And who the hell threatened a man’s balls?

“Nope.”

“Do you think she’ll do it?”

“Not a chance,” Kayla said, and my expression fell.

“Really?”

“No. She hates you.”

“She”—I emphasized the word—“hates me?” I scoffed, jerking my head back and shaking my head like this whole thing was ridiculous. “Why would you even bring her up then?” I found myself getting even more annoyed ... and competitive. I was not the type of man who lost easily, and now, this was something I needed to win. Even though it would probably be a huge mistake.