Part 2: Can I help you?

CH1

When the door opened, a naked torso faced Evonne. Not just any old torso, but a hot, muscled, six-pack naked torso.

She blinked and blinked, and then she blinked some more. She couldn't understand why a grown man would be wearing a towel, just a single white, fluffy towel wrapped around his waist, to answer the door.

He was leaning against the doorframe, one hand supporting his tall, lean, muscular body that, Evonne noted, any female would want in her bed, including her. Not that she'd bedded any male, of course, since she was still a bloody virgin, for Lord's sake.

As her eyes traveled up to his face, her heart decided to do a disco dance, moving in time to the sound of the very popular music currently playing in the background somewhere inside the man's house. She felt a little breathless and lightheaded.

Her cheeks flushed the same shade as the bouquet of scarlet roses in her arms. Not that she was florist or a delivery person or anything. No, the florist was one of her best friends, Rina, and the delivery person was too sick with influenza.

So being the great best friend that she was, Evonne offered to help. Rina had begged because this was her VIP client. Rina herself was too busy preparing for the many orders for Valentine's Day, which was tomorrow, so the job was thrust upon her with little room for argument.

And Evonne herself had succumbed to Rina's bribery of free roses, which she loved. Now here she was, knocking on the door of 88 Summer Street in Herne parkway, one of the wealthiest suburbs in Auckland.

At the moment, her eyes were busy blinking rapidly at the half-naked male specimen standing before her.

But my oh my, did she almost forget she was holding on to the bunch of roses because heaven helps her, this man was G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S. That slightly wet, dusted-corn hair had a sparkling golden sheen beneath the afternoon sunlight.

The man looked so hot she couldn't help ogling at him. Putting all the symptoms together, which included pronounced asthma induced breaths, the after-the-marathon heart rate, and the light-as-a-feather feeling inside her head and stomach, Evonne concluded this condition was because she had never seen a naked man in the flesh in her whole twenty-nine years of life.

If she had counted the time she had seen her young nephews during their bath time, however, then yes, maybe she had seen the male species displaying their valued male anatomies.

But for the likes of men like this one, so well toned, so well made, and with so much testosterone, then the answer would be a definite no.

Those arms looked so strong, so muscular, so— "Can I help you?" he asked, drawing her senses back to reality, breaking the spell, and making her blink a few more times before she became aware of the mission she came to accomplish. "Umm." Suddenly, she realized she'd lost her voice.