Excerpt: Suburban Urgency

Who the hell—and that’s when I turned. The wheels on the carts are pretty squeaky and from down the aisle, I could hear some shrieking. I jumped back just in time for it to come barreling by me. It happened so fast—there was the boy, very attractive, propelling it forward and then I caught sight of the fact that there were at least thirty pints of my B & J's in that one cart.

But that was secondary, because he almost took off my legs. I hopped halfway inside of the freezer and let loose a high pitched noise. Whether it was a scream or a yelp, I just don’t know, but I did know I was getting one of the pints from that boy.

He stopped abruptly ten feet away from me and hopped down from the cart. It was too soon because the cart swayed and crashed, falling on its side. I just watched as the boy stared at the pints rolling away from him. He didn’t even scramble to gather them; he—he actually screamed.

Under a different setting I would have called it a battle cry, but we were in a grocery store for crying out loud. Which is exactly what he did—cry out loud. I was staring incredulously at them; another friend had just rushed forward and slapped him on the back, laughing. I stood there gaping long enough for one of the tubs to roll toward me.

I picked it up from the floor, turned it over in both hands and read the flavor. Nice. Half Baked. I turned away from those guys—either drunk or complete lout of their minds—and started to throw it in with the rest of my groceries.

I turned back; just to glance to check that I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing. The guy, the one who rode the cart, said something to his friend and started jogging toward me. He wasn’t far away and I—though I watched his whole procession toward me—jumped when he spoke. “You’re really going to steal my Ben & Jerry’s?”

“You didn’t buy it yet.” I jerked the hand holding the ice cream away from him. He grinned. Nope, he was way too attractive for me to have prolonged exposure to, no matter how crazy he was. I’d probably hand over the ice cream without any argument if he kept smiling at me like that.

His eyes, a startling electric blue, were almost to light for his face. He had a deep tan and dark brown—no, it was black—hair and dimples in both cheeks. “But it was in my cart.”

“Well, it’s in mine now,” I said as I dropped it in. He chuckled and took a step toward my cart and in turn, me. “I’m not giving it back.”

He rocked back on his heels and abruptly leaned forward. Too bad I could already tell what he was planning on doing. I slid the cart backwards and forgot about myself. I froze and heat flooded my face as he delved way into my personal space.

He smiled wider—it seemed to be a game to him. But, I don’t give up quality dairy products for anyone. “Tricky girl.”

And then everything went black. Or, well, the overhead lighting in the store flickered and died.

"I'm Logan."