"Shanna Swendson - Enchanted, Inc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swendson Shanna)

as he'd like to think. This one wasn't exactly hideous. With a little effort and the right
personality he might not have been so bad. Unfortunately, he made no effort at all,
so that his hair was poorly styled and greasy, while his skin would have made my
mother, the Mary Kay representative, faint in horror. But he acted like he thought
every woman on that train should be drooling over him, which made him even more
unattractive to me.

The funny thing was, all the women on the train were looking at him over the tops of
their books and newspapers like they thought Pierce Brosnan had joined us on the
subway car, and he grinned at them like he was totally used to that kind of attention.
Maybe they could tell he was particularly well-endowed. Or maybe he was a famous
rock star I didn't recognize. I wasn't hip enough to know what most rock stars
looked like. He had the kind of smug slickness you'd expect from a famous rock
star who didn't have to do anything to make women fall at his feet.

As for me, I'd rather look at Mr. Right, who was getting his fair share of admiring
glances but who looked shy about it, not like he expected the attention. That made
him infinitely cuter in my book.

"On your way to work?" Slick asked. It wasn't among the top five pickup lines I'd
ever heard. Not that I heard a lot of them.

"Actually, I just like being crammed like sardines in an underground tin can to head
to lower Manhattan in the morning," I said.

He stretched his arm out along the back of the seat, like he was angling to put his
arm around me. I'm from a part of the world that still has drive-in movies, so I
recognized the move and edged away as subtly as I could. "You're obviously not a
native New Yorker," he said, oozing charm like my dad's old tractor oozes oil. "I
love your accent."

Little did he know, but he wasn't paying me a compliment. As effective as the steel
magnolia routine could be when I was asking for something or trying to get my way,
it was a liability at work, where everyone seemed to think my Texas drawl meant I
was dumber and less educated than they were. I'd been trying to lose my accent, but
it kept slipping out when I was being particularly sarcastic. I guess I inwardly
thought the drawl took the sting out of whatever ugly thing I'd just said. In this case,
it seemed to have worked, just when I didn't want it to.

I wished I'd brought a book to bury my face in, but I'd planned to walk to and from
work when I left the apartment, so I hadn't brought anything to read. In fact, the only
things in my oh-so-professional-looking briefcase were my sack lunch and my
dressier shoes for the office. Instead, I just gave Slick a glare and turned my
attention to Mr. Right. Maybe he'd have a Galahad complex and feel compelled to
rescue me from the subway stalker.

Then I noticed that Slick was looking at Mr. Right as well, and suddenly his face
was totally serious. Mr. Right, also serious, nodded his head slightly. Miss Airy
Fairy was also staring at me. Now I couldn't help but wonder if this was a
conspiracy. Were they going to rob me or try to scam me? Goodness knows, I