Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 85565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
And then I wanted to run them all over the rest of him. Followed by my tongue.
That I wanted to lick an incredibly handsome man didn’t surprise me. That I’d found myself talking so easily to him had caught me off guard. Usually I wasn’t the sharing type, especially with strangers, and especially about things that truly mattered to me. It had been both liberating and unsettling, and I’d found myself turning the conversation back to less-weighty topics before I found myself baring my soul to him.
“Yo, squirt.” My cousin Karlie’s pet name for me pulled me from my thoughts. She never tired of needling me about being the youngest in the extended family.
“Yes, mamma?” I asked in return, a nod to her seven-months-pregnant belly rounding out the apron tied around her waist.
She rolled her eyes, but I could see the hint of a smile. She liked to grouse about her current situation, and she had good reason to since her good-for-nothing ex-boyfriend had ditched her after finding out he was about to become a father. More often than not, though, I caught her running a hand over her belly, a look of wonder and adoration in her eyes. She was going to make a wonderful mom.
She gestured toward several receipts piled on the bar. “You wanna maybe fill this order for me before I grow old and die right here where I’m standing?”
Her eyes slid toward the man I’d been talking to with interest. I wouldn’t have put it past her to find some way to embarrass me in front of him if she felt it would get my ass in gear, so I shot him an apologetic smile for the hundredth time tonight. “’Scuse me again.”
“No problem. I don’t want to interfere with your work.”
As I hustled through pulling a few beers out of the tap, I thought about how much I’d love for him to interfere with my work. I imagined bringing him back to my room and stripping him out of those designer duds. He looked like a Boston businessman, someone whose suit wardrobe vastly outweighed his casual wear collection. And when he’d decided to jet out to the Cape for a long weekend, some stylist in the city had probably hand selected the pristine “yacht chic” getup he was sporting right down to the brand-new boat shoes I’d noticed when he’d first walked in.
It wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen a million times over, but usually this kind of guy went to Nantucket or the Vineyard. Hell, even P-town. But I wondered what the hell had attracted him to sleepy McBride instead. If he was looking for a man to hook up with, I was about his only option besides Hank Isaacson, who was on the golden side of oldies and didn’t believe in manscaping. I only knew that because I’d seen him in a Speedo on the beach more times than I could count. And if his groin had half as much hair as his back did, I wasn’t sure Mr. Armani would be interested.
Besides, I’d mentally already called dibs the minute he’d entered the bar.
After I finished filling Karlie’s order and cashing out a few of the regulars, I wandered back down toward the giant magnet of a man at the end of the bar. “So, if you’re interested in a day at the beach tomorrow, I know the perfect spot,” I said, giving him my best smile.
Technically I was supposed to be meeting with my three uncles in the morning to talk about the future of my grandparents’ inn, but I’d take any excuse to blow it off. We’d been going around and around on the issue for months and weren’t any closer to an agreement. They wanted to sell, I wanted to renovate and reinvigorate it the way we’d originally planned. I wasn’t going to make any headway in convincing them until I could finish drawing up a formal business plan and fix up one of the rooms as proof of concept. Until then, I wasn’t interested in rehashing the old arguments.
Unfortunately, my potential excuse for ditching the meeting didn’t look like it was going to pan out. The sexy stranger’s smile faltered. “I, uh, can’t.” He cupped his hand around the back of his neck, and I noticed a slight flush at the base of his throat. “I have a, uh, commitment in the morning.”
At least there was a note of regret in his voice which meant he wasn’t necessarily uninterested. I decided to up the ante a little as I reached for his empty drink glass, “accidentally” brushing the tip of my finger down the side of his pinky in the process. It may have been my imagination, but I thought I sensed him shudder at the touch. If I could get him alone, I could repeat the touch to see if my hypothesis was correct. “Refill, handsome?”