Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
“Am I being awkward?”
He shrugged. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. We had a moment. We don’t have to have more than that.”
“But you want more.” She needed him to say it first. If he said it, it would be okay for her to say it, too.
“Yes. I have ever since I saw you.”
She wasn’t sure if she believed that. “But you didn’t know me.”
“I’m a guy. I don’t have to know you to want to get to know you. If you know what I mean.” His voice was deep and low, soothing in a way and also unsettling because that voice of his made her long.
“Really?”
“You look good, baby.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t feel like it. I’ll be honest, I don’t feel very…sexy. I was going to say romantic, but that’s not the right word. And you look good, too. Fantastic, actually. Sometimes you roll up your sleeves and I just watch those muscles in your forearm. It’s very sexy.”
“Is it? Hmmm. I guess I never thought about it.”
He was a terrible liar. She threw one of the decorative pillows his way. “You totally do that on purpose.”
He easily batted the pillow away, his lips curling up in the sexiest smirk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And tell me why you don’t feel sexy because you’re absolutely sexy. You kill me when you laugh and your whole body moves with it, like you feel it in your soul. And when you’re thinking, you bite your bottom lip and twirl your hair in your right hand. I love the way you stand in front of the oven waiting for the timer to go off and you kind of rock from foot to foot like you hear some music in your head.”
“None of those things are sexy.”
“They are when you do them.”
How long had he been watching her so closely? She was a woman who was used to going unnoticed, and now this magnificent man seemed to have made a study of her. “I feel like I’m grumpy all the time. I know I wasn’t exactly sunny when we first met.”
“Oh, you were so not sunny. Do you even remember when we first met? You got in the elevator and you were carrying moving boxes and I asked if you needed help.”
She felt herself flush. “I was having a terrible day. I think I told you I didn’t need any and then I asked if you thought I needed help because I was a woman. You should understand that I’d had an argument with my father-in-law who told me it was foolish that I didn’t move into their place because two women shouldn’t be on their own out in the world.”
“You were still sexy even with all that grump. And you should understand that if you’d let me help you, I would have rolled up my sleeves real slow and let you get a look at these muscles of mine, and then I would have bent over just right because I happen to know my glutes look good in a pair of jeans. I would have bent over and made sure you got a good view, and then I would have picked up your heaviest box and turned toward you and asked where you wanted it in a way that let you know I wasn’t talking about the box.”
Her breath caught, and she was somewhere in between laughing and shock. She brought her bare feet up, twisting so her back was against the arm of the sofa and she was turned toward him. “You would not…yes, you would. You’re a terrible man.”
He grinned, the expression lighting his face, and his hand found her ankle. He encircled it and brushed his fingers across the bridge of her foot. “I am not terrible. I’m actually quite nice.”
Just that one touch was enough to let her know her libido was working nicely. It made her breath catch, and she couldn’t help but stretch her legs out like she was chasing his touch. “It’s been seven years since I had sex. You should know that. And it wasn’t very good before. I’m not foolish. I know sex can be good even though I would say I’ve never had it myself. I didn’t have a great sex life with my husband. We slept together a couple of times and then I was pregnant. We got married. We weren’t in love, but I thought we could make it work.”
He moved in closer and lifted her feet in one hand and put them on his lap. “You got married because you were pregnant?”
She sighed as he brought her right foot between both his hands and squeezed. She hadn’t realized how much they ached from being on them for ten hours today. “I know it sounds old fashioned, but I felt very alone in the world at that point. My dad had died and my mom had pretty much left me with enough money to finish school, and she was gone, too. I thought I could make a new family for myself even though somewhere in the back of my head I knew Dennis wasn’t the man for me. But he seemed to want to try. Honestly, as long as I was supporting him, I don’t think he would have left me. I made some sense to him, and once Lou started reading at the age of four and she showed unbelievable potential, he actually talked about wanting more kids.”