Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
I must have paused longer than I’d realized because he ducked his head a bit, giving me a warm smile that matched the light in his eyes.
“The way I was raised, a woman’s hand never touches her own door handle,” he told me, and I couldn’t tell you why but his words sent shivers through me again, but this time on the inside.
I knew what Vega would say in this sort of situation. She’d make a joke about how she saw that as a challenge, and was going to need to be faster than him when the car stopped, so she could open her own door. Something like that.
But I wasn’t Vega.
So I said, “That’s very old-fashioned, but, you know, in the good way.”
“And not in the misogynistic prick way?” he finished for me, smirking. “Don’t worry. I know women are perfectly capable of opening their own doors. The point is, when you’re with me, you won’t need to,” he said, gusting into his car, and I didn’t even hesitate to slip inside.
In my head, somewhere muffled in the back, someone was narrating with the voice of a deathly serious true crime show host, saying something like Meredith Behr didn’t know that she was getting in the car with a monster.
But it was in the way back of my head, so it was easy to ignore.
Besides, my gaze was watching Cesare move across the hood of his car, unbuttoning his suit jacket with those tattooed fingers in a gesture I’d always found oddly sexy.
Then he was sliding in beside me, giving me a whiff of the crisp, somewhat spicy cologne he wore as he closed the door with a waft of cold air.
I watched as he fiddled with the touchscreen for a moment, not paying any mind to what he was actually doing—he could have been changing the radio or pushing a button to dispense toxic fumes, for all I knew—because my mind was too busy having strange, sordid thoughts about those fingers and how they might look moving over my pale skin, teasing over the curves of my hips, my breasts, lower.
It wasn’t until he suddenly reached across me, filling me with anticipation that perhaps my fantasies were coming to life for a second, that I realized what he’d been doing.
Messing with the heat.
Then reaching over to position the vents more in my direction.
And that was just so damn considerate that I couldn’t help but look at his face, giving him a warm smile.
“Thank you.”
“And if your ass feels warm, it’s the heater in the seat,” he told me with a little wink before turning his attention back to the dashboard, and pulling away from the side of the road.
“Hey, sweetheart?” Cesare called a moment later, snapping me out of a pretty vivid fantasy I was having about climbing onto his lap and all that might happen after.
Not that I would ever be that bold.
But a girl could dream, right?
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to need you to point me in a direction,” he told me, glancing over with that damn sexy tug of his lips again.
“Right,” I said, prattling off my address, and telling myself that I was not, under any circumstances, going to invite him inside when we got there.
But then he was parking, and rushing out of the car to come get my door.
The second I was on my feet, looking up at him, the words were falling out of my mouth.
“Do you want to come in for some coffee?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cesare
It was just my luck that being a Good Samaritan would trap me with the one woman I really needed not to put my hands on.
Really, I couldn’t tell you what it was about her.
Sure, she was gorgeous.
But many women were.
There was just something, I don’t know, sweet, maybe even delicate about her.
Apparently, that fucking caveman part of myself that liked to be the “big, strong man” was intrigued.
It also didn’t help that the woman had absolutely no poker face to speak of, so every single thought that crossed her mind was written all over her pretty face.
Meaning there was no way I missed how heated her eyes had gotten for a moment, how her gaze had slipped to my hand. I could practically see the visions myself. Of my hands on her skin.
You know, shit I really needed not to be thinking about when trying to be a good guy and just give a woman a ride home.
Not to mention because she was off-limits, being she was in the middle of a situation for me and work. Whether she knew anything about that or not.
Then she had to do it.
Invite me up.
And my ass had no self-control.
So the next thing I knew, I was following her into the apartment building and to her door.
The door that barely got open before another woman was calling out, “Oh, thank God. I was going to send out a search party. Since when do you not answer your… ohhhh,” the woman said as Mere moved in, leaving me in the doorway.