Total pages in book: 183
Estimated words: 174715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 874(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 874(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
“Are you okay?” he asks, probably because I’m leaning into him, like I can’t stand, not away from him as he’s obviously a stranger.
“Yes,” I reply, when I should move, but instead, I blink into intense pale blue eyes framed by slightly wavy, finger-tousled, dark brown hair. “I’m fine,” I add, which is an understatement considering he smells like sandalwood, musk, and man, and I’m having the most sexual experience of the past two years of my life, on the street with a stranger. Oh God. What am I doing?
“I’m okay,” I say again, shoving away from him, aware now that he’s not only tall, broad, and in an expensive suit, he’s handsome, cheeks chiseled, eyes not just beautiful but intelligent. Like half the men I went to law school with, but somehow, unlike any of them, which I can’t explain in my mind at this moment, so I don’t try.
Seeking the safety of my bag, and senses, I squat down to grab it, only to have my morning destiny stranger do the same. He stares at me and I don’t move. I just squat there, in the middle of a New York City sidewalk, which could be dangerous, not to mention dirty, but I’m rattled and I don’t get rattled. Cat was right. I was top of my law school; back then I wasn’t a coffee queen, but rather the queen of taking down men just like him and yet I’m still not moving. Move, Lori! I scream in my head. “I need to get to work,” I say, reaching for my bag, but it’s too late.
He grabs it and when I begin to stand, he catches my arm to help me to my feet, heat darting up my arm, and Lord help me, across my chest. I actually think my nipples tighten. Okay I don’t think, they do tighten. I don’t have time to recover before I find myself captured by his probing, compelling stare once more. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” he says, in what is more a command really than a question. “I did run into you,” he adds. “It’s the least I can do.”
“I’m pretty sure we ran into each other,” I say, and he’s still holding my bag and me. Why am I letting him touch me? “You don’t owe me anything and I have to get to work.”
I go for my bag. He holds onto it. “How can I reach you?”
“I run into people at this very corner a few mornings a week,” I say, with an awkward laugh that is also not like me at all. “See you tomorrow?” Wind blows my long brown hair into my face, and to my horror, among other, more intimate physical reactions, he brushes it from my face.
“I’m out of town tomorrow,” he says, his full, arrogant, sexy lips curving while his blue eyes spark with amusement. “How about tonight?”
“No,” I say, because it’s the right answer. For me. For my mother. For now.
“Then when?” he presses.
“Another morning,” I say, stepping back from him, freeing myself of his touch, when I really don’t want to be free at all, but my life doesn’t allow a distraction like this man could easily become. “I really have to go,” I add firmly, grabbing my bag and side-stepping him and then darting away, in between two people, and then to the center of what feels like a huddle of bodies.
I look over my shoulder and just like that, my stranger is gone. It’s for the best, and yet, I have the gnawing sense of regret, like I want a do over that I shouldn’t want at all. It’s not time for hot men, with blue eyes and hard bodies. Correction, intelligent, blue eyes. They were intelligent, and brains make beauty sexy, but that’s irrelevant. I will not be meeting him on that corner again. It’s done. I can’t go back even if I wanted to.
Chapter two
Lori
Iend my day job in the center of a file room of a law office that is established and respected, but unlike Cat’s husband, the partners here don’t want to grow. Therefore, they don’t need someone like me to be more than I am at present: a clerk. For now, that works for me. I don’t want to be at a firm that might represent my future when I can’t give all that I have to give to become a success. I simply can’t work eighty-hour weeks for a limited income to pay my dues right now. At least I’m learning with every case I research here and with Cat. I’m staying fresh. I’m staying ready to be on game when I return to Stanford. Or finish at NYU or whatever I have to do to just get that degree.
With the offices already dimmed, I store my garment bag in a closet at the back of the file room on my way out. I just don’t have it in me to carry it to Cat’s and then on the subway home tonight because while Cat lives near my workplace, my mother and I cannot afford a place anywhere near this neighborhood. I exit the building that is on the opposite side of the courthouse from Cat and Reese’s building, and start walking, dialing my mother as I do. She answers on the second ring.