Total pages in book: 34
Estimated words: 31414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 157(@200wpm)___ 126(@250wpm)___ 105(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 31414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 157(@200wpm)___ 126(@250wpm)___ 105(@300wpm)
Mel studies me for a beat, before nodding, apparently satisfied that I’m not going to be emotionally destroyed by my weekend fling. “Good. Love you, talk soon.”
“Love you,” I echo, shutting the door.
Once it’s closed, I lean back against it with a sigh. I may have lied to my sister a teeny tiny bit, but that’s okay. No one needs to know that I’m already having more-than-boink-buddy feelings for Connor, or that I’m looking forward to talking to him again as much as I am staring into his gorgeous green eyes or feeling his hands on my body.
That will be my little secret, one I’ll keep today and for the rest of my life.
I’m good at keeping secrets. After all, neither of my sisters knows I’m still a virgin. I’ve kept that close to the vest, along with my secret love for playing Dungeons & Dragons online and my collection of vintage test tubes. Yes, all of those are nerdy things, not sexy, emotional things, but surely secret-keeping is a skill that transfers from one type of secret to another. And the person I’m most concerned with deceiving is only going to be in town until Monday morning, so I won’t have to keep the secret for long.
Or so I think…
I’m still pondering secrets and connections and the probability of such a thing as love at first chess game when there’s a knock on my apartment door.
Almond croissant still in hand, I cross the living room and flip the lock, not bothering to look through the peephole first. Strangers never show up at my door. It’s always a family member or my local UPS lady, usually with another vintage test tube for my rapidly expanding collection.
I’m expecting to open the door to Mel with a spare croissant, or perhaps my mother, coming to ask where I ran off to last night after the wedding. My mother is a driven woman. She’s determined to have all her babies married off before she turns sixty-five and she only has a year left to get me headed down the aisle. She won’t be happy that I ducked her re-introduction to Petey Sinclair.
But when I open the door, it isn’t my mother on the other side.
It’s Connor, looking even more delicious than he did last night in an olive t-shirt that brings out the green in his eyes and a pair of wire-framed glasses almost identical to my own.
“Glasses,” I murmur, blinking in shock as I take in his rumpled hair and slightly puffy face. He looks like he woke up and ran here straight from his bed, a fact that sends butterflies fluttering between my hips.
He swallows and nods, pushing them up his nose as he says, “Yeah. I had my contacts in last night, but I didn’t want to waste the time this morning. I…I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Me, either,” I say, suddenly very aware that I’m in my star-print pajamas with the ruffled shorts that make me look approximately twelve-years-old and am holding a croissant in the air like a torch between us. But as awkward as I am, he’s still looking at me the way he did last night, like I’m an almond croissant from a fancy French bakery and he’s a pastry aficionado. “You want to come in?” I step aside, nodding toward the kitchen. “I have an extra croissant.”
“Thank you, but no,” he says. “Well, at least, not yet. I have a crazy idea, but you’re probably going to think I’ve lost my damned mind. If you do, you probably won’t want me in your apartment, but I…” He exhales a ragged laugh and drags a hand through his hair. “But I can’t stop myself. I tried, I really did, but as I was lying awake last night, I kept thinking about how cautious I always am. How I wait and wait and overthink and second guess myself and then, by the time I’m ready to pull the trigger on something, it’s too late. I’ve missed the moment or squandered the opportunity or…” His gaze locks on mine, making my chest tighten and the butterflies low in my body triple in number. “Or lost the girl. And I really don’t want to lose the girl this time, Wendy Ann. I’ve never felt this way about someone before. Especially not in just a few hours. My ex and I were really close, but she never made me smile half as much as I did last night. Your sense of humor, your mind, your laugh, the way you lick your lips when you’re thinking…”
I swallow, letting my croissant fall to my side as I nod. “It was a piece of croissant that time, but I do lick my lips when I’m thinking. No one’s ever noticed that before.”
“I notice everything about you,” he says, hope burning in his eyes. “And everything I haven’t noticed I want to notice. I don’t want this to be a one or two-night thing, and I don’t want to risk losing you by trying to do long-distance.” He steps closer, bracing his hand on the doorframe. “It wouldn’t work, anyway. I couldn’t handle being away from you.”