When Stars Collide (Second Chance Romance #2) - Sara Furlong-Burr Page 0,11

our shit together, and produce a couple photos of me where I don’t look like an emaciated troll. We can then resume our otherwise tumultuous relationship. Deal?

Extending my arm out just slightly above my head, I enabled the front-facing option on my phone’s camera and began snapping away, turning my body ever so slightly after each shot. When I’d taken somewhere in the ballpark of two dozen pictures, I switched my camera off and sat down on my bed to look through the results of my amateur boudoir photoshoot.

No … No … Definitely not … Could be worse … That one isn’t too terrible.

After some contemplation, I managed to narrow down the candidates to the two I found to be more acceptable than the others, and then proceeded to my contacts, scrolling through for Peter’s name.

Incoming.

He wouldn’t see the text until early the next morning, probably before I woke up to get ready for work. At no point in our relationship had Peter ever made me feel in any way inadequate. Be that as it may, I was still nervous over what he would think when he opened that text, whether he would be disappointed in some way. Maybe he would have preferred my purple bra or, better yet, the one that enhanced my cleavage even more than the one I’d selected. My mind raced back and forth between the rational and the irrational, and it was entrenched in those thoughts and my own insecurities that I eventually fell asleep with my phone in my hand.

*****

Groggy the next morning, I managed to stumble halfway down the hall toward the bathroom before I remembered the message I was certain to have waiting for me on my phone. My eyes flew open at the same time my legs did an about-face and headed back to my bedroom, all traces of exhaustion abandoning me.

Moment of truth.

Anxiety building, I checked my phone, only to discover that I had received no text messages of any kind.

Your fingers had better be broken, Peter, I fumed as I once again made my way back to the bathroom with my phone in hand. Maybe I forgot to hit send? The thought occurred to me, and I paused outside of the bathroom door to check my messages. Huh, I don’t remember sending a text to Phineas yester—

“No! God, no!” I let out the equivalent of a squeal/scream hybrid as I collapsed against the wall, my hand shaking.

Jo’s bedroom door flew open. Frantic, she ran out, tearing through our living room and hurdling over an ottoman with impressive agility, all while nervously looking around our apartment.

“Is the building on fire? What the hell was that God-awful noise? Did you step on the cat? Wait, did we get a cat?”

“No. It’s worse,” I managed to choke out. “I accidentally sent half-naked photos of myself to my boss.”

Jo stared at me, her adrenaline-charged brain processing this information. A second later, her lips pressed together into a hard, thin line, and the laugh she was struggling to suppress made its way out by way of a snort she usually only made when she was on the verge of tears from a hard laugh.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized after catching a glimpse of my less than amused face. “You know what, no I’m not. I’m totally not.” By this point, her body was shaking so much she had to brace herself against the wall for support.

“Are you finished?”

“Hold on,” her shoulders shuddered when she answered, “I’m getting there.” She sucked in a deep breath, slowly exhaling it as she straightened her body back up to its full height. “Nope.” Jo punctuated that statement with another laugh that once again tore through her body.

“I’m happy to see my utter humiliation is providing you with so much amusement this morning. How am I going to explain this? My job as an editor is to catch everyone else’s stupid mistakes, yet I couldn’t even keep my fat thumb from selecting Phineas’s name instead of Peter’s.”

Jo composed herself, her guffaws now only sporadic, like a light sprinkle, a drop here and there to keep you guessing whether another downpour was coming. “Hold up,” she stretched out her arm, her palm facing me, “your boss’s name is Phineas? What is he, like seventy? If that’s the case, you’re in the clear, because he probably doesn’t even know how to check his text messages, anyway.”

“If only,” I sighed. “Phineas is at most a half-dozen years older than I am, and he