Falling into Forever (Falling into You) - By Lauren Abrams Page 0,53
die right now. A sneak and a laugher. I don’t think either of those are real words. I try to recover what’s left of my dignity by shooting him a haughty glare just before I stomp off across the lobby to retrieve my jacket. He follows me, catching my hand just as I reach for it. He takes it and holds it out with the arms open.
“I’m sorry, Hals. I shouldn’t have listened to your conversation. I heard you talking about Marcus and figured I should get some recon in. It was a favor for a friend. You can’t begrudge me that.”
“Oh, yes I can.”
I snatch the jacket back from him and struggle with it for a minute. He takes it back silently and holds it out again.
“Hallie. Stop. Let me help you.”
People are starting to stare at us. There’s a guy at a table in the corner who’s adjusting the lens on an expensive-looking camera. He stares a bit longer than the others, and I give him a quick once-over. He looks fairly normal, like a regular person, but my brief stint as the most pitiful person in America taught me that the paparazzi come in all shapes and sizes. I can’t take the chance. Muttering obscenities under my breath, I slide my arms into the jacket, and Chris’s hands briefly touch my uncovered skin. I think I manage to squeak out a thank you as the little tremble in my spine starts. Turning abruptly from him, I march across the lobby and press the button over and over again, praying that this is the one time that I don’t get stuck with the slowest elevator in the history of mankind.
I feel him behind me, or at least I think I do.
I don’t wait long for confirmation. When he spins me around to face him, his eyes are filled with good-natured laughter, and I’m torn between wanting to smack him and wanting to fling myself into his arms. He draws me close and whispers into my ear, his lips brushing against my hair.
“You know, coffee is really good for doing movie things. It helps with the things. And I’ll even let you cheat on the jinx, as long as you forgive me for the eavesdropping. It wasn’t even really eavesdropping. I would call it overhearing. Definitely overhearing.”
I push back, giving him my best angry face before crossing my arms and turning in the opposite direction. I’ve apparently become a pouty four-year-old. What’s worse, I can tell that he’s still doing the silent laughter thing and stubbornly refusing to move out of my way.
The elevator door dings and mercifully, it’s empty. I step inside, but before the doors can close, he steps right beside me.
“Get out.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. You don’t own the elevators, you know.”
As the doors close and the lobby disappears, I take a look at him. He’s sticking his tongue out at me and has an absolutely ridiculous expression on my face. I want to be mad, to maintain some semblance of my ice-cold façade, but I can’t help it. I lose it, and before I even know what I’m doing, I’m laughing so hard that I have to lean against the back of the elevator for support.
He lets his eyes wander the full length of my body, and a small, hunger-filled gasp escapes his lips.
“You drive me crazy, do you know that? Especially when you talk about…things.”
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it, Jensen.
“Hallie.”
It’s one long moan.
Shoot. I’m a goner.
It’s all instinct, the reaching of my hands up to encircle his neck and my unconstrained movement into the crook of his arm. My mouth finds his immediately and I stroke his hair, pulling it under my fingers and letting my whole body turn into jelly under his grasp. He lifts me and pushes me against the elevator wall, his hands grabbing at my waist with greedy fingers. I gasp as he sucks my bottom lip into his mouth, releasing it only after I feel like I’m going to drown from the lack of air.
I don’t even notice when the elevator doors open to the top floor, but he manages to brace them with his foot just as they start to close on us.
We tumble out.
“Something about this feels extremely familiar,” he whispers, the laughter rumbling in his chest. He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out his room key. “We’re moving on up, though. The presidential suite.”