Just One Kiss - J. Saman Page 0,13

to be. Eyes that gorgeous aren’t real, but I sure as hell plan to paint them. I already know the colors I’ll use.

She smiles at me and I smile back, wanting to say something to her, but not knowing what. She’s still surrounded by a few lingering people, and I’m still the new kid who doesn’t know anyone and doesn’t fit into their world.

Her world.

She’s clearly the queen bee and the queen never falls for the servant.

She tilts her head, her eyes flittering around my face and body as if she’s trying to place me. Then she does the most amazing thing. She walks through the sea of people, heading directly for me. My heart stops dead in my chest before it slingshots into a sprint as if injected with a shot of adrenaline.

I can feel the color rising up my face, but I will myself to tamp it down as I straighten my spine and stare back unabashedly, the way she’s staring at me.

“Hi,” she says in a sweet melodic voice and my cock jumps in my khakis. “Are you new here?”

I open my mouth to answer her. To say yes and ask for her name. To tell her mine and ask what her schedule is because whatever hers is, I want to be in that class.

But before I can so much as utter a sound, one of her friends grabs her arm, throwing me a harsh look that suggests she’s already onto me and isn’t liking what she sees.

“See you around,” she says to me as her friend drags her off and that’s it. Moment over. But sure as hell not forgotten. Maybe this place won’t be so bad after all.

Taking the lid off the stew, I give it a stir, rousing myself out of my reverie. I force myself not to think about the woman upstairs. The woman who is showering in my home and likely stuck here for a couple of days. Hopefully not longer. Hopefully this storm blows over quickly and her car is easy to fix, and she can be on her way. Hell, I have a truck and a SUV. She can take that.

I hardly even use it.

It’s been well more than a year since Piper left. Since someone has been here, staying in this house with me. Even then, I never let Piper in my head or too deep in my heart. My walls were always up. Something I’m grateful for now considering one day she just decided she was done with me, the way everyone else has, and up and left.

Just like that.

I don’t love you anymore, Miles, and was gone.

“Stop staring at the back of my head like that. It’s for the best if she goes.”

Betsy makes some kind of noise that doesn’t take a dog whisperer to decipher she’s huffing out a, who are you kidding, at me.

But what Betsy fails to understand is that’s how my world makes sense. How everything fits and nothing breaks. London is London. Gorgeous face and curvy, fuckable body with a warm laugh sweet smiles, an incredible mind, and heart-stopping presence.

She is the package.

The one every boy imagines and conjures up in their heads as their ideal, perfect woman.

Really. She’s it. Always has been.

Of all the people who had to crash their car and I had to happen upon, it had to be London.

I go about setting two bowls out. Two sets of silverware. I pop the top on a beer and wonder if I should open wine instead. Then I mentally shake myself. This isn’t a date. This is not me trying to impress some woman.

London Canterbury is not and never will be mine.

I hear the bedroom door open and her feet along the hall upstairs. I go into the freezer and pull out an ice pack, cracking it so the inside of it breaks apart, and then I round the corner only to find her hobbling down the stairs.

Dammit. She’s really hurting.

“Shit,” I hiss, so pissed at myself for letting my need for distance from her overtake the help she requires. “I should have helped you up earlier. Are you in a lot of pain?” I race over to the stairs, jogging up the five or so steps she has left. Without thinking, I take her hand that’s not holding on to the railing, and put it over my shoulder when what I really want to do is pick her up and carry her down, the way I did when she