Just One Kiss - J. Saman Page 0,29
as pity and I’d rather die than do that to such a strong man. So instead, I step into him, wrapping my arms around his waist and tucking my head against his chest. His heart is pounding against my ear and I smile.
He stiffens at first, like a wood freaking log, until finally he softens, and his arms find my back, holding me against him.
“I’m glad it was you yesterday,” I whisper, smiling just a little bigger. “It would have been really awkward staying at a stranger’s house through this storm.”
He chuckles, which was of course my intent.
“It could have been like The Shining.”
I give an exaggerated shudder and he laughs harder.
“You crazy people who live in the woods in the snow really should get your heads checked.” I step back, winking at him and making a show of looking out the window at the beauty beyond it. “I mean, how you tolerate all this stunning nature and gorgeous wildlife and beautiful dream home is beyond me.”
“Oh?” he challenges, cupping my chin and turning my face back to his. “So, you’re saying that living in an apartment with neighbors surrounding you, in a cockroach-infested city with smog and traffic and constant noise is the way to go?” He makes a tsking sound in the back of his throat. “Damn. And all this time I had it wrong with the stunning nature, gorgeous wildlife, and beautiful dream home.”
I sink my teeth into my lip as I try to fight my smile. “The restaurants are really good.”
His face grows serious as his eyes search my face. “My cooking is better.”
His cooking is really good.
“The shopping can’t be beat.”
“We have designer outlets not too far away.”
“Then I guess Vermont has everything New York doesn’t,” I muse with a quirk of my lips.
He shakes his head, his expression deliberate. “Not everything.” I swallow my tongue at the way he says that. “I’m going to start the fire. Why don’t you grab your laptop.”
Right. My laptop. Work.
I spin on my heels and race out of here, passing Betsy who is contentedly gnawing away on a bone, and up the stairs, ignoring the ache in my knee.
Wowzers, Miles Ford is intense.
So intense I feel his damn intense eyes in the pit of my stomach. I’ve had a very serious and active case of butterflies since I woke up yesterday on his couch and if he keeps this stuff up, I’m likely to start throwing them up.
I go for my phone, wishing, praying I have service here. Miles seems to on his cell, so what the fuck? Doesn’t the world understand that I could really use a phone-a-friend moment about now? Rina or I’d even settle for my sisters, who would likely roll around on the floor laughing or just tell me to take the bull by the horns, or his balls in my hand, knowing them, and kiss him.
“Rina,” I growl as I pick up my phone seeing that it blatantly shows no service. “You can’t move to Boston. I need you, dammit!”
I need her blunt truths because within the span of twenty-four hours, my mind and my heart are going in some wild, uncharted places.
Grabbing my laptop from its case, I do my best to calm myself back down.
But god! I can’t get all the things he said this morning out of my head.
Making my way back downstairs, I enter the solarium to find a fire roaring in the large fireplace, a space heater off to the side cranked up, the large white down comforter I woke up in yesterday, and a spread of cheese, fruit, crackers, nuts, and wine on the coffee table.
“How long was I upstairs?”
Miles glances up from his perch on the far corner of the sofa, his knees bent with a sketchpad resting against them, his right hand poised with some kind of thick, dark pencil in it. He smiles and my chest flutters right on cue. “I just figured you might be hungry.”
Could this man be any more thoughtful? “If you keep this up, you’ll make it impossible for me to leave when this storm blows over.”
His gaze holds mine as he says, “Maybe that’s my plan.”
He immediately returns to his sketchpad, leaving me standing here in the middle of the room without a retort, trying to absorb what he just said.
Miles has this way about him. A bluntness that is new to me and never fails to make me squirm in my shoes. Did he mean that? He wants