Steal My Magnolia (Love at First Sight #3) - Karla Sorensen Page 0,50
insides as I said them. "Maybe ... maybe that healing just takes time, you know? To realize that coming to the end of a relationship like that will look different for you than it did for him, and that's okay. Eventually, you'll know why it all happened the way it did, but you can trust that the embarrassment you feel now won't always be there."
Her eyes were serious when I glanced over. "You think so?"
I nodded. And as I did, I wondered if she could see what it cost me. "Yeah. Don't rush trying to feel okay with it. You don't need to compare yourself to your parents or Tucker and Grace, or anyone else."
"Just be myself," she said carefully. Still watching. Still studying.
This time, it was easy to give her a smile. "Yeah. Because you're Magnolia fucking MacIntyre, and that's more than enough."
"Such language," she tsked. But she couldn't hide her smile, slow and sweet and beautiful. "We've still got work to do with you, Grady. Good thing I'm a determined woman."
Certainty.
I felt it again, at the back of my head, that she was it for me.
I'd never been good at being patient. Never been great at sitting back and allowing life to unfold at its own pace. Setting the pace was more my style.
This, though, was different. She was different.
"Good thing," I murmured.
Chapter 15
Magnolia
The farther we drove, and the closer we got to home, the conversation turned back to "normal" stuff. As much as I valued everything we'd discussed, everything I felt safe enough to discuss with him, it was a relief. The elephants receded, and for a while, I felt like me. The Magnolia that didn't get to come out very often.
"What are you going to do with all that junk?" I teased.
"Marketing swag has a valuable place in this universe." He stuck his hand behind my seat and pulled out one of the fifteen travel mugs he was given. "Did you see this? I almost cried."
I laughed. "It better not find a place at the office because I have dreams about how well that place is organized right now."
Grady sped around a slow-moving vehicle, and the headlights briefly highlighted the strong bone structure in his face and the casual strength in his frame he carried with ease.
The longer I was around him, the more he reminded me of a mountain lion.
Not a regular lion, with a big roar and a solid block of muscle on a large frame. Grady was graceful in his strength. Underneath his unassuming clothes, underneath that charming exterior, he kept his strength contained until the right moment. One moment when you couldn't not see it.
With a smirk on his face, he leaned back again to set the cup back into the bag behind my seat, and I caught a whiff of him.
Even after the entire day walking around that massive convention center, he smelled good.
I tried to channel his very good advice and think about how I should just be myself for a while. But in the dark interior of the car, I wanted to do all sorts of things when that smell crossed whatever invisible barrier was between our seats.
None of them were proper.
None of them were polite.
I could feel my Southern ancestors blushing in the grave because of my thoughts, yet I couldn't bring myself to stop them. They rolled around in my head, gaining momentum. Thoughts of his teeth on my collarbone. My fingernails raking along his muscled abs and around to his back. Thoughts of him over me, thoughts of pulling, pushing, sweating, thrusting.
I waved a hand in front of my face, because if my hairline wasn't glistening with sweat, then I didn't know my own name. It was insanity.
Closing my eyes, I let out a slow, quiet exhale and brought up the one thing guaranteed to derail such a line of thinking.
"Speaking of Tucker and Grace," I said.
He glanced over at me. "Were we?"
"No."
Grady smiled.
"Do they know?" I hadn't wanted to ask. Because it was a reminder of how I'd started in this job in the first place. He had to smooth things over with them because of my choices.
His smile disappeared as he nodded. "They do."
"Do I want to know how it went?"
"They're both okay, I promise." Grady sighed. "Grace was fine. She kinda feels the same as you do. She liked you," he said with a tiny smile.
"Your sister is the instigator of one of the worst hangovers of my entire life."