CHAPTER 1
He’s All Wrong for Me; It’s Perfect
ELLIE
SIXTEEN MONTHS AGO
Iwas going to throw up, and surprisingly, it wasn’t because I’d just invited a man back to my hotel room. It wasn’t because we’d had a drink too many, either. I was going to hurl because I was laughing so hard.
“Tell me they let him back in,” I said, gasping for air. My stomach ached. Tears streaked down my cheeks.
“No!” Sam said. “Banned for life.”
I screamed. Even though we were nearly at my room, I had to stop to press my hands onto my stockinged knees. It took me internally talking myself down to stop laughing. When I stood back up again, I let out a long breath.
This man was cute, definitely, despite him being a little too charming for my liking. It’s why I’d responded to his flirtation downstairs at the conference social. But I hadn’t counted on him being so hilarious.He’d just finished telling me about a story he’d been told about a guy banned from his seaside hotel in Victoria, BC, because he left packages of gourmet sausagehe’d bought in his room. When he left, fifty aggressive seagulls invaded the hotel, brawling over preserved meat.
“They completely trashed the whole room. Torn sheets, garbage everywhere. Shit everywhere. And the way they screamed, the neighbors thought a murder was going down.” Sam imitated a seagull’s squawk, flapping his arms.
The reenactment was incredible. Remembering it had me losing it again. “I had no idea seagulls even ate sausage,” I said when I could finally breathe.
“Oh, they’ll eat anything. They’re sky rats.”
“You know,” I said as we rounded a corner, “a seagull ate a hot dog right out of my hand once on the Santa Monica pier.”
He laughed—this full-body, carefree laugh of genuine happiness, which made me laugh, too. Who was this happy? And why did this stranger bring the same joy out in me?
When he looked back down at me, his face still split into a grin, I realized telling myself he was just cute was a trick I’d played. A ruse to keep me from making this a big deal. This man was beautiful.
It’s fine. This was fine. We lived on opposite sides of the country. More than that, we had nothing in common: Sam cavorted around the world and was only at this building conference to ‘explore his options’ for a career moving forward. I’d spent my twenties changing diapers, doing school pickup, and building my business. These days, I worked, worked some more, and had the high school on speed dial with all the trouble my son got into.
Still, I daresay this past hour with Sam had been the best sixty minutes I’d had in a long time. As long as I could remember, actually, save my favorite moments with my son, before he started hating the world. And me.
Still, Ilikedthis guy. And we’d reached my room.
Sam leaned against the wall, his head turned sideways to look at me with that dangerously sexy smile. This was nolonger theoretical. This man—a man I could no longer deny I found deeply attractive—was about to see me naked. If I went through with this.
A click sounded, startling me.
“Shit.” I’d dropped my key card. I didn’t even remember fishing it out of my bag.
Sam dropped down to pick it up. But instead of getting up again right away. He just hovered down there, holding the card.
“Hey,” he said, tipping his face up at me. “We don’t have to do anything, Ellie. We could just hang out.”
Having him down there was doing something to my insides.
“Stand up,” I said. “Please.” I hoped I could think straight again when he stood. But I was wrong, because the whole time he rose, he kept his eyes locked on mine. God, those eyes. They were so blue they looked like a tropical ocean. What did you call that? Aquamarine? Cerulean? I had no idea, but I had to look away.
“Ellie?”
“Yup!” What was happening to me? I didn’t get intimidated by men. But those eyes, his proximity, his clean, soapy scent…and what I’d brought him up here for—my heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t think.
Sam’s fingers grazed the back of my hand, sending a jolt of electricity through me. We hadn’t touched since we left the bar. Was he trying to hold my hand?
Then I felt the cool press of plastic in my palm.
He was handing me my card.
