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Michael was noticing.
“You said you liked to explore the woods, didn’t you?” Abby asked, eager for conversation. They’d finished breakfast, and it looked like Michael wasn’t interested in seconds. “Did you and grandpa ever find anything neat out there? I remember when I was a kid, we found all kinds of interesting things. Trees covered in fungus, or rocks with crystals… Once we found the antlers from a deer.”
“Oh. There’s tons to be seen out there. I don’t think I could pick a favorite discovery.” Michael’s hand slipped across the table again to take hers, and Abby shivered when he touched her. The pinpricks that ran up her arm were impossible to ignore. She couldn’t remember another date who’d ever made her feel so wonderful through innocent touch alone. “Really, I think my very favorite discovery didn’t happen in the woods at all.”
“It didn’t?” Abby tilted her head to the side, curious. “Where did it happen? What was it?”
“It was at the bar the night I met you,” Michael said softly. “I don’t think I’ve ever made a discovery as fantastic.”
He was talking about her. Abby sank back in her chair, but she didn’t pull her hand away from his. Michael’s thumb worked across her skin, caressing.
Did he really have to get to work? Abby was beginning to think that fixing a house with some minor damage wasn’t worth the price of losing his company.
If this kept up, it was going to be very hard to get back to writing—this time not because of heartbreak, but because her heart couldn’t get enough of the way Michael made her feel.
“It’s like all the little things in life have come together to lead me to you,” Michael said. “Coming to this town, meeting your grandfather, and hearing all about you through him… Who would have thought when we met, we’d hit it off like we have?”
He thought that they were hitting it off. Butterflies rose in Abby’s stomach, and she had to control herself from laughing out loud with joy. There had been gorgeous women at the bar—skinny, confident, attractive women, but somehow it had been her who’d landed the hottest man of all.
And it wasn’t a trick.
Abby knew that she was pretty, and that her weight was only a number, but it was a much harder concept to internalize than it was to speak. But Michael was helping her see her worth, and right now, she felt on top of the world.
When he leaned across the table, Abby leaned, too. An
d when their lips met and she closed her eyes, there wasn’t anything else on her mind than how wonderful that moment was and how spectacular she felt.
Unadulterated joy, like fireworks, burst inside of her and lit her up from the inside out. She smiled against Michael’s lips as he led her through one of the sweetest kisses she’d ever had, and then, when the kiss came to a natural end, he pulled back and she opened her eyes.
His hand slipped away from hers reluctantly.
“I better get to work before I get too distracted,” he whispered.
Michael had slipped out of his chair and through the front door before she could pull her thoughts together well enough to ask him to stay.
* * *
There weren’t any clouds, and the light of the sun beat down mercilessly. Inside the cabin, typing away at her laptop, Abby was sheltered from the worst of it.
Up on the roof, toiling away at replacing some rotted wood, she knew that Michael wasn’t so lucky.
It had been hours since he’d slipped away at breakfast, but her mind had been on him the whole time. The touch of his lips against hers still made her feel hot, and she’d taken all of that inspiration and funneled it into her latest novel.
The first in a paranormal series, she decided.
Even if things didn’t work out between her and Michael, what they’d shared in the short time they’d been together was inspiration enough for a trilogy. Maybe even more. Abby’s head was full of him, and her body still vibrated at the memory of his touch.
The man really was magical. Her real-life paranormal hero.
Only in person, Michael was somehow even better than his fictional counterpart.
He was still tearing apart the old wood when she made her way out onto the front lawn to look up at him, a tall glass of ice water in hand.
“Do you want a drink?” Abby called up to him. From where she stood, she couldn’t see him, but she knew that he had to be there. She could hear him tearing and tossing wood down.
A few seconds later, Michael made his way over, and Abby’s heart jumped into her throat.
He was shirtless. The jeans she wore were tightened at the waist with a belt, but were otherwise baggy. Sweat glistened on his skin, which was tanned from hours spent toiling in the sun. And his muscles?
