AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m average height, spiky dark hair. Big earrings.”
Sam checked her earrings, decided the giant silver triangles definitely qualified. The spiky dark hair was a given. She’d left out that her eyes were the color of storm clouds and that her cheeks had the rosy glow of a skin care commercial.
So he’d finally met Rory Fowler. Somehow his crazy reaction fit. She’d sucker-punched him twice now. First with her voice. Now with her everything.
He wrenched open his car door without sparing her another glance. “Follow me.”
* * * * *
“Follow me.”
Rory stared straight ahead and wrapped her shaking fingers around her steering wheel. Traffic inched at a crawl, cars moving like sluggish beetles through the congested streets. Haven, Pennsylvania had been her home all her life but she might as well have been dropped down by the mother ship in a strange new land.
Normally she’d be bouncing on the seat, eager to start a new adventure. The girl who’d once hugged every sideline known to man had blossomed, as clichéd as it was, once she’d started to lose some weight. Though she still questioned how she looked on a daily basis, she didn’t let it stop her. So she still had a few extra pounds. She had a cute wardrobe and she knew how to work what she’d been given. With that confidence had come anticipation for whatever lay ahead.
She didn’t argue with her urges anymore. Usually they led straight to fun. But this particular brand of fun came emblazoned with a skull and crossbones.
Odds were good Sam had no clue who she was. He didn’t know what she looked like beyond dark hair and black clothes. He also didn’t know where she lived. She, on the other hand, had filled out his address innumerable times over the past two years. His voice had ignited a flicker of recognition that had soon kindled into a wildfire when he’d rattled off his street name and number.
Which took this from the realm of stranger sex to pure insanity.
She tentatively gassed her sedan as the cars lurched forward. They’d just had a car accident—a minor one, true—and he hadn’t taken her info yet. If he had, the jig would’ve been up.
And she would’ve continued to wonder about him, as she had wondered for the past two years.
An honorable person would tell him who she was. It seemed right. They weren’t strangers, not completely. But that would ruin the mystique. Anyone could see the shadows gathered in Sam’s haunted dark eyes. If she could give him a respite from his ghosts for an hour or two, she would.
He’d mentioned exchanging information, so he’d find out who she was soon enough. But she didn’t harbor any illusions about the real reason she was following him home. What had happened the minute their eyes met defied explanation or conversation. He’d felt it too. Refusing to go home with him hadn’t even been a consideration. He’d asked, she’d agreed. No thinking involved.
Dangerous or not, she absolutely wanted this to happen. Whatever this was. She’d learned early on that sex revealed a lot about a person, both in what they gave and what they held back. She wouldn’t get to study all his gears or dismantle all his secrets in an hour, but she’d definitely get a crash course in what made Sam Miller tick.
He wasn’t anywhere close to the poetic-looking guy she’d expected. He had to be six-four, easy. For a girl who reached five-foot-seven on her best day, that was big. And the guy was as bald as a newborn, with eyes as black as the hair color she got from a bottle. He had no facial hair and no visible tats, though it had been hard to look away from the draw of his eyes on hers.
One thing he had was muscles. A lot of them. To go with his notable height, he had the sort of massive body she’d never found particularly attractive. She liked her men with more brains than brawn.
So what happened when she found one with both? Then what?
“He’s married,” she whispered. Still wore the ring to prove it. Even knowing that his wife had died didn’t diminish her sense that he was very much taken—and worse, that by doing this she’d be betraying a woman she’d never laid eyes on.
By even coming here, she was confirming every negative opinion her aunt had of her. Despite what Pam thought, she wasn’t easy and she didn’t sleep around. But this couldn’t just be a casual lay. Not only was Sam a client of JDS, she didn’t want to create any more drama for him. Or for herself.
She wouldn’t flip and expect a relationship, but any sensible woman knew a guy on the rebound after dealing with grief wasn’t a good bet. Maybe she would inadvertently cause him more problems than she solved. Sex wasn’t always the magic elixir it was cracked up to be. Even though he looked like a big enough boy to know what he wanted and needed, exteriors could hide a lot.
But she still followed his silver Chevelle, keeping far enough back that she wouldn’t accidentally inflict any more damage on his previously pristine classic car. Any admonitions were basically useless at this point. No internal warning would stop her from finding out all she could about Sam Miller, sexually or otherwise.
He swung into the drive of an ordinary-looking two-family house and she parked behind him, using the moment it took to grab her purse to suck in a deep breath. She’d told Pam she’d be gone for two hours, just in case. She glanced up as he climbed out of his car. His intent dark eyes bored into hers through the windshield and she felt the hit all the way to her toes.
Two hours that just might change her life.
It took every ounce of nerve she possessed to climb out of her sedan. She walked over to where he stood by his trunk and searched frantically for something to say.
I’m here. Now what?
But she knew what. And when her attention locked on his full lips, she wanted that what to start immediately. At least until he started moving.
Rory stepped backward as he advanced, self-preservation belatedly kicking in. He dwarfed her, both in size and intensity. In everything. Only when she bumped into her car did she realize she’d never even looked at her own fender. Hell, she had enough trouble even remembering they’d been in an accident.
With effort, she tore her gaze from his and zeroed in on a small tic-tac-toe board of scratches on her black Honda. She would’ve shrugged them off but he leaned around her and smoothed his fingers over them, drawing her focus to the size of his hand.
