AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER9
~ MILLIE ~
Glancing toward the stall doors in the diner’s bathroom, I confirm I’m alone in here.
Because I’m putting on lipstick.
Worse: I’m putting on lipstick and it’s a Friday night, and I have no plans except to go home.
Which can only mean one thing.
I’m putting on lipstick forhim. For Dax. For a guy I can’t even reasonably consider dating. Not just because he’s military.
But because he’s not interested in me.
Not. Interested. In. Me.
I force the words to echo through my hormone-soaked brain as I anticipate seeing him tonight.
“I’m just new in town and was hoping to pick your brain a bit.”I nibble thoughtfully on my lip as I replay his words from our initial meeting in my head.“…pick your brain…”
Makes him sound like a hovering vulture and I’m roadkill, my skull smashed by an eighteen-wheeler on the highway. There’s no romance in the statement. No hint of a potential attraction. Only gore. So why all the butterflies migrating from my belly southward?
I’m certifiably pathetic.
But I can’t help it. I’ve been thinking about him all week—thinking about how much better I felt after I talked to him.
If that evening under the stars with him—an evening that might have been plucked from my favorite romance novel—if it had been adate, there is no way I would have ended the night with him going to his bed and me to mine, at least if I had any say in the matter.
Nope. Instead, I would have leaned into those glorious lips of his and plastered my sex-deprived body against all his muscular curves until he reminded me what it feels like to be a woman.
But it wasn’t a date.
Nor was it a date that morning after when we made Pop-Tarts in the toaster and I decided it was the most romantic breakfast I’ve had in my life.
Nor was it a date that evening when we played fetch with Junie and I enjoyed way too much that moment our skin touched as he handed me my dog’s saliva-saturated toy.
Yep. I’m totally crushing on him.
I’ve got it so bad for him that I actually swiped the last piece of apple pie and hid it in the back of the diner’s fridge so that I could bring it home to him tonight.
I can’t even regret it. Because it feels so good—this distraction from worrying about my brother, worrying about my job, worrying about whether my dog has added a new stain to my hardwood floors.
I step through the bathroom door and into the quiet of the diner. We closed about fifteen minutes ago, and Harriet is at bingo night at her church, so it’s just me and Bo and about ten pie crusts we need to make for the day tomorrow.
As I step into the kitchen, he gives me a curious look.
“You all right?” he asks as he sifts dry ingredients into a giant mixing bowl.
I feel my brow furrow. “Yeah. Great. Why?”
His frown is subtle. Almost discerning. “You look different.”
I tuck my chin in defensively. “Bad different? Or good different?”
“Just different,” he says with a shrug. “You feeling okay?”
My face falls. “Geez, Bo. I put lipstick on. And you think I looksick? Seriously?”
