AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m working on it.” His voice drifted as if he had held the phone away.
“Patrick?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I’m reading this board...” He trailed off, then came back with a burst of energy. “Oh! I’m gonna go see if I can get on standby for this 11:45.”
Gemma pulled her phone away to check the time and did some quick math. “That’s in a half an hour. Aren’t they already boarding?”
“Yep. Gotta go!” he blurted, and disappeared into a muffle.
“Okay! But please—”
The wordstell me if you get ondissolved on her tongue because he had ended the call.
She looked down at her phone with a frown and looked up right in time to see a broad-shouldered man with tousled brown hair staring at his own phone crash straight into her.
“Whoa!” she blurted as they collided in a fantastic display of exploding to-go cups and spewing coffee. Frothy brown liquid—hotliquid—splashed her chest like a wave and splattered the floor. The cups clattered and rolled. An ice cube from her drink found its way into her bra. The kind of mortifying, deafening hush that only follows a loud, public accident swept the room as she struggled to gain herbalance. To top it all off, she slipped in the seeminggallonsof liquid that had somehow managed to drain from the four reasonably sized cups.
The man reached out, struggling on his own, and gripped her arms in a desperate effort to keep both of them from hitting the floor.
“I’m so sorry!” he said as they just managed to stay on their feet. “I wasn’t watching where I was going. Are you okay?”
She was a dripping, sticky, possibly burned mess. Her favorite blouse was ruined. She’d have to change and was going to be late for work now. An insistent ice cube was getting intimate with her left boob.
But all of that disappeared when she heard his voice.
She knew that voice.
She looked up and saw eyes that she knew too. Shining, slightly tired blue eyes that looked like they held a secret.
She blinked and shook herself. It was impossible. She had never seen him before but also felt like she’d known him for years.
He stared at her, searching with an earnestness that warmed her face.
The feeling of something familiar slipping through her fingers returned, except the familiar thing was holding on to her with a substantial amount of force, she realized. As if he didn’t want to let go.
“Do I...?” The words slowly left her mouth, and she wasn’t sure where they were headed.
His eyes brightened. He leaned forward like he desperately wanted her to continue.
The rest of the coffee shop returned to life around them.Chatter resumed. The milk steamer squealed. An irritated barista came over to mop up the mess, her face set in a scowl that implied she was the true casualty of the collision.
But Gemma tuned it all out. She couldn’t stop staring at the stranger staring at her.
“Do you what?” he asked.
The look on his face, Gemma couldn’t quite place it, and it didn’t look appropriate for having smashed into someone carrying four cups of coffee and living to tell the soggy tale, but she swore it looked like... hope.
Her thoughts had veered off into an irrational place. She kept careful inventory of the people she knew; she could count most of them on four hands, and she was certain on a very confident level that she did not know this man. But at the same time, the familiarity about him was as striking as a brilliant sunset. She could not ignore it.
The only way forward that she could see was to ask.
“Do I... know you?”
To call the look on his face relief would have been an understatement. Sheer joy blossomed, lighting his eyes and lifting his lips into a smile. Gemma got the distinct sense that she had seen the look before. He squeezed her arms where he still held them and nodded.
“Yes, you do.”
CHAPTER
