Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 97994 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97994 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
A small dimple appears in his left cheek.
A DIMPLE.
I did not know that existed.
Holy crap. He looks so much younger when he smiles. Warmer. Devastatingly handsome…
This is not the broody, emotionally unattainable guy I’d been constructing in my head and daydreaming about. This is a man with laugh lines. A man who looks like he might actually enjoy stuff. Like he might tease and grin and charm things without thinking them through.
I feel it down to my toes: this stupid, giddy, dizzying shift in my chest.
Oh.
That’s what Aaron looks like when he’s happy.
“Wine that requires decanting?” He laughs. “I’ll have you know, I ate cereal for dinner. Out of the box. Over the sink.”
“You’re lying.”
He holds up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
I glance over my shoulder.
“Juliette,” he says quietly. “Stay.”
He steps aside, spreading the open door, giving me a wide berth to enter, warm light spilling farther into the hallway, soft and inviting.
“Come in,” he mumbles. “Before you overthink this and climb back into the elevator.”
I hesitate half a second longer. Walk toward him instead.
“You’re so cute,” he says once I move past him, shutting the door behind me.
I glance around his entryway to avoid his intense gaze—and immediately regret it because the place is exactly what I imagined.
Historic. Dark. A massive piece of art stretching across the far wall. A console table with a single ceramic bowl placed on a stack of coffee table books. A gilded mirror above it.
No shoes kicked off by the door.
No pizza boxes.
It’s a penthouse more fit for an older couple who winter in Boca Raton and smells faintly like cedar; I imagine that somewhere there’s a candle burning that smells like man.
Lordy. “My parents could live here.”
He chuckles. “It’s near the arena, that was one of the perks.”
Aaron leads me farther into his penthouse.
He gestures for me to follow, guiding me down a short hallway off the main living space. The lights are dimmer here; black-and-white photographs of old stadiums, architecture, and historic cityscapes hang on the walls along the way.
“Do you like history?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
He steps into a den that makes my breath hitch.
Floor-to-ceiling bookcases filling three walls, painted a rich, deep green and lined with hardcover books. Biographies. History texts. Fiction novels. A ladder on a brass rail that slides across the shelves that has me wanting to climb it and slide from one side of the room to the other…
A huge sofa anchors the room, dark and inviting and could swallow me whole, with cozy-looking blankets stacked at the end of it. On the opposite wall, a massive movie screen.
“You have a whole library,” I say, spinning unhurriedly, taking it all in.
“It’s my favorite room. I spend most of my free time in here.”
Why is this turning me on?
The dimple, the dark wood, the library.
His manners!
All of this.
“I like it quiet,” he says. “After games. After practices. After a long fuckin’ day.” He gestures toward the couch. “This room makes it easier to shut my brain off.”
I find this so attractive. I blush, turning away from him, eyes to the shelves so he doesn’t see how flustered he’s making me.
“Climb it,” he says quietly next to me.
My cheeks are aflame. Hot. “What?”
“The ladder,” he clarifies. “You’ve been staring at it since we walked in.”
I have. “I am not climbing your fancy library ladder.”
Aaron grins. “Why not?”
“Because if I f-fall and crack my skull open, I would never live down the humiliation.”
He chuckles. “I’d catch you.”
I ignore him and go to the sofa, sinking into one of the magnificent cushions. Set the cookies on the coffee table and cross my arms. “You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who hunkers down at the end of an evening with a biography.”
He leans one shoulder against the doorframe, arms folding casually across his chest. “What do I strike you as?”
I’m unable to hold his gaze. “ESPN. Loud buddies piled in here. Ordering wings at midnight.”
A grin tugs at his mouth and there’s that dimple again. “I mean, I’m into that, too. Occasionally.”
He saunters all the way into the room now that I’ve settled, sitting beside me, close enough that his knee touches mine when he manspreads his legs.
“Movie?”
“Yes, please.” Because if he doesn’t do something to distract me with soon, I’m going to fixate on his mouth. And hands. And the way his hair is curling at the nape of his neck as it continues to air dry. “I’m down for whatever.”
Down for whatever? Ugh. I did not say that.
Aaron reaches for the remote, thumb scrolling lazily through options. The massive screen casts a soft glow over his face, catching the bump of his nose, the delicious stubble along his jawline. His knee is still touching mine.
He doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
He settles on an old romantic comedy about a wealthy woman on a yacht who falls off the side and loses her memory—and is rescued by the carpenter who’d been building her walk-in closet.