An Unexpected Love Story (Love Story Book Two) (9 page)

“I’m just here for the weekend,” he said suddenly, pulling back to look at me. “I don’t want to lead you on, or anything.”

I smiled at him. “Your concern is cute. But I’m a big girl. A very busy girl. The only thing I have the time and inclination for is a fling.”

John smiled at me. “Well then let’s make the most of it.”

Within minutes, John was leading me over to the bed, and I was more than happy to comply, having finally silenced my inner critic. I was allowed to take happiness where I could get it, and I’d be damned if I let anyone—including myself—tell me otherwise.

And I had a feeling John could make me very, very happy.

Chapter Eight

“What have you got there?” John asked me an hour later, pushing himself up onto his elbow and peering at me over the pillows. I swallowed, overwhelmed by the sight of him half-naked in bed, the sheets pulled up around his gorgeous hips. You’d think I’d be over the shock of the sight of him by now, especially considering the things we’d just done together, but his gorgeousness struck me all over again, making my throat feel dry.

“Snacks,” I said, holding up the tray in my hands. “Fresh from the kitchen.”

“You went downstairs like that?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at my robe-clad figure. “You could have caused a riot if one of the gamers saw you.”

I laughed, joining him on the bed. “It’s two a.m.,” I pointed out. “There are few fringe benefits to my job.” I lay the tray down between us. “But twenty-four hour access to the kitchen is one of them.”

“So, what do we have here?”

“Couple sandwiches, some beer, fruit. Oh, some French fries, too. They’re cold, but not too bad.”

“Sounds good,” he said, leaning over to kiss my neck. I closed my eyes. God, his lips felt good. “Just what I need to get my strength back for a night of ravishing.”

I pushed him away. “I don’t think so, mister,” I said.

“Oh, did you want to ravish
me
?” He raised an eyebrow at me, smirking.

“There will be no more ravishing of any kind. It’s already very late, and I have to work tomorrow.”

John groaned and lay back down on the bed. “I was afraid you were going to say that. Isn’t there any way you could get away for a while?”

“I thought you had your mysterious meetings tomorrow,” I said, grabbing a club sandwich and taking a huge bite. I hadn’t realized quite how hungry I was—the sandwich was heavenly.

“I should be done by lunch time,” he said, not taking my bait about the purpose for his meeting. “It would be great if we could get away from the inn for a little bit.”

“Hate to break it to you, buddy, but there ain’t much to do away from the inn this time of year.”

John grabbed a sandwich of his own. “Really? I recall this afternoon you telling me that if I needed any advice to let you know.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, reaching for a beer to wash down my food. “That was when I was still trying to get in your pants.”

John laughed loudly, the sound making me happier than I liked to admit. I was taking far too much pleasure in making this guy happy.

“Come on, Brooke,” he said, kissing my neck again. I felt my will power slip a notch. “Just for a few hours?”

“Well,” I said, his kisses making me feel slightly light headed. “I suppose I could see if my dad could handle things for a bit.”

“Good,” John said, pushing the tray down to the end of the bed.

“Hey, I was eating that,” I protested. He kissed my hand before removing my beer bottle from my fingers.

“Not anymore you aren’t,” he murmured.

“Really?” I teased. “What am I doing then?”

John set the bottle down on the bedside table and pushed me onto my back, hovering over me. He grinned down at me. “I’ll show you.”

* * *

“What are you so happy about?” Kellie asked me the next day as I passed her hostess station.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re looking all…bubbly,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “It’s weird.”

“It’s weird that I seem happy?”

“It’s just…not like you. To be so…smiley.”

I laughed at that, and she raised her eyebrows, looking alarmed. “See? It’s weird.”

“Sorry for freaking you out,” I said, giving her another grin. “I’ll try to keep it toned down.”

I sauntered away from her station, knowing there was a bounce in my step. She did have a point: it wasn’t really like me to go walking around with a huge grin, but I was having trouble keeping one off my face.

My night with John had been amazing. There was just no denying that he made me feel great—better than I had felt in a long time. In addition to being heartbreakingly good looking, he was also funny, and smart. And while I could tell he was into me, he also seemed to sincerely want to get to know me—and not just between the sheets. We had stayed awake for hours last night, just talking; favorite books we had read, movies we had liked, teasing each other about our respective favorite sports teams. I had been surprised by how much I enjoyed it, lying there in the dark talking of inconsequential things.

You’re getting ridiculous
, I told myself.
Mooning over someone who’s leaving in two days. You’ll only end up hurting yourself.

I knew my inner critic had a point. I should definitely try to get ahold of myself. Unfortunately, John walked into the restaurant at that moment, and I completely forgot my good intentions.

“Hey,” he said, walking over to me. “I was hoping I would find you in here.”

“Did your meeting go well?”

“Yup, pretty well. I’m all yours now. Are you done working?”

“Yup,” I said, feeling a little fission of excitement at the prospect of getting to spend so much time with him. “Let me just find my dad and tell him I’m heading out.”

My dad had been thrilled at the prospect of running things when we had a full house. Granted, there wasn’t much to do that afternoon. The gamers were wrapped up in tournaments. There was a theme dinner that evening to get ready for, followed by a marathon of role-playing games, but I planned to be back in plenty of time for all that.

“So,” John said as we stepped out of the front doors of the inn. “What are we gonna do today?”

“It’s a surprise,” I said.

“Okay,” John said evenly. “Just tell me this. Will lunch be involved? I’m starving.”

“Lunch will be involved.”

“Then I’m in,” he said. “Want me to drive?”

“I can drive.” I pointed to my truck at the end of the parking lot. John took one look at it and shook his head.

“I’ll drive,” he said firmly, taking my arm and leading me to a shiny black Lexus.

“Do you have a problem with my truck?” I asked, feeling stung.

“I would like to get to our destination in one piece, if that’s alright with you.” John opened the passenger door, but I just stared at him.

“I’ll have you know that’s a great truck,” I told him. “It never fails me. They don’t build them like that anymore.”

“That may be true,” he said, kissing my nose. “And there’s probably a good reason for it. Now get in, please. I’ll turn up the seat warmers and let you control the radio.”

“You have seat warmers?” I asked, feeling excited in spite of myself. Emily’s friend Ryan had seat warmers in the leather seats of his car, and I had always considered them the height of luxury, insisting that he drove me around whenever I came down to visit.

A few minutes later we were off, John navigating smoothly through the sparse Saturday afternoon traffic of Alpena. “Just stay on this,” I said. “I’ll tell you where to turn.”

Our trip was a short one. About fifteen minutes later, I was directing John to pull into a parking lot in front of a large, non-descript building. John got out of the car and came around to open my door—an unnecessary touch, but a nice one. He squinted up at the sign over the large glass doors.

“Ice arena?” he asked, turning to look at me. “Are you serious?”

“What, haven’t you ever ice-skated before?” I asked, reaching out to take his hand. He shook his head wordlessly. “Seriously, dude? Aren’t you from Chicago?”

“I was more into soccer growing up.”

I thought about his lean, wiry build, as displayed so pleasantly to me the previous night, and smiled. “That doesn’t surprise me,” I said, tugging on his hand a little. “Come on, this will be fun. I promise.”

Chapter Nine

Ten minutes later, we were sitting on a bench inside, lacing up our rented skates. “It’s freezing in here,” John muttered.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “That’s so the ice doesn’t melt. What, did you think it would be warm?”

“Shut up,” he said, leaning over to finish tying his skates.

“They need to be tighter than that,” I said, glancing down and suppressing a smile. It was always nice when someone so put together and confident clearly had no idea what he was doing.

“Thank you, oh guru of the municipal ice rink,” he said, tightening his laces. “Better?”

“Much.”

Finished with our skates, I stood up on the rubber mat, wobbling slightly. “Ready?” John looked up at me and sighed dramatically.

“As I’ll ever be.”

I reached out a gloved hand and took one of his, pulling him to his feet. He stumbled a bit on his blades, falling into me. Laughing, I wrapped my arms around him and looked up at his face. “Steady there, mister. I can’t hold you up on my own.”

“You seem to be doing pretty well right now,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at me. His face was only inches away from me. Even through the layers of our coats, the warmth of his body made me feel slightly dizzy. “In fact,” he went on, lowering his head for a kiss, “if I had known there would be so much full-body contact in ice-skating, I wouldn’t have whined about this nearly as much.”

I kissed him back, letting myself melt into him. As John was already wobbly on his blades, this didn’t work out so well. I had to reach out an arm to the glass wall behind us to keep us both from falling over.

“Wow, I have literally knocked you off your feet with my charms,” John said.

I snorted and pushed him away. “Think you can walk now?”

“Yeah,” John said, taking a tentative step. “But maybe you better let me go on that side so I can hold onto the wall.”

We made our way across the rubber mats to the entrance to the ice. There were a few couples already skating, along with a group of teenagers and a couple families. “Oh God,” John muttered. “I have to do this for the first time in front of teenagers?”

“Are you chicken?” I asked, stepping out onto the ice. I took a few quick strides, then turned back to John, skating backward as I called out to him. “Come on, you can do it!”

John took a tentative step out onto the ice, looking terrified. “Uh, Brooke? You left out one important step.”

“What’s that?” I called, now a good ten feet away from him.

“You didn’t tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do once I’m on the ice.”

I laughed and skated back to him, offering him a gloved hand. “It’s pretty easy,” I said. “Like roller skating, a little bit. You just move one foot at a time. Try to take little strides until you’re comfortable.”

“Yeah, like
that’s
ever gonna happen,” he muttered. I watched him watching his own feet, a look of great concentration on his face. I had to admit, it was pretty cute. He looked younger, somehow, trying so hard to get it right. I held his hand tighter.

“You’re doing great.”

Ten minutes later, we had managed to cover about a quarter of the perimeter of the rink. John had finally stopped holding onto the outer wall, but he insisted on holding my hand in a death grip. “This must be getting pretty boring for you,” he said, glancing up briefly to smile at me.

“It’s fun watching you fall on your ass,” I said, winking. John made a face at me, but he had no idea how serious I was. I couldn’t count how many guys I had gone out with whose sole intention seemed to be trying to impress me. Emily said I intimidated them and they felt like they needed to keep up; I just found it annoying. John was one of the first guys I had ever met that seemed confident enough not to try to impress me. His willingness to mess up and fall flat on his ass was incredibly endearing.

“Why don’t I rest here for a minute and you can get a few laps in.” When I started to protest, he held up his hand. “Come on, Brooke. I could tell as soon as you got out on the ice you were good at this. Why don’t you skate on your own for a minute? I’ll wait here.”

It did sound tempting. I reached up and kissed John briefly. “Okay, I’ll be right back.”

He leaned into the wall and waved. “Have fun.”

I took off, loving the feel of the cold air rushing by me. I had been on skates since I was a baby, though the municipal ice rink was a rather new addition to the town. When we were younger, Emily and I, and all of our friends, used to shovel the snow from a myriad of ponds and lakes in the area to skate or play hockey. Paul had gotten really into the sport when we were in high school; his mom used to let him flood the back yard at the start of winter, guaranteeing we would have some good ice as long as it stayed cold.