Page 19 of When Hearts Surrender

Memories of being the last kid standing when no one picked me for their sports teams in elementary and middle school flash to the forefront. The helplessness, the anxiety. Fuck, I hate this feeling.

My heart drops to my stomach as a heat flushes through me and I see the mad dash of excited patrons getting into cars.

The heaviness returns to my chest.

I have no one. Lonely as always.

Shaking my head, I dispel the morose thoughts. If they won’t let me race alone, then I won’t race at all. I’ve accepted my course of life long ago.I’m calm. I’m at peace. I’m—

Slam!

My head swivels to the right, finding the mysterious black-haired beauty sliding into the passenger seat. Her eyes widen comically as she listens to the aria, her full lips parted as she heaves in panting breaths, like she has run a mile to sit next to me instead of walking the dozen steps of distance between us.

She gnaws on her lips again as I find myself speechless while the tenor’s voice erupts into a crescendo in the tight space of the car.

What the fuck?

She takes in a deep breath, turns to me, and holds up her hands. “Look, I know I don’t know you, but this is my year of yeses, and the announcer just said for this race, every racer needed to have a companion to liven things up, and I didn’t see anyone get into your car.”

Her hands cover her cheeks, which are flushed and pink.

She rambles, “Then, Jamie gave me an ultimatum and I couldn’t say no because it’s my year of yeses. I said that already, didn’t I?”

My voice continues to desert me as I stare at this vixen, my fingers suddenly itching to pick up a pen or a pencil, my sleep-deprived mind even contemplating opening a vein to capture her on paper. Fucking insanity.

But the life teeming in her eyes beckons me. Then, there’s her smooth ivory skin, unblemished except for a small freckle under her right eye, her long lashes, her beautiful irises, which I now see are a dark, tawny green, the colors of the moors in Scotland in spring.

My jaw flexes and every muscle in my body locks with tension. The air thins in the space between us.

She blinks, her face turning bright red. “What am I doing? Oh God, this is so embarrassing. You know what? I’m just going to leave—”

She reaches for the door handle and I don’t know what comes over me this instant, but all I know is I don’t want this woman to leave my car.

Stay.Don’t leave me.

Leaning over her, I cover her trembling fingers with my hand, flinching the moment my skin touches hers, a barrage of jittery sensations overloading my nerves. She lets out a breathy gasp, and a thousand shivers coast down my spine.

And my cold, impervious heart—the muscle I thought was long dormant—stirs to life.

Chapter 6

My heart shakes inmy rib cage as my gaze traps on his large hand on top of mine. This handsome stranger looks even more beautiful up close, like he could be one of the Greek statues displayed at the Louvre.

Those long, lean fingers, an artist’s fingers—a painter, an architect, a musician, I don’t know. It’s a gut feeling, a truth I can’t shake. The map of veins on the back of his hand, which trails up his muscular forearms, sprinkled with a light dusting of dark hair.

The lips that look so soft, I wonder, for a split-second, how they would taste.What’s going on with me?

Then there’s dark hair, the brown so deep it’s practically black, the strong Roman nose and angular aristocratic jaw.

But it’s the intense eyes, the gray almost iridescent, that stall my breath, the eyes that drew my attention to him in the first place when he arrived in his car.

I don’t know what came over me when I caught sight of him moments ago, because I’d never done anything like this before. He looked older than me by at least a decade, and yet, I couldn’t find it in me to care. I just had to meet and talk to him.

Every atom in my body is awake as I watch his fingers lightly trail from my hand to slowly encircle my wrist, his thumb settling there, alighting a thousand sparks across my body.

I’m afraid he can feel how hard my pulse is beating against my skin.

“Don’t leave me.”

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