Page 55 of Runaway Bride and Prejudice

“You mean it doesn’t feel like you barely know me?”

It’s the same for me. From the very start, Van felt like he wasn’t new to me. Like he’d always been there, like an invisible seed making itself known in spring when shoots break through the surface, the roots already spreading wide.

“That—and giving up. This isn’t a sacrifice, Mills. I’m having fun too.”

There’s an instant shift in the air between us, reminding me of the way a cold front blows in from the mountains, dropping the temperature rapidly with a few strong gusts of wind.

Now, we’re staring at each other as though our gazes snagged and are linked together.

A lush headiness diffuses through my limbs as Van continues to stare. Because the way he’s looking at me, it’s almost like?—

No.

He can’t want to kiss me.

He can’t be feeling the same strong tug I am, a riptide drawing me out to sea.

The best way to fight a riptide, I remind myself,is not to fight.

You let it draw you away from shore, then when the riptide ceases, you swim parallel to the shore until you can come back in. My dad drilled that into me every beach trip we took. Which wasn’t many. He had an irrational fear about riptides or, more likely, just about me drowning.

Is it bad to think about Van like a riptide? To stop fighting this pull?

If I let it take me out, when this attraction ends or when we go home or when he stops being so sweet and looking at me like he wants to kiss me, I can swim away and head back to shore. And to normalcy.

Then again, if he keeps looking at me like this, I’m not sure I’ll survive it.

Maybe the rules of riptides should not apply here. I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll be dragged out to sea, then left without the strength to get myself back to shore at all.

Fueled by a sudden sense of self-preservation—along with the need tonotkiss this man on the day I was supposed to marry another one—I break the moment, shoving at his chest lightly.

“Shut up.”

His gaze snaps from my mouth back to my eyes, and he loosens his grip on me, allowing my feet to touch sand again. I back away one step. Two.

“I didn’t say anything,” he says.

“You were thinking about it. Stop.”

His smile is brighter than any star I can see. “You’ve got it. Whatever you ask for, Mills.”

And I shiver, not because the cold of the water is finally seeping through my bones, but because I realize that in his simple offer of whateverIwant, Van just gave me more than Drew ever did.

CHAPTER 11

Van

I wake with a groan,feeling the telltale ache that comes with hotel travel. Even though the Appies’ accommodations got a major upgrade in the last eighteen months, a hotel bed is a hotel bed is a hotel bed.

And a hotel couch is a hotel couch.

I’m sprawled out shirtless on a sofa, one knee bent and the other leg dangling over the side, my foot flat on the floor. I barely fit—why am I sleeping here? My jaw aches and as I blink, I can feel swelling in one eye and the other cheek.

Did I get in a fight last night? I don’t even remember the game.

Do we have a game today? What city are we in?

Is that coffee I smell?

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