Page 4 of Counterfeit Boyfriend
“Shall we sit?” I plopped down before he answered. “I got you a blueberry muffin because I know how much you like them.” I pulled it out and frowned at it. “Um, it’s kinda squished, but I’m sure it’ll still taste good. Possibly also a little like chocolate since your muffin was clearly making a move on mine.”
He muttered something about getting the hurricane thing, and I glanced up at him. “Did you just say you understand hurricanes now? Did you not understand them before?”
“Um. Nothing. Never mind.” He sat across from me and took the extended muffin. I’d warned him that I’d squished it, so why was he frowning at it like it was the most offensive thing he’d ever seen?
I tilted my head and took him in, from the blue eyes trained on me to that jaw I occasionally dreamed about, and then I got a wee bit lost in the undone buttons on his dark green shirt before returning my attention to his expression. Still amused, but something else was in the mix as well. “You seem different this morning.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m kinda hungover, to be honest. Partied it up a little too much last night.”
“Sounds like you,” I said, then immediately realized that didn’t sound very nice. He simply laughed, though, and when he aimed his grin at me, it kicked me right in the gut and made my heart beat out an erratic rhythm. “Sorry. I mean—”
“Hey, don’t apologize. The great thing about being me is I don’t have any worries. I just live it up and go with the flow.” The way his fingers traced the lid, pressing and securing it on the rim, were at odds with his words and his usual quick, almost careless actions. Then he wrapped those long fingers around his cup—had I checked out his fingers before? If not, that was totally my bad, because there was something sexy about them, and I suddenly wanted them on me.
Whoa. This is… I don’t know what this is, but I want more.
As a chronic overanalyzer and overplanner, one of the first things that drew me to Evan was his carefree spirit and the fact that he seemed so unfazed when things totally went wrong. He was one of those life-of-the-party-guys, and he always had fun, no matter where we were. “Sometimes I wish I could go with the flow and live it up a bit more. It’d be nice if my brain would just, like, take a vacation once in a while.”
“That all-expenses-paid brain-vacation can be yours if you drink enough alcohol. But then you end up making dumb decisions, and the next morning you have to deal with what your brainless self did. While hungover, nonetheless.”
“Hmm. Maybe don’t put that in the brochure if you’re trying to sell it. And ‘all-expenses-paid’ is sorta misleading, because last I checked, alcohol costs money.”
One corner of his mouth twisted up, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen that particular smile before. Speaking of vacations, I kind of wanted to stay in the curve of his lips and live in this moment for a while. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, but it only added to the cute, disheveled look he had going on.
After another beat or two, I felt like I was taking the staring into the creepy-long range, so I bit off some of my muffin, and a moan slipped out.
Evan’s mouth hung open a few inches, and he was gaping at me, eyebrows raised, like he’d never seen anyone enjoy a muffin quite that much before. In my defense, chocolate had been my main coping mechanism for a while, and Sacred Grounds took baked goods to the next level.
I tried to cover by taking a sip of my coffee. “The muffins are extra yummy this morning. Are you not hungry? Isn’t fatty food supposed to be good for a hangover?”
“Good point.” He lifted his muffin and took a miniscule bite.“Mmm.”He set the pastry aside, then shifted forward in his seat. “Gwen, I need to tell you something…”
It’s too bad I’ve decided we’re not destined to have an epic love story. He’s almost too good-looking to stare directly at. Like the sun.
“Isn’t it weird that looking at something that’s in the sky for most of our waking hours could burn your corneas right out of your head?” I risked a half glance, below where the sun would be but high enough to have to squint against the bright light. “It seems like something that dangerous should be… well,nothanging in the sky all the time. It’s like if I had a peanut plant in my apartment and occasionally inhaled really deeply as I brushed by it so I could see how many hives I could get.”
Crap. I just totally plowed right over what he was going to say. Why are my thoughts spinning so fast today?
“Sorry.” I placed my hand over his and turned my full attention on him, which wasn’t exactly a hardship. “You were saying…?”
