Page 55 of Love and the Laws of Motion
Her eyebrows furrowed.“Are you okay?”
“Um, sure.Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem all here tonight.”
“Nothing.I’m just thinking about some things.”Your breasts, your legs, your ass.
Livie’s eyes dimmed slightly.“Right.I’m sure you’ve got a lot of stuff on your mind right now.Poppy and everything.”
Poppy?Poppy who?Right now, he could barely recall what she looked like.But he said nothing as Livie dragged her laptop across the bed.“Let’s pick this up tomorrow.”
“No, you don’t need to go.”Although maybe it was for the best if she did.If she stayed, he might end up acting on this sudden rush of lust, and that would be a recipe for disaster.
“I’ve got some emails I have to send for school anyway.I got distracted by all this and forgot.”
“Hey, it’s pretty exciting, right?”
She looked up at him with cautious eyes.“What is?”
“This.You might have cracked the code, Livie.”
“We have a long way to go before we know if that’s the case.”
“Nah, you did it.I’m sure of it.”Like the cleavage wasn’t deadly enough, she had that brilliant brain of hers, too.No wonder he was such a mess right now.
She climbed off his bed.“Thanks.We’ll see, I guess.”
His eyes had drifted down to her ass as she made her way to the door, but they snapped back to hers when she turned to look back at him.“Good night, Nick.”
Licking his lips, he forced himself to look her straight in the eye.Not at her bare arms, or that long graceful neck, not at the curve of her ass, anddefinitelynot at her spectacular breasts.“Good night, Livie.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Livie clambered up off her knees, a stack of old catalogs in one hand and a phone charger in the other, all of it unearthed from under the coffee table.She’d been wondering what had happened to that charger.
“What’s going on in here?”
Letting out a startled yelp, she spun around.Nick was standing in the entryway, looking in at the unusually tidy living room suspiciously.Her pulse fluttered unsteadily at the sight of him.She’d been bad enough before, but ever since that night—thatkiss—it was like a switch had been flipped in her head and no matter what she did, she couldn’t flip it back off.
Something had been awakened in her when Nick had kissed her, something new and eager and yearning.Okay, it was hormones, and what she was yearning for was sex, she knew that, but knowing didn’t make the stupid hormones go back to sleep.Every time she looked at him, she flashed back to the feel of his mouth on hers, his body pressing hers into the door, imagining what else might have happened if he hadn’t gotten spooked...
Oh hell, she was doing it again.
Ducking her head to let her hair slide forward, she turned away.“Um, Dad’s bringing someone to dinner tonight.We’re straightening up.”
Jess passed through the room with an armload of clean laundry, heading for the stairs.“He’s bringing hisgirlfriendto dinner.Hi, Nick.”
“Hi, Jess.”He came a little closer, but stopped right inside the living room, eyeing the freshly fluffed throw pillows.“John’s got a girlfriend?I’ve never met her.”
“Neither have we.Well, Gemma has, but notashis girlfriend.”
“How long have they been going out?”
“Um, since last December?But he only told us in May.”Thathad been an awkward conversation, Dad sitting them down for a serious talk, ready to ease them into the subject, when all three of them had known about Teresa for months.
Dad’s announcement that he’d like them all to get to know each other better was a clear signal that this was serious—Teresa was sticking around.Livie had known that, of course, but knowing was different than confronting it face-to-face.And that was turning out to be harder than she expected.Alotharder.
“John was sneaking around with someone?Who knew?John Romano’s a horndog.”
