Page 1 of For The Weekend
Chapter 1
Roman
Ilove Wawa as much as the next guy—the freshly baked bread smell hits every time—but watching my six-year-old daughter sprint from end to end, shouting literal obscenities about how “fucking amazing” it is… Well, it’s exhausting.
After driving nearly seven hours from Buffalo, New York, to West Chester, Pennsylvania, I wasn’t looking forward to opening the door of our new home to an empty kitchen, and Mazie polished off the last of the food I packed her two hours ago. So I stopped at the regional mini-mart I’ve been missing for a long time, intent on ordering a ten-inch double meat Italian, but first, I had to wrangle the human equivalent of speed.
“Daddy! They have doughnutsandhot dogs!”
“Yep.”
“Can I get a milkshake?”
“If you stop running around here like an animal, sure.”
She stops in front of me with a can of Pringles. “What about these?”
At this point, she could ask me for a pony, and the answer would be, “Sure.”
“Fuck yes!”
Even though the store is almost empty, she’s got to stop cursing. A battle I’ve been fighting for the last year. “Watch your language.”
She doesn’t acknowledge that she heard me, too busy pressing on one of the order screens.
“First time here?”
It takes me a moment to realize the feminine voice is aimed my way, and I glance to my right before turning back to Mazie, only to do a double take at the woman, her head tilted as she watches my kid with an amused smile on her face.
“Yeah,” I say, and the woman laughs as Mazie studies the screen seriously, as if she’s actually reading it. Mazie likes to pretend she knows how to read, often making up whole stories from the short paragraphs on the backs of cereal boxes.
“I think she’s ordering everything on the menu,” the beautiful stranger says, angling her face my way. Her smile reaches sparkling green eyes, lifts up the rosy apples of her cheeks, and it feels like someone twice my size has punched me in the chest.
Flattened me right over.
She moves closer as if waiting for me to answer her, but I can’t. Not when she smells like sugar and spice and everything nice and looks like all of my favorite goddamn sins.
There is not an ounce of makeup on her creamy golden skin, and she’s tall. Probably only an inch or two under six feet, curvy all over, round in the best places. Her wheat-colored hair is a mix of waves and curls, a halo around her head, and her loose shirt has the wordGORGEOUSprinted across it in all caps. Hot-pink spandex shorts showcase her long and supplelegs, and I have a terrible itch to skate my fingers over the dimples of her thighs.
But I don’t even know the woman.
Except that, yeah, she’s fuckinggorgeous.
“Good for her,” the goddess of a woman says. “I like a girl who knows what she wants.”
I nod like a goddamn idiot.
Because I’ve only just arrived back in my hometown with a daughter who might be purchasing fourteen macaroni and cheeses for all I know, and I never thought I’d run into…her.
Whoever she is.
My new favorite fantasy, from the way she licks her lower lip and combs her fingers through her hair. I imagine doing the same thing, wrapping those golden strands around my fist, biting that mouth.
And what the fuck?
I’m with my kid.
In a convenience store.
