Page 58 of Whisper of Temptation (Whisper Lake 4)

CHAPTER 19

Sara turned to Austin, who stood at the bottom of the steps of the community center. The sun was setting behind him and he looked like an ad in a men’s cologne campaign. He looked rugged, and sexy. The kind of guy that every woman wanted and every man wanted to be. “Thanks for walking me.”

The grin that spread on his lips was so sexy Sara nearly swooned. If she had, she knew that he’d be there to catch her, just like he had the night before when her knees went out.

“You sure you want to go in there? We could be at the lake right now. We could check that beginning of summer tradition off your to-do list.” The bad-boy glint in his eyes and the promise of seeing Austin naked, and wet, was almost enough to tempt her into agreeing.

But after the revelations that she’d found out today, she didn’t want to flake on Mrs. D who’d run into her at the festival after breakfast and pretty much demanded her presence this evening.

The steel handrail was cold on her palm as she wrapped her fingers around it and leaned toward Austin, her face was mere inches away from him as she softly spoke. “I was told, by a very reliable source that if I received an invitation to the Needlepoint Mafia I had to come and kiss the ring.”

“I’ve got a ring for you to kiss,” he flirted.

The rough, gravelly quality of his voice skittered down her spine stopping right between her legs.

Her inner walls clenched.

Her mouth watered.

Her palms dampened.

Her heart raced.

One night together. That was all it had taken for her body to be conditioned to this Pavlovian response. Everything in her was screaming to blow off the knitting club and follow him…anywhere.

But she knew that was not the right move. She was in control. Not her hormones.

Pushing down the desperation threatening to overtake her, she decided to level the playing field a little. She didn’t want to be alone in what she was feeling.

Leaning even closer to him, their breaths mingled as she spoke, letting her lips brush his as she whispered, “I’ll kiss your ring later.”

With that suggestive declaration, she spun and rushed into the building. But she didn’t miss the flash of desire that sparked in his eyes. She couldn’t help the smile that spread on her face.

She’d never had a playful relationship like this one. In high school she barely dated. Guys that age weren’t really too pumped about spending Friday and Saturday nights at home with her little brother and sister. In college it was the same thing. Then she was busy starting her business, and the next thing she knew she was married with a baby on the way.

Her connection with Austin was fun, it was intense, it was…easy. Even in the beginning, especially in the beginning of her relationship with Jack everything felt like work. And it was. The two of them as a couple was like trying to force a square peg in a round hole.

But Austin was so different. She’d only known him a couple of days, but he felt like her oldest friend and confidant. The connection that they shared was so real. So deep.

She had no idea what the future held for them, but somehow she couldn’t picture her life without him in it.

“Sara?!” Jess called out as she walked into the room that the club was being held in.

Her friend’s exclamation garnered several shhhhs from the women seated around her.

Is this like a library situation?Sara wondered to herself as she weaved her way through the chairs over to her friend who was wearing a shirt that had a crochet needle and a ball of yarn with words in a rainbow shape above it that read: I’m an amazing hooker. Be jealous.

Jess’s perfectly lined eyes were wide as she patted a seat beside her and whisper-mouthed, “What are you doing here?”

Sara lowered to the seat and pulled out the mittens that she’d been working on for Charlotte. She’d always prided herself on her ability to read a room, and it was clear that the knitters here took their craft very seriously.

“Mrs. D invited me.” Sara spoke in her most inside of inside voices as she continued the cable stitch pattern.

“Why?” Jess whispered, then shook her head. “I mean, I’m glad you’re here, don’t get me wrong, but…why?”

Sara didn’t take offense to her question. “I ran into her today at breakfast and she recognized me. She knew my grandma.”

She briefly, and quietly filled Jess in on everything that happened over breakfast and then also that she’d run into Mrs. D again at the festival, where she told her the time and place of the meeting that night and said that she expected to see her there. It wasn’t so much of an invitation as an expectation.

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