Choosing the Right Man (NICE GIRL TO LOVE Book Three) (16 page)

“You can just watch if you want but it’s actually pretty fun to see all these animals and flowers come to life in the fruit. Plus, I figure with two of us working, we’d be able to make something really pretty.”

Taking a deep breath, Skylar nodded. “Abby would really love that. Okay, let’s do it. But go slow…I’m not that great with knives.”

“Neither was I. Just takes practice.” Tessa pulled out a bright green u-shaped contraption that sort of looked like a football mouth guard. “Here, just in case. These will keep your fingers safe.”

Skylar sighed with relief. “Okay, now I’m really ready. What are we going to do first?”

“A melon swan, a couple of pretty birds out of apples, some assorted fruit flowers flowing out of a pineapple basket, and two gigantic roses out of watermelon halves if we have time.” She showed Skylar a few photos of what they’d look like when they were through.”

“Oh wow, cool!”

“What the—”

Brian bolted up from his seat and stalked across the tented reception area over to the tables next to the buffet line where his daughter was currently wielding a knife as long as her forearm to core a pineapple.

“Skylar, what do you think you’re doing?”

Giggling happily, Skylar waved at him. With the knife. “Hey dad, look what we’re making!”

Brian couldn’t see anything past her sawing the huge blade back and forth mere millimeters from her fingers. “Skylar, why don’t you put that thing down. Who gave it to you anyway?”

“Tessa did.”

“Who’s Tessa?”

“That’s me,” called out a cheerful voice from behind him. “Your daughter’s awesome by the way. She helped with all the wings on the apple doves and did a pretty amazing job helping me shape the melon swan. We were thinking of tackling a watermelon rose next. Want to help? I’ll even let you use the big cleaver.”

Was the woman high? “Skylar, I think Becky and her folks are back from taking pictures. Why don’t you go find her and bring her over here to show her…all of this.”

That’s when he finally did notice all the intricate fruit decorations spread across the silver tray on the table before him. They were pretty incredible.

“Oh! Good idea!” Skylar looked over at the strange woman. “Tessa, if Becky wants to, can she help with the watermelon rose too?”

“Of course, the more the merrier. You can use the sink in the kitchen to wash up.”

Brian snagged the woman by the elbow and walked her over to a quieter part of the tent. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Tessa.”

“What?” Definitely high.

“‘What the hell were you thinking,
Tessa
.’ If you’re going to yell at me, we may as well be on a first name basis.” She shrugged. “To answer your question, I was thinking it’d be fun for your daughter to help make some of these fruit decorations. And it was.”

“So you think because it’s fun, it’s okay to arm random children with knifes without at least asking their parents first?”

“I didn’t arm her, I taught her how to use a cooking utensil. And I didn’t ask you because I knew you’d say no.”

He’d never lost his temper so irretrievably before.

“Let me get this straight. You thought this was dangerous enough that I would say no, and you just plain did it anyway?

“No. I think it’s perfectly safe with the right training and supervision. I knew you would say no to it regardless.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Brian—”

“And how in the world do you know my name?

“We talked on the phone once a long time ago.”

Suddenly, he remembered her voice. And her unforgettable weirdness. “You were the one with Connor’s phone, the one who likes hanging up on people to go eat cake.”

“Actually, I was
serving
cake that day but...huh, you know what, that
does
sound like something I would do,” she beamed, visibly pleased.

Weirder and weirder.

“Look, just because you know my brother, doesn’t mean you know me. Don’t make baseless assumptions about me.”

“Oh, they weren’t baseless.”

And then the woman up and simply walked away.

Of all the aggravating… He stomped after her. “Explain.” He didn’t trust himself with longer sentences at this point.

“I was at the hospital that day Skylar cut her finger off.”

She was?

“That’s why I knew you’d think this was too dangerous.”

He took in a long, slow breath. “So you knew Skylar cut her finger off, and your brilliant idea was to then give her a gigantic knife to play with?”

“Yes. Skylar clearly developed a fear of knives after that accident. I saw the way she looked at them. So I was trying to help her.”

“What are you a part-time shrink as well?”

“Nope. I just know that she’s better off without harboring an unnecessary fear.”

“You don’t know anything about her. You may have been at the hospital, but you don’t know a damn thing about what she’s gone through. What she’s going through.”

Tessa finally stopped working then. She came toe to toe with him and said, “Maybe not all of it, but I know some. I do a lot of volunteer work with Huntingon’s patients. That’s how I met Connor, in fact. I’ve been working with him on a lot of grant projects for new clinical trials and a few of his pro bono cases that involve alternative healing practices for Huntington’s patients.”

Brian just stood there and stared. Connor never said he was working on anything like that.

“Plus,” her voice crackled with pain, “my sister died of Juvenile Huntington’s. She had more than enough things to be afraid of in her life. If I’d been able to help her overcome even one more of her fears before she died, I would’ve done it in a heartbeat.” She flashed him a stubborn look. “I realize that Skylar doesn’t know if she has JHD yet but I can guarantee you she’s scared. So what’s the harm in my helping her get rid of one of her other, smaller fears?”

Well hell, when she put it like that.

“I’m sorry about your sister,” Brian said softly.

“I’m sorry about your wife,” she replied, just as softly.

Mulishly, he maintained, “I still think you were wrong about giving her a knife.”

She burst out laughing then. A musical, effervescent laugh full of life and hope and things he couldn’t remember, even.

How the hell was she still able to laugh like that?

“I think I like you, Brian. I think I like you a lot, actually.” Still chuckling to herself, she walked back to the kitchen, her long, dark, pink-tipped ponytail swishing behind her like a metronome.

What a strange woman.

Never had he met anyone so frighteningly good at pushing his buttons.

And damn, if she didn’t have the cutest smile too…

~ The End ~

Note from the Author:
Fear not dear readers, Brian
will
be getting his HEA.
If you fell for him with Abby, just wait till you see him with Tessa...
Stay tuned for:

F
INDING
THE
R
IGHT
G
IRL

(A Nice
GUY
to Love Spin-Off Novel)

Brian & Tessa’s Story

COMING OCTOBER 2013

--EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PEEK--

PLAYING WITH HER HEART
by
New York Times
and
USA Today
Bestselling Author
Lauren Blakely

Coming August 20, 2013
BOOK DESCRIPTION

When you’re acting the role of a lifetime, how can you know if love is real—or all just a part of the show?

Twenty-three year old rising theatre star Jill McCormick has built a life out of pretending. Pretending she’s happy, pretending her long-distance crushes add up to something real, pretending she’s not haunted by the dark secret that shattered her world six years ago. Cast in her first Broadway show, she desperately needs to keep her façade intact, but that’s before she comes face to face with her devastating new boss…

Hot-shot director Davis Milo knows the first rule of directing: never fall for your leading lady. Captivated by Jill’s raw talent, he fights his feelings, but watching Jill on-stage with another man is more than his jealous streak can take. Keeping things professional isn’t an option. He wants all of her.

Soon the ingénue and her director are staying late in the empty theatre, their private rehearsals spiraling into new, forbidden territory. Caught up between fiction and reality, Jill struggles to find the truth in all their staged kisses. But how can she be sure that what she feels is real, and not a part of the play? And when two people spend their lives pretending, what happens after the final curtain falls?

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT

He glances down at the black pumps. “Nice shoes.”

As I follow his eyes, I realize my hand is on his shirt, my fingers fisted around the cloth, clutching it. I should let go. But I don’t. Because I can’t help but notice he has that clean and freshly showered smell that makes any woman want to lean in and lick a guy’s neck.

Close her eyes. Inhale, and trail a tongue all the way to his earlobe, enjoying the sound of a low groan.

“Nice shirt,” I say softly, running my index finger across one smooth button. Then I look up to find him staring down at me. His dark blue eyes aren’t cold anymore. They’re not keeping me at bay. Instead, they’re heated, searching mine.

It’s hypnotic the way he looks at me. Completely hypnotic, as the room goes quiet, the air between us charged.

I press my teeth against my lips, and I think, but I’m not entirely sure, because thought has vanished, that I nod briefly, almost as if I’m giving him permission. Then he bends towards me, and my breath catches. Before I even process rationally what’s happening, his lips are on mine, and my pulse is racing. It’s a barely there kiss, just him brushing his soft lips against mine, but I want more. So I pull him closer and deepen the kiss. He groans, and then suddenly his hands are in my hair, and he’s twining his fingers through my long, blond strands, and tugging me close. I thought I was leading this kiss, but I’m not anymore, because he’s claiming me, tracing his tongue across my top lip, then nipping at the bottom lip, then kissing me so deeply and with so much heat that I shudder. That only makes him kiss me harder, and everything else falls away because this is a kiss I can feel in every single cell in my body. Deep, and fevered and possessive.

It makes me want things I’m not supposed to have.

It makes me want him.

My heart pounds wildly as he presses closer, so dangerously near to me that I’m longing for him to slam me against his body. Touch me all over. His lips own me, his hands want to know me, and I swear I might combust from this kind of electric contact.

He breaks the kiss and I’m honestly not sure where I am anymore. Or who I am. I look at him, at Davis, but everything is so hazy right now, that I don’t know what to say. I don’t think he does either, because he doesn’t speak for a moment. He exhales deeply, collecting himself. As if he doesn’t know how the kiss transpired either.

“I’m sorry,” he says, then steps back, pushing his hand roughly through his hair. He looks away from me, staring at some distant point on the wall. “That was a mistake,” he says quietly.

My mouth is open in shock. A mistake? That was a kiss that begged to become so much more.

But I manage to hide my embarrassment at having kissed my first Broadway director by doing what he hired me to do. Act. “Yes. A mistake,” I say confidently.

“It won’t happen again,” he adds, now turning his gaze back to me, his eyes cold once more. Stripped of all that longing from seconds ago.

“Of course not. Thank you for the script. I’ll see you when rehearsal starts.”