Excerpt from Esme’s Novel
“ F avorite color?” Noah asks as we sit on the edge of my bungalow’s deck, soaking in the sun.
He’s trying to take my mind off of the attempted kidnapping earlier today while we wait for our late lunch to arrive.
He’s asked me first-date-type questions, and with that vibe forming between us (and the fact he saved me), I’m having thoughts . Sexy savior complex type of thoughts.
I shut them down, grimacing at the water. It would be one thing if I just thought he was hot, but there’s something else lurking beneath the haze of attraction. Something… oceans deep. Too foreign to explore.
“Pink. But like, pale.” I respond, eyeing the man who has at least seven inches on my five-foot-five frame, even while we are sitting side by side. “And yours?”
“Orange.”
I cease kicking my feet in the ocean, tossing him an incredulous look. “That’s the worst color in existence.”
He feigns hurt, bringing one large hand to his chest. I really need to stop focusing on his hands…
“Dang, girl. You’re brutal.”
I shrug and resume kicking my feet. “It’s truly awful. So loud. Bright and in your face.”
“I like bright and in your face,” he croons in a sultry way that nine out of ten is not supposed to be taken that way. Or maybe it is? This Noah guy is the flirtiest man I’ve ever encountered.
“Favorite book?” I ask, positive he isn’t a reader. It should turn me right off from his good looks, and then I can get my crap together and go back to sulking over getting left at the altar by a cheating man and reckoning with almost getting taken—
“The Joy Luck Club.”
Once again, my feet stop their mindless splashing. I choke out, “Amy Tan?”
He raises one dark eyebrow, a smirk pulling at the corner of his full lips. “Yes?”
“You read books? Classic books? Books all about women and their familial, cultural struggles?”
“And why does that shock you so much, Esme?”
“Look at you.” I gesture up and down, perusing his stellar frame shamelessly.
“I’m hot so I must be illiterate?” He crosses his arms in a challenge, biceps flexing. He asked me when we got back to my place if he could strip his shirt off while we lounged on the deck, and I told him I’d be comfortable with it.
I needed a little sugary-sweet eye candy to pick me up after the past week I’ve had. The afternoon I had…
“I don’t make the rules.”
“That’s a hasty generalization, Meme. You’re hot and obviously a reader since you asked me that question. We can be hot readers together.”
I try not to focus on his eyes taking a once-over or the fact that he used my nickname without knowing it is my nickname, but I’m sunburned, so the heat on my face can be attributed to that. “Females have to be literate. It’s trendy to be a voracious reader.”
He drops his arms and pulls one leg up from off the edge, tucking it underneath him as he manages. “So you only read because you feel feminine society says you must? Aren’t they all about the erotic, anyway? Is that what you read, Esme?”
My face burns so intently that the sun gets a little jealous it couldn’t do the job as effectively as Noah. “No. But if I did, you’d judge me, right?”
He shakes his head, loose black curls bouncing. I ache to find out if they’re as silky as they look.
“You’re lying,” I state.
“It could be… fun.” He winks and places his hand over mine, his fingers sinking in the spaces as my hand flattens against the wooden deck . Oh, mercy. Lord, give me strength… “But, I don’t encourage that, Esme. You should know that right off the bat. Sex is sacred between a married man and woman.”
My brain is short circuiting. Who is this man?
“Well, I don’t,” I brilliantly articulate, staring down at our intertwined fingers. His hand looks like it’s eating mine for dinner, and I think I’d let it happen. I’ve never felt this way about a man before. It’s new. It’s invigorating. It’s dangerous.
My skin tingles with interest and desire as I move my gaze from our hands, up his tanned, sculpted forearms, and finally, my eyes snap to his face.
His stupidly gorgeous face.
Maybe I don’t need strength to withstand. Maybe I just need to live for a week. Maybe I need to be reckless and make forgivable mistakes.
I can have a vacation fling. I’m single.
I’m sad. And he saved me. Quite frankly, I don’t want this man to leave my side until I know the perpetrator is caught.
I shiver once at the thought of that guy finding me again.
Thousand Bora Bora suns, I think, as if tricking myself into thinking I can deliver a good punch is the way to make it happen.
“Are you single?” I blurt before I can change my mind. I wait with bated breath for his answer.
Noah’s responding smile is wide, crow’s feet forming at the corner of his pretty hazel eyes. “I am. Are you?” His finger caresses one of mine.
I don’t have the courage to tell this beautiful man I was cheated on and forgotten at the altar like something old and discarded, so I merely nod, returning his smile and getting lost in his eyes now that I know I have full permission to.
The depth of his eyes, which can’t seem to decide on blue, brown, or green, beckon me in. I want to jump.
Should I be worried about being alone in this bungalow with a stranger? I should be. Why am I not? Did his hotness break me?
No, his heroism touched me.
And where I had an off-putting feeling from the other guy immediately, with Noah, I feel safe. Protected. I can’t explain it; it just… is .
I eye his cross necklace, the emblem sitting right above his chiseled pecs. Yes, he must be a Christian. I’m safe. In all ways.
“How old are you?” I ask.
“Twenty-eight. You?”
My heart dances even though I command it not to. “Twenty-six.”
Noah stares at me with a look I can’t quite name—disbelief? Fear? But also, joy?—and then his phone dings beside him. “Our food is here.”
I move to stand, but he stops me. “I’ve got it. You stay put and relax.” Noah’s voice is like the bass in the band, somehow rumbly and smooth simultaneously. He takes on a focused look like he’s prepping for a battle. It dawns on me he’s keeping me here in case it isn’t our food.
What a gentleman.
I swoon a little as he stands and walks through the doorway back into the bungalow.
I lay down on my back and breathe. It’s my first moment alone since Noah stepped into my life acting like a real-life hero.
I thank God for having Noah in the right place at the right time, and tears begin spilling from my eyes, rolling into my ears.
They flow harder as my body decompresses, allowing every moment of frozen fear to come to the surface in the form of salty tears and full-body shakes.
God and I haven’t been on the best of terms. Why did He allow Ryan to cheat on me? Why did He allow me to get left at the altar? Why did I not listen to Him sooner and leave Ryan after he told me that I had too high of expectations for any man to reach in terms of romance?
I pretend that the last question doesn’t exist. Because if it does, I’m ultimately to blame, not God.
My life plan was going as I wanted.
Go to college.
Get a job teaching.
Find a good man.
Marry him.
But somewhere along the way, I started to dread teaching. I desired to write, to tell gripping romantic stories. I craved romantic gestures and butterflies in my relationship that had come to be a little… well, stale… regardless of the glorious way in which Ryan kissed me.
“A good man” no longer felt like enough.
Ground-level romantic expectations didn’t do it for me.
I wanted burning red love. A love that would simultaneously set me aflame and hold me tight. Just like in the novels I read.
But Ryan did a marvelous job of convincing me that was not achievable for any man no matter how much he loved a woman, so I planned to meet him at the altar anyway just to be told he wasn’t going to be waiting for me.
“Do you want to eat out here, or inside the—” Noah stops talking as he looms over me, concern etching into his features. He kneels, wiping wetness from my face. “I’ll set up lunch inside. Take as long as you need, Esme.”
With that, his handsome face disappears from view, and a new round of tears—ones of gratitude and disbelief—takes over.
Because so far, it seems like Noah Ashton stepped right out of a romance novel.
And I think I might want to have this week with him, even if it ends in burning flames.
The feelings he calls to surface within me are bright and new, and I want to see how we fit, even if it’s just for this little slice of summer.
Something tells me he might be worth it.
***
“ S he reads smut and she cooks,” Noah teases, gripping the edge of the island bar in the middle of the kitchen as if he’s trying to stay upright.
He groans, tilting his head back as if he can’t wait to taste my food.
He stayed after our late lunch. We went for a swim, talking about nothing and everything, went grocery shopping for food this evening, and now, we are enjoying a sunset dinner on the deck of my bungalow.
A meal that I cooked out of sheer appreciation for this magnificent specimen of a man.
He only left to shower and change, and while he was absent, fear nestled into my soul, and I kept the door locked and a kitchen knife in my hand until he came back.
I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the night. My “thousand Bora Bora suns” maxim is no longer cutting it the more I dwell upon what almost happened to me out on the beach.
“I don’t read smut,” I state, swatting his hand away as he attempts to steal a mango slice off of my fish taco.
I don’t understand how this man makes me feel terribly at ease.
It might be scarier than the kidnapping attempt to be honest, but I’m here for it.
All the way. One hundred percent, pedal to the metal.
I decide to jump into the depths of his eyes.
It’s Bora Bora, after all.