Chapter 1 #2
While the hunk in front of me, this ridiculous, grinning stranger who has just waltzed into my book signing and rearranged the entire room around himself, lets out a low chuckle without breaking eye contact with me.
The sound slides under my skin, far too intimate for a man whose name I don’t even know.
My thoughts scatter. My pulse trips. I can’t seem to think straight, not with that delicious blue gaze locked on mine as if he’s found the one person in this room he actually wants to see.
Heat curls low in my belly, startling and sharp, because he could ask me to do anything right now and I’d get on my knees for him.
Which is not me at all. I don’t lose my mind over handsome men with cocky smiles.
So why does every sensible part of me feel like it just surrendered?
My face is burning. “It’s my favorite. Not the… the buns are my favorite because they’re bread. They’re a bread product. A completely normal, non-scandalous bread product.”
“I’m sure they are.” He raises one thick eyebrow.
Fantastic. I’ve been in his presence for less than three minutes and have already defended the moral integrity of buns.
I open the cover, pretending I’m a composed professional and not a woman who should be legally banned from speaking near attractive men. The pen trembles slightly in my fingers. “Who should I make it out to?”
“Brody.”
I write the name, and my hand keeps moving, carried by momentum. To Brody. With love, Claire Darling. I draw a small heart after my name because, apparently, I have lost all control of my motor functions and my dignity in one go.
I close the cover and hand it back. He takes it, glances at the inscription, and his grin widens into a full smile.
“With love,” he reads aloud. “I’ll treasure that.”
Katie materializes at my shoulder. I feel her lean in. “Interesting. You have never once signed a book ‘With love.’ ”
I want to sink through the floor, through the foundation of this converted fisherman’s cottage, through the earth’s crust, directly into the center of the planet, where no one can see the color my face has turned.
“Special edition,” I manage.
Brody laughs, and the sound is dangerous in how quickly it has me wanting to lean in closer to him. “Well, Claire.” He holds up the signed book. “Thank you for the special edition. I’ll let you get back to your adoring public.”
He turns and saunters toward the door with that easy, rolling stride, and behind him the line reshuffles and reforms and suddenly people are talking to me again, but their attention is split, half on me, half on the doorway he’s just disappeared through, the ghost of his cologne still hanging in the air between the shelves.
“Oh my God.” A woman in her thirties sets her book down in front of me with trembling hands. “Did you see the way he was staring at you?”
“He was just being polite.”
“He just stared at you,” three people confirm simultaneously.
“Did you leave your number in the book?” another woman asks, breathless. “Please tell me you did.”
“I just signed my name,” I say, feeling fire climbing up my neck.
“God.” The woman places her hand on her chest. “If it were me, I would’ve written my entire home address. Apartment number. Door code. GPS coordinates. Floor plan.”
The line laughs, and I can’t help but join in despite my face still burning up.
When the last person in the line has their book signed, Katie drops into the chair beside me and crosses her legs. “So.” She’s grinning evilly.
“Don’t.”
“You have no idea who that guy was, do you?”
I pause. The honest answer is no. Beyond a first name and the lingering sense that I’ve just made a fool of myself, I’m clueless. “Should I?”
Katie rolls her eyes so hard I’m concerned for her optical health. “This is why I need to get you back on social media. That was Brody. From ManBaker.”
I raise an eyebrow, tilting my head sideways. “Should I know that name?”
“Food blogger. Millions of followers online. He does these cooking videos where he’s…” She gestures vaguely at her own torso. “He’s very interactive as he bakes, and each video alone easily gets over millions of views.”
“Shit!”
“Yep.” She grabs my arm. “Go home and watch his videos. Trust me. You’ll need to fan yourself.”
I gather my things, stack the remaining unsigned books, and try to process the fact that the man I just doodled a heart for is apparently internet royalty and I didn’t even recognize him.
Which, given that the internet and I are not currently on speaking terms, shouldn’t surprise me.
But it does. Because I’m left wondering if he knows who I am from my one viral video.
Katie links her arm through mine as we walk to the door.
“You know,” she says, with the careful, innocent tone that means she’s about to be neither careful nor innocent, “maybe you should have left your number. Seeing as you already signed it ‘With love.’ Having that kind of connection would be like winning the lottery.”
“No way a man like that wants anything to do with me.”
She grins. “Don’t underestimate yourself, girl! I saw the way he was drooling over you. And you, my beautiful, oblivious disaster of a best friend, just had the best moment of your signing, and you didn’t even know who you were having it with.”
Once we’re all done, I push through the door into the late afternoon, where Mistberry Cove is looking impossibly pretty in the low autumn light, the distant cliffs soft-edged with the last of the day’s mist. I think about blue eyes and a warm voice and the name Brody written in my own handwriting above a heart I didn’t mean to draw.
Except I did, which is either romantic or deeply concerning, and I’m going to choose not to decide which until I’ve watched every single one of his videos and determined whether this flutter in my chest is attraction or the early stages of cardiac arrest.
I’m betting on both.