Falling for Mr. Wrong(32)
She sighed. “What bums me out is that I was so damned gullible.”
“I’m not sure if I even want to know this, but did you have feelings for him?”
“Well, right now my feelings involve wanting to wrap my hands around his sneaky bastard throat,” she said. “I mean, he seemed so nice and charming and cute and all. Though to be honest, there was something missing there. I didn’t get any fireworks, even though I tried.”
“Fireworks?”
“When we kissed. It didn’t stir anything in me. It was kind of like kissing a brother.”
Noah grinned. “You know I was hoping against hope you didn’t carry a torch for him. When you described your kiss in my car that night as ‘nice,’ I was certain I still had a chance with you. I could tell it was your first kiss, and nobody can get too excited about a kiss that was ‘nice’ or ‘pleasant.’”
“Good detective work.” She sighed. “Yeah, try as I might, it simply didn’t blow my skirt.”
“Score one for the good guys, then. I’d like nothing more than to blow that skirt of yours.”
“That makes us even then because you’ve got something I might be happy to blow—” She blurted out a laugh.
“You get no objections from me, babe.” He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her tightly to him. “You gonna reply to that disgruntled wife of the fly-eater?”
Harper paused for a minute, pondering. “Nah. Let’s let it dangle. He deserves that.”
“So that leaves it up to me to stake my claim, then.”
“Stake away, Noah. But don’t do anything that’s going to hurt me, okay? My heart can’t take that ever again.”
“I know I’m going to have to keep working hard to regain your trust, Harper. But I want you to know I’m going to be relentless in that pursuit. So don’t for a second think I’m going to stop proving myself to you. Because I love you, Harper Landry. For that matter, I always have.”
“It’s only that for a long damned time you had a funny way of showing it.”
“Try me now—I think I can persuade you.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You think, do you?”
He nodded. “About that dry spell…”
“Ahhh,” she said. “Of course. I think you’ll need to water my garden on a fairly regular basis to prove that you’re intentions are honorable.”
“My hose is at the ready.”
And they laughed with relief as Noah rolled her over to prove his point.
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Keep reading for a sample from Falling for Mr. Maybe, the next book in the Falling for Mr. Wrong series.
Falling for Mr. Maybe
by Jenny Gardiner
Chapter One
Georgia Childress took an odd sort of pride in all the dinks and rust spots her fifteen-year-old chalk-yellow Volvo station wagon sported. Maybe they weren’t exactly badges of honor, but each one had its own little story to tell, even if they did occasionally remind her of some of her more blond moments while driving in which she perhaps could have paid a little bit more attention while behind the wheel. And at the end of the day, they were a part of who Georgie was, like it or not.
The good news is nothing really bad ever happened in any of those episodes. Even the time she sort of backed out erratically and scraped bumpers with the mayor (four-inch-long black streak on the front right bumper) ended up being okay; Mayor Petrilli liked Georgie enough to hire her to petsit her two yellow Labs when she went on vacation for two weeks. Granted she did insist that she not take the dogs in her car, but nevertheless, it was all good.
Even that time she backed into her brother’s best friend Max’s ten-speed bike (ten-inch scrape caused by the bike’s hand brakes along the center of the trunk), it worked out. Yeah, it did cost her a few hundred dollars in repairs, but he didn’t stay mad at Georgie. For long.
Georgie had just gotten back into her car after taking a late-day stroll along the beach. Whenever she got a chance to take a break and sink her toes into the warm, fine sand along the shoreline, she did so. It was her happy place, listening to the repetitive swoosh of waves upon the shore. Walking along the beach helped her put life into perspective and gave her a sense of inner peace.
Summer was on the wane, and soon the beach landscape would take on an entirely different complexion and not be so welcoming to bare feet and tank tops. Although Georgie was happy to stroll beachside even with snow falling from the sky—unfortunately becoming more and more rare here in North Carolina—she was happiest on a day like today: wisps of cotton-candy clouds lacing the late-afternoon sky as the sun cast its warm melon glow across the sand.
It’s one of the reasons she moved back to Verity Beach in the first place; something about the ocean called to her. Sometimes she swore she must have been a mermaid (better that than, say, a sea manatee, or a man-of-war jellyfish) in a past life, she loved the ocean so much. Although, yeah, that whole broken engagement in D.C. thing certainly impelled her homeward as well. Nothing like being dumped weeks before your betrothal to the man you thought loved you to send you scurrying back to a place of comfort and familiarity.