The Perfect Lie (Hope Falls Universe)(6)

She had lied to him, but it had only lasted for a few minutes. He knew the real reason he was so upset was because, for those few minutes they’d walked together, he’d liked her. And he hadn’t liked anyone like that, no matter how illogical, for a long damn time. He hadn’t been upset that she’d lied to him. He’d been upset that he couldn’t have her.

“Well, I’ll be in town for a little bit and I’m still more than willing to make it up to you.”

Josh debated whether he was losing his mind or not, but he decided to go for it. “Do you want to get dinner? Not to make up for what happened but just because.”

“I, uh…”

He’d caught her off guard and he knew she was trying to find a nice way to turn him down. Well, great.

“Don’t worry about it. It was nice meeting you, Steph.”

He started to push away from the bar, but she reached out and set her hand on his arm. “Josh, I…I want to. I do. But I’m only here for a few days and I don’t know what would happen if we went out. Like, I would either have a horrible time and wish I never went. Or I would have a great time and then have to leave you in a few days and both of those options kind of suck.”

He nodded. “It was nice meeting you.” He knew he was leaving a perfectly good beer on the bar, but he couldn’t be next to her for one more second without doing something he would regret. He refused to look back at her as he made his way out of the bar and toward his truck.

He was just pulling the door open when he heard the footsteps behind him. It was her. He didn’t know how he already learned what her footsteps sounded like, but he knew.

No. He wasn’t going to continue this back-and-forth any more. If she wanted to hang around town, fine, but she was going to have to do it far away from him. He turned around to tell her that, but she was right there, cupping his face with her hands and standing on tiptoe to press her lips against his.

The pure shock value of the kiss had him standing still as the kiss started. It took a few seconds for his body to realize that he had the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen pressing herself against him.

Josh tilted his head to get better access to her lips, which parted for him, and his hands rested at the curve of her hips. To keep himself from going further than he should in the middle of JT’s parking lot, he fisted his fingers in the soft fabric of her shirt and pulled her tightly against him. His rock-hard erection pressed firmly against her stomach, and she let out a little moan that made him half crazy. He fell against the truck, pulling her with him as he deepened the kiss and pressed his tongue deeper into her mouth, imitating what other parts of him wanted to do to her.

A car started to pull into the lot and Steph pulled away. She ran a hand over her mouth and he tried to figure out what the hell happened. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“I don’t think you need to apologize for anything right now,” he said, still a little breathless. Come on, he told himself. You’re not in high school any more.

“I don’t mean to give mixed signals. I just have no idea what I want.”

Well, she was alone in that because right now he knew exactly what he wanted. “My place is only a few miles away,” he offered.

“No!” she said immediately. This time he wasn’t nearly as hurt as when she turned down the date. Because now he knew without a doubt that she wanted him. Even if everything about them had been dysfunctional so far, he was so damned happy about that kiss he didn’t care about much else.

“I don’t—I’ve never slept with a guy I’ve just met before. You’re…”

“Different,” he offered. He felt the exact same way about her.

“Something like that.”

“So you don’t want anything serious,” he said. “And you don’t sleep around.”

“Yeah.”

This would be a good time to excuse himself from this whole thing. She was way more complicated than he wanted right now and he didn’t really know what he wanted, either. He had a feeling he would be happy with whatever she was willing to offer and that was new for him. But, as was now par for the course when dealing with Steph, he didn’t do the logical thing and end things right then and there. Instead, he said, “Why don’t I show you around Mountain Ridge tomorrow?”

She frowned. “Like a date?”

“Well, if I say it’s a date you’re going to run for the hills. Probably literally just take off running down Main Street.” He pointed to the road.

She smiled. “You might not be wrong… Don’t you have to work?”

“I’ll get the day off.” It would be a pain to move the schedule around last minute, but enough people owed him favors that it wouldn’t be impossible. “A private tour of Mountain Ridge by an expert. Not everyone gets this opportunity. You’ll be VIP.”

She raised a brow and he knew he had her. “A VIP non-date? Okay. Yeah. Sure. When do you want to do this? Want to give me your number?”

“Ten a.m. tomorrow, where we met. And I’m not going to give you my number because you’re going to wimp out and cancel on me if I do. And you’re already too guilty to stand me up.”

Her cheeks flushed again.

Damn, he loved how easy it was to make her blush. It might be his new goal in life to get those cheeks red as much as possible. Either through embarrassment or…