“You have a lot of nerve showing up here, buddy.” Josie interrupted Eric’s salacious thoughts as he sauntered toward them. When he reached the beautiful pair, she poked his chest. “We protect our own here in Riverhaven. So why don’t you go crawl back to whatever . . .” She trailed off, now fascinated with his chest. She kept poking it, but in different spots. “Dang. You’re rock solid. Like, wow,” her voice became breathy. She went from poking him to practically massaging his chest with her curiously strong hand.
Eric’s brow quirked. “Excuse me.”
Sorrel grabbed Josie’s hand. “Sorry, she’s still learning to keep her hands to herself.”
Eric wished Sorrel would take some lessons from her uninhibited friend and use them in her dreams.
Josie unabashedly stepped away from him. “Just because you’re freakishly hot, doesn’t mean you’re welcome here.”
“I think we should let Sorrel be the judge of that.” He gave Sorrel his best smoldering smile.
Sorrel looked between her friend and Eric, rubbing her neck. “Well, I mean, maybe we should find out why he’s here,” Sorrel squeaked.
Josie rolled her eyes. “You’re hopeless. I’m going to finish my run.” She pointed her finger at Eric. “I will hurt you if you mess with her.”
Eric shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I was just hoping to finish our interview while I take her to brunch.”
A wide smile lit up Sorrel’s face before her hand flew up and covered her mouth. Eric was both amused and frustrated by how conflicted she behaved. She was the same way in her dreams. He knew she had every right to be. In fact, she should run the other way from him, and he was confused as to why she hadn’t yet. As conceited as it sounded, Eric knew how good looking he was. He didn’t think, though, that Sorrel was someone who valued looks over substance. No, from all his interactions with her, he could tell she was someone who esteemed a person’s heart.
Honestly, he was beginning to wonder if the book wasn’t playing some part in their unnatural attraction. Not to say he doubted why he was bewitched by her. One only had to look at her and talk to her for five minutes to know why. But he questioned why she was just as drawn to him. Which made him more suspicious that the book was playing a role, as his heart was undeserving of her. What nefarious purpose did the book have? Maybe he should turn around and leave. He almost did, but then Sorrel owned her smile and said, “I’d like that, but I need to shower first.”
Eric’s first thought was to ask her if she wanted company, but he knew that wouldn’t go over well with Sorrel or Josie. And he had to protect her from himself. It was going to be easier said than done. “I’ll wait.” Eric was happy to oblige.
Josie whispered something in Sorrel’s ear before turning to scowl at him. “I won’t be far,” she warned as she jogged off.
“I get the feeling she doesn’t like me,” Eric joked.
“I don’t know. By the way she was petting you, I think you could easily change her mind.” Sorrel drank deeply from her pink water bottle.
“Do you run often?” Eric asked, fighting the urge to make the water in her bottle cascade down her chest. He remembered how beautiful she’d looked the night he’d coaxed her into the water during one of her dreams. The way her T-shirt had clung to her, showing off her figure. The way her dark hair was made darker by the water and how it contrasted so beautifully with her creamy, smooth complexion.
“A few times a week,” she answered. “Do you want to wait in my apartment while I get ready?” She bit her lip as if she were afraid it was too bold to ask a man up to her place. Surely this woman had a thousand suitors knocking down her door.
“If you’re comfortable with that.”
She nodded, though her cheeks turned crimson. “Tara will be happy. Once she came off her catnip high, she kept looking for you after you left last night.”
Eric stepped closer. “Will it make you happy, Sorrel?” He wasn’t sure why he asked her that, but all he wanted to do was make her happy, even though he knew it was impossible.
She rubbed her red, blotched chest. “I think so.”
He tilted his head. “You don’t know?”
“I don’t know anything about you,” she whispered, “other than I want to know everything about you. But that makes me sound crazy.”
“Then we’re both crazy.”
“Are you using me?” Her voice pleaded with him to tell her no.
“Is that what Josie whispered?”
“She’s worried you’re trying to seduce me and will hold the article over my head if I don’t give in to you. She thinks I’m naive.”