An Ex for Christmas (Love Unexpectedly 5)

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Read on for an excerpt from

Runaway Groom

I Do, I Don’t

by Lauren Layne

Available from Loveswept

January 2018

I hang up on Marjorie. She’ll understand when I explain later.

“So,” I say, forcing a smile at the unsmiling man leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. “Awkward, right?”

Gage says nothing.

The light coming from the cracked door is enough to let me know it’s him, but not enough to read his expression.

I start to slip my phone into my back pocket, but he wordlessly holds out a hand.

“Um, no.”

“No phones,” he says. He pushes away from the wall and plucks the phone out of my hand. He glances down at it, his thumbs moving across the screen, as he unabashedly snoops through it. “Who were you talking to?”

“Give it back.” I try to grab for it, but he holds it higher, still snooping. “I’ll turn it in, I swear.”

He gives me a skeptical look but finally hands the phone over, and I shove it into my back pocket and glare up at him.

I’m a little surprised by how tall he is.

I’ve always heard that actors are shorter in person than they seem onscreen, but Gage has to be at least six-two, and he towers easily over my five feet four inches.

He’s wearing shorts and a button-down linen shirt, but the casual attire does nothing to diminish his masculinity. A fact I’m pretty sure he knows, because he steps closer, then grins when I back up and stumble over a bucket.

Gage reaches out a hand to steady me, a hand big and warm on my waist. For a second I think he’s lingering, but then I realize his fingers are simply testing the fabric of my T-shirt.

“So this is the business,” he murmurs. “Looks like a men’s undershirt to me.”

I bat his hand away. “The cut of a man’s undershirt doesn’t adequately account for a woman’s—”

I break off, and he lifts his eyebrows. “Yes?”

“Never mind,” I say, not about to say the word “breasts” or “boobs” when I’m in very close proximity to a man who’s making me too aware of my boobs.

He drags his eyes from my shirt up to my eyes, blinking a little in surprise as he does so, as the eye contact jars him.

“The person you were talking to. Was this the same friend that made you come here?”

My eyes narrow. “Why are you saying it like that? Like you don’t believe me.”