Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 29132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 146(@200wpm)___ 117(@250wpm)___ 97(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 146(@200wpm)___ 117(@250wpm)___ 97(@300wpm)
After her recent history, she should be too scared to trust the voice deep in her bones insisting that this man was one in a million, the one she could trust more than every other man she’d dated combined. But Noah’s arm around her felt too damned good and that voice was coming from a place Clint had never touched, a secret, primal place that insisted that in a world full of frogs and much, much worse, she’d finally found herself a prince.
CHAPTER NINE
Noah
The picnic spot appeared around the next curve in the bend, a grassy place between two shade trees with a hammock big enough for two stretched between the trunks, but Noah only spared it a glance before his attention returned to the woman by his side. He couldn’t stop thinking about her last romantic relationship and the fact that it could have so easily been her last. If things had played out a little differently, he might never have met Yasmin North because a monster would have stolen her bright light away from the world.
The thought made his chest ache and his arms long to pull her in for a long, hard hug.
But they weren’t at that point in their relationship yet, and they might never be if he couldn’t find a way to convince her that he was worth putting her justifiably fearful heart back on the line. Because he wanted a chance at her heart, not just her stunning body or her clever mind.
Sometime during the walk up Jasper Hill, he’d stopped fighting the crazy certainty that they were meant to be something important to each other. He couldn’t fight himself and fight for her at the same time. Well, he supposed he could, but he didn’t believe in dividing his energies. Once he decided to go for something—whether it was a patent on new software or funding to supply his latest educational outreach effort—Noah threw his entire self into the battle, body and soul.
So when they were finished eating and were lounging on the quilt side by side, watching the sun sink behind the hills with their second round of cold beer bottles sweating gently in their hands, he didn’t pull any punches.
“You read my medical records, so you know I had a bout with cancer, right?” he asked, taking a pull on his beer.
She nodded seriously. “Yes. And that you lost your dad to the same cancer. I’m so sorry. That must have been hard.”
“It was,” he said. “But the hardest thing about it wasn’t the diagnosis or the treatment; it was the way it changed the way I looked at the world. For the first few months, all I could think about was all the people who should have cancer instead of me. All the lazy, mean, lying, hurting, warring wastes of human flesh who deserved to suffer and die in my place. If I could have, I would have passed my cancer on to one of them in a heartbeat.”
Unexpectedly, Yasmin smiled. “Is that your deep dark secret?”
“One of them,” he said, brows drawing together. “It’s an ugly time in my life that I’m not proud of.”
She put a hand on his thigh. Her fingers were cool from holding her beer, but her touch still sent heat pulsing across his skin. “We all have thoughts like that. Or at least, most of us do. We know that the world isn’t fair—that good people get cancer, and bad people make millions running corporations that are destroying our planet—but that doesn’t mean we can’t wish it were different. That doesn’t make you ugly inside, that makes you human.”
He grunted softly. “Maybe. But I was still ashamed of myself.” He spun his beer between his fingers. “And I was a little surprised that someone would want my sample, honestly, knowing that I had a history of cancer in my family.”
“Every sample I looked at had a genetic downside in one area or another,” she said. “And you beat cancer. You took it to the mat and came back healed and whole. To me, that was the sign of a fighter, someone strong enough to take the blows life deals out and come back swinging.” She looked up, studying him in the fading light. “And now that I’ve met you, I know that I was right.”
His lips curved, wondering what she would think if she knew she was what he was most interested in fighting for at the moment.
“What?” Her lips curved in an uncertain smile as she brushed a finger down either side of her pretty mouth. “Do I have food on my face?”
He shook his head. “No, you have beautiful on your face.”
Her cheeks flushed, but she didn’t look away. “Thank you. You’ve got some of that on yours, too. But don’t think you’re going to wiggle out of secret time that easily. I want a dark secret, O’Sullivan. Something that will make my eyebrows lift at least a little bit.”