Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 129179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 646(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 646(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
Grandmother always insisted that I was too uptight about the whole thing.
"Don't you know that you always come upon it when you least expect it? Fate has a plan, Jacob. Let it unfold as it's meant to. One day your wait will make sense."
My brother Jeremy got married when he was twenty-four. One of my sisters, Jen, got married when she was nineteen. The other, Jill, got married at twenty-one.
Standing on the sidelines as they found their soulmates sucked. As happy as I was for them, I couldn't help feeling like I was some kind of dud. I was the oldest of the four of us—how was it that I hadn't found my forever? To be perfectly blunt, I'd given up hope it would happen at all.
And then I saw Amber, dancing in my office, and everything snapped into focus for me.
I imagined it was a lot like what Neo felt like the first time he was plugged in and realized he had the ability to learn new skills in the blink of an eye. I went from utter frustration with the idea of soulmates to complete understanding of why things happened the way they did.
My grandmother had been right all along. Suddenly my wait made sense.
In the two hours I’d waited to see my girl again, I'd had plenty of time to think about what had happened in my office. The reaction I'd had to her was an anomaly, never before experienced even on a lesser scale. Amber was unique, and I knew it beyond the shadow of a doubt the instant she turned around and our eyes connected.
It was as if for the first time in my life my heart, soul, mind and body were all aligned and in agreement on the very same thing.
After she left my office, I'd immediately gone to my computer and pulled up the personnel files. It didn't take me long to find out that Amber's last name was Stewart and she'd been working for us for eight months. Her attendance logs were perfect—no sick days, and she'd never been late even once.
The supervisory notes in her file were all glowing, moving her from the probationary period a full thirty days before it was even up. When I reviewed her employment application, I noted her bachelor's degree was in business management. I liked what it said about Amber that she had put her career on hold to help her best friend. I thought that was truly admirable.
The last bit of information I'd gleaned from her employee file was that she drove a white Ford Focus hatchback. It didn't take long to find it in the garage, and once I did, I stood next to it like an asshole while I waited for her to finish her shift.
She didn't immediately notice me as she came off the elevator and started walking toward the car because she was preoccupied with shoving her work ID badge into her purse. I gritted my teeth as I watched and worst case scenarios played out through my head. If she were alone, any psycho could've come up from behind her and yanked her into their van.
Granted, we had top-notch security, but I wasn't taking any chances with my woman. I calmed myself with a reminder that I was there to make sure that everything would be okay as I trailed my eyes over her.
When she saw me leaning against the pillar next to her car, she stumbled for a second before her gaze met mine. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that her reaction to me was happiness. That gave me confirmation that what I'd thought up in my office was true—Amber was as attracted to me as I was to her.
"What're you doing here?" she asked softly.
Her voice was like auditory ecstasy.
I grinned. "Waiting for you," I answered.
The sweet smile that spread across her face hit my soul like perfect rays of sunlight after prolonged exposure to darkness. I wanted to see it every day for the rest of my life, multiple times a day.
"Really?"
I nodded as I took a few steps forward to lessen some of the space between us, her magnetic draw too powerful to be ignored for even another second.
"Why?"
Just looking at her got my heart beating triple time. I loved her braided pigtails and the touches of fuchsia in her light blonde hair. Imagining all the things I wanted to do to and with her were making my dick throb in my jeans.
"I'd like to take you to dinner," I answered.
I wanted so much more than dinner, but I knew I had to start somewhere.
Her mouth formed a perfect little O as her eyes widened. She closed her mouth and stared at me for a second in silence. Cocking her head to the left, she answered, "Okay. When?" There was no part of me that didn't want to tell her that right then and there would be perfect, but I didn't want to press it and scare her off.