Claiming Carter by Ws Greer Read Free Book Online Page A

confidently.
    “Okay, awesome. I’ll see you then.”
    “Okay. Oh, and Lily,” Kelvin interrupted just as I was about to hang up, “wear something nice. Nice, but sexy. Like you what you wore at Applebee’s. I’m going to make all the boys jealous tonight.”
    The blush flashed up my chest to my hairline, and had trouble coming up with a response. What was this man doing to me? He was entirely too gorgeous to be flirting with me, but I grinned from ear to ear when I realized that that was exactly what he was doing. “Applebee’s? You thought that was sexy?” I whispered quietly.
    “Sexy enough to get my attention, that’s for sure. And I assure you, that’s hard to do. Look, you don’t have to try to do anything over the top. Just do what you always do and that will definitely be enough. I have to get going, but I’ll see you soon,” Kelvin said, just before I heard the line go dead.
    My entire body was warm all over as I sat in my chair in utter shock. Kelvin Carter Jr. was some sort of successful business man—or something like that—and he was absolutely beautiful, and somehow he seemed genuinely interested in me. I smiled at the thought of him calling me sexy and wondered if it was possible that compliments like that one would continue. Tim used to call me sexy too. After about a month, however, the romantic gestures and loving terms of endearment came to a screeching halt. Deep down inside, I hoped that Kelvin wouldn’t be anything like Tim. So far, Kelvin was already light years ahead of him.
    School let out at its usual time and I found myself too excited to sit at my desk grading the day’s papers. Instead, I rushed out the door, down the white and blue hallway, out into the staff parking lot, and into my car. When I ran passed Lexy’s door, I heard her calling out after me, but I was in too much of a hurry to stop. Kelvin wasn’t giving me much time to get ready, and with Chicago rush hour traffic about to hit, I desperately needed to get on the road so that I would have time to change.
    The drive home was surprisingly light. The traffic jams weren’t as hectic as they usually were for me this time, but I could see in my rearview mirror that I had left just in time as the line of cars behind me was beginning to pile up. When I finally made it home, I had already burned twenty-five minutes and was down to an hour and fifteen minutes before Kelvin would be showing up—if he was on time, course.
    I rushed out of my car and ran up my driveway and into the house. When I came running through the door, my brown and white Singapura cat, Meghan, stared at me like I was an idiot as she lay on my dining room table. I ignored her, dropped my purse on the couch in the living room and began kicking off my heels as I ran towards the bathroom to take a shower. Tonight had the potential to be special, and I didn’t want to ruin it by smelling like I had been wrestling with twenty screaming, sweating, crying, nose-picking seven and eight-year-olds all day.
    Ten minutes later I was out of the shower and standing in my closet trying to figure out what the hell I was going to wear that was nice, but sexy. Kelvin had told me not to do anything that was over the top, but just by asking me to wear something “nice, but sexy,” he’d unintentionally put me under a tremendous amount of pressure. I felt obligated to show him something better than what he’d seen at Applebee’s only two days earlier, but every outfit in my closet seemed to want to do the opposite.
    I stood inside of my tiny walk-in closet, staring at the row of clothes hung up in front of me. On the left side were all of my pants: sweats, jeans, leggings, and capris. I immediately ignored that side of the closet and all of the t-shirts next to it, and moved to the center where I kept all of my skirts. The first skirt I grabbed was black with tiny red squares all over it that came up to about mid-thigh. I took it off the rack, gave it a quick glance