The Challenge by Megan Hart Read Free Book Online Page A

anything. Right?”
    He gave her a cautious nod. “Well…right.”
    “And for me,” Katie said, “I really just needed someone who was into me. Even if only for an hour.”
    “I’m into you for longer than that,” Dean told her and squeezed her hand.
    She laughed, sounding better than she had earlier, which made Dean feel better.
    “You know what I mean.”
    “Yeah. I do.” He leaned back against the couch cushions and stared at the ceiling.
    “He makes it all seem so easy.”
    “It’s not how he makes it seem,” she said. “It’s how he makes it feel.”
    Jacob made it all feel easy, too. Dean frowned as Katie’s cell phone rang, vibrating the coffee table. She looked at it and sighed, but didn’t pick it up.
    “It’s Jimmy.”
    “Douchebag,” Dean said and picked it up. “Hello?”
    “…Katie?”
    “She’s busy,” Dean told the guy.
    “Oh. Um, can I leave a message?”
    “No,” Dean said, and hung up.
    “Dean!” Katie looked shocked, but was laughing.
    Dean shrugged. “Maybe he’ll think better of jerking you around.”
    “Maybe he’ll never call me again!”
    “Would that be a bad thing?” Dean asked. “For real?”
    Katie frowned without answering, and Dean pulled her close to hug her. They sat like that for a while without speaking. Then she sighed and pushed away from him.
    “Go to him,” Katie said.
    Dean nodded and stood, then handed her the cell phone. “Call him back.”
     
    Katie almost bailed.
    She’d waited until the morning to call Jimmy, not sure if she wanted to go down that road, maybe waiting to see if he’d call her first. He didn’t. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
    It didn’t matter how she felt now, though, since she’d already called him and asked him to meet her for coffee. He’d hesitated before saying yes, a pause that hadlasted a thousand years while she forgot to breathe. She wasn’t, in fact, sure she remembered to now when he walked through the door.
    He looked too damned good, she thought. It wasn’t fair.
    “Hey,” Jimmy said as he slid into the chair across from her with a cup of coffee he put on the table. He shook his shaggy hair out of his face and shrugged out of his coat. His grin was at half-wattage.
    “Hi, Jimmy.” Katie had a mug of coffee in front of her, but she hadn’t even sipped it. It was cold now, but she clutched it anyway as though the porcelain would warm her hands.
    “This is nice. Meeting like this. Thanks for asking me.” Jimmy sounded hesitant, uncertain. Not his usual self at all.
    But what was his usual self? Did Katie even know? She had to admit she probably didn’t. Everything about Jimmy was late-night conversation, and just because she’d bared her soul to him didn’t mean he’d done the same.
    “Thanks for coming. It’s nice to see you.”
    They never talked like this. Even the first time he’d called her, they’d slipped into a loose back-and-forth that had only gotten easier over time. Now it was as though they’d only just met and had no reason to get to know each other better.
    Jimmy’s smile amped up a notch, still far from his usual bright grin, but noticeable. “Yeah. Two times in one week, that’s some kind of crazy, huh?”
    Katie had always believed honesty to be the best approach, but facing Jimmy across the tiny café table, all she could think of was how she wanted to make up some lame excuse for why she wanted to see him instead of just telling him the truth. “Yeah. Super crazy.”
    Jimmy seemed to relax a little bit, his long fingers turning his cup around and around on the table. His knee nudged hers. “Sorry.”
    “It’s okay.”
    This was going nowhere. Katie hated it. She wanted to ask him if he liked her, or if she was just some myth, a story he liked to tell over the phone. She wanted to tell him about how she smiled at the sound of his voice. Of how she wanted more.
    Jimmy glanced over her shoulder toward the counter. “I’m going to grab a refill. You