Untangling The Stars by Alyse Miller Read Free Book Online

could find a celebrity within their budget when Tandy erupted in a fit of out loud giggles that made everyone stop to stare. It took almost an entire minute of full-throttle giggling before Tandy was able to get enough air back to speak.
    “Star power! My dear Dr. Foxglove, why don’t you just ask Guy Wilder to come speak for us?” She fanned herself with one of the pink color swatches. “I bet your sexy new BFF would be just to die for in a slick black tuxedo with a little bit of bashful peeking out.” She coyly put her fingertips to her lips and winked suggestively. “The color I mean, not that bit of bashful!”
    Andie’s jaw fell at the exact second Tandy’s punch line hit home with the rest of the table. Her contagious laughter and general absurdity coaxed Elizabeth, Melody, and Denise to join in. Andie wanted more than anything to glower at Tandy’s cheeky malevolence, but she could do little more than revolve her head side to side in what she hoped was a disapproving look while her mouth stayed agape. It was nearly impossible not to succumb to the perfect silliness of it all. Andie watched her girlfriends each howl with their own variety of laughter. Tandy had her forehead down and hands slapping the table. Elizabeth doubled over, and Melody had her head rolled back and eyes closed. Even prim Denise was trying to hide her laughter with a hand over her mouth. They were impossible to resist. Andie thought of Guy slinking into her classroom, frazzled and then sensuous, and finally sulky and fuming. She let every mixed emotion blend together and then let them all go at once in her own burst of laughter. It really was pretty damn funny.
    Andie laughed. The more she imagined that sullen, brooding hunk of man hiding behind his dark shades and standing on stage surrounded by cloud-like tufts of bubblegum pink tulle, his tux adorned with a giant pink peony and his handsome face fixed with an embarrassed grimace, the harder she laughed, until she was out breath and had almost forgotten about the gala completely. That would serve him just about right.
     
    ***
     
    When they’d finally calmed themselves and packed their things to leave, the anxiety of earlier in the day had melted away from Andie’s shoulders. She felt back to herself again, and ready to take on the next day. Even still, all that healing laughter over her mental cartoon of Guy surrounded by pink hadn’t changed the heat trapped deep inside her. There was no doubt in her mind that Guy’s steely blue eyes with their ring of chartreuse fire, would be the last thing she saw when she closed her eyes to go to sleep that night.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR

     
    A spectacular sunrise crawling up the sky in strips of yellow and pink delivered the new morning from behind Boulder’s Flat Iron mountains and into Andie’s open bedroom window. Always an early riser, normally she was up and out the door before dawn, but this morning Andie had taken great pleasure in sleeping in. It hadn’t exactly been planned, but the dream she’d just woken from had been worth it. It was going to take an extra round with the loofa to scrub away the remainders of her very— very —steamy nighttime fantasy about that incorrigible Guy Wilder.
    The more Andie tried to remember her dream the faster it slipped away. All she could remember for sure was that they had been on a beach somewhere, and that Guy’s lips had tasted like the ocean as he rose over her, kissing and moving inside of her at the same time. The blazing sun behind him had cast a halo around his entire chiseled torso, his eyes the same piercing blue as the waves crashing in the distance, his hair soft and tickling against her skin… Uugghhh , Andie buried her face in the pillow. It was too much . She’d had sex dreams before but come on .
    It was too bad the man she’d encountered yesterday hadn’t been the same as the man she’d met in her dream. While every bit as heart-wrenchingly gorgeous in his