Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set by Amber Scott, Carolyn McCray Read Free Book Online Page A

deter her.
    She should have known better. What had she hoped for? A knee - buckling smile? A sparkling conversation ending with a date? Sure. Yeah. Right between him picking up the cart and her stuttering apologies.
    “ So this is where the magic happens?” Ben asked when they reached her bedroom. “Somebody hates unpacking.”
    Sadie ran a palm over her face and smoothed her long hair. “Yeah. I have more stuff than I have room for.” Mostly, she didn’t know what to do with the boxes’ contents. Her mother’s umpteen journals and drawings weren’t exactly appropriate décor.
    “ This is nothing, girl. My place? I’m an IKEA wet dream.”
    Whatever that meant.
    Elijah had been so pissed he’d glared! The man she had a crush on and the man he really was, could not be the same. The guy in her dreams looked at her with heat and desire so intense she felt it in the backs of her knees.
    She led Ben to the garage, trying to push her jangled - up feelings back.
    Dream Elijah would have at the very least shown some curiosity. Or intrigue. At the very minimum, polite detachment. The real Elijah couldn’t get away fast enough and every nuance of his reaction screamed revulsion. He’d turned his head away. As though she stunk.
    “ Oh my God, Sadie!”
    Sadie jerked back to reality and realized she’d brought him to see her paintings. “Oh no. I didn’t mean to—.”
    “ Did you paint these?”
    Reflexively, she stood in front of one.
    “ Don’t you dare,” Ben said and tugged her aside. “This is gorgeous. And those too, and that one, oh, very Passion of the Christ, Sadie. Saintly and sexy all at once.”
    As if that weren’t enough, Ben kept going. He must have looked at every last one. Sadie wished the concrete could swallow her up. She didn’t want compliments. She never meant anyone to see these.
    “ Jesus! Twenty - nine paintings of Elijah?” Ben a sked. “Uh, stalker much?”
    If her cheeks got any hotter she could melt wax on them. “Just, please can we go back inside ? ” she managed.
    “ Don’t be embarrassed. I love them. And I totally get it. He’s ideal subject matter and you’ve done him justice in every one. I love the wings.”
    “ Ben!” She hadn’t meant to shout , though. “Ben. I didn’t actually mean to bring you in here. I was distracted. It’s nothing personal, I don’t share my art.”
    “ Okay, okay. I’m going. I get it.” He let her usher him out. “I forgot you have reason to be sensitive today, okay?”
    Sadie sighed. “I could die.”
    Ben plopped onto the sofa. Sadie did as well, hugging her knees up.
    “ I think I’d better ask Cynthia to change shifts.”
    “ Don’t you dare! And it wasn’t that bad.”
    “ Uh, yeah, it was. I clobbered him with a cart, smack in front of his goddess of a girlfriend.” Sadie’d only seen the dark-skinned beauty with Elijah once or twice, but if her sexy outfits weren’t memorable, the woman’s sculpted face was.
    “ Possible girlfriend.” Ben grinned. “I mean, she could be his wife, after all.”
    “ Please, God, tell me they’re just friends.”
    “ Friends with benefits?”
    Sadie socked him in the shoulder.
    “ Well, if they are just friends, that woman wants more.”
    Ben was right. She couldn’t count the hours already spent worrying over the woman. The possessive way she watched Elijah, the control in her movements, as though minute by minute, she resisted reaching out to touch his face. “She laughed at me.”
    “ Screw her and the corset she rode in on.”
    “ Oh well,” Sadie said. “Better to never see him again.”
    “ Yeah. And how long do you think that will last?”
    She was lying. She knew she’d try to make a better impression and probably fail. No matter how many times she told herself in the last three hours to forget about ever landing eyes on him—at least a thousand by now—she wouldn’t. Pathetic.
    At least she hadn’t let him—or her—see how thoroughly his reaction had