by Cara Bastone
“What?” Serafine eventually asked him, turning to him with her arms crossed over her chest and those bright eyes burning a hole in the side of his head.
“What what?” he asked back, his eyes stubbornly on the kid slapping their order together behind the counter.
“I can feel your question for me. Just ask it.”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but just barely. He really hated all this psychic bullshit. “You got chili cheese fries.”
“So?”
“So, I assumed you were, like, a vegan or something.” He’d eaten with her before at Sebastian’s house but had been too distracted by her presence to pay attention to what she ate.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”
He couldn’t help but laugh as he finally turned to look at her. He took her in, from her complicated dark braid over one shoulder to her makeup-less face, the silver and gem rings on her fingers and bangles on her wrists. He looked her over, from her loose embroidered top to her equally loose embroidered pants and all the way down to what looked like a pair of velvet slippers. She carried with her the scent of sage and something else earthy. As painfully gorgeous as she was, her look screamed earth-child.
“Because you’re all...” He rolled a hand in the air, searching for the right word. “Organic-looking.”
To his immense surprise, she actually burst out laughing. He was used to making people laugh. It was one of his favorite things on this Earth. But he’d yet to make her laugh like that. He’d thought she was most likely one of those people who never laughed—they merely smirked instead. Or chuckled behind closed lips. But here he was, blinking down at a row of white teeth, her lips, so full in repose, almost disappearing in the stretch of her smile. He got that solar eclipse feeling again and when he tore his eyes away from her, a faded echo of her smile followed his vision for a moment, like he’d burned his retinas on her laughter.
“I also happened to grow up in Louisiana,” she reminded him. “They run vegans out of town down there.”
So, she was a meat eater. He couldn’t say why that pleased him. He couldn’t say much of anything, really, befuddled as he was by her smile, her laughter. Why did he let this woman throw him off his game so much? It was annoying. She wasn’t actually magical, regardless of what she told people. There was no reason at all for him to treat her any differently than he would any attractive woman he happened to be attracted to.
His heart banged hollowly in his chest like a rock clanging against the side of a bucket. Holy crap. He was gonna do it. He was gonna finally do something about the hairs that, even now, were rising on the back of his neck. He’d been an athlete his entire life, and Tyler instantly recognized this feeling. This at-bat, at-the-free-throw-line, let-the-muscles-do-their-thing sort of feeling.
“Let’s go out,” he suddenly blurted to Serafine, his voice a little too loud, his eyes on the ground instead of her face.
Shit. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to factor in the whole clown-shoes effect she had over him. Could that have been any more clumsy? He wasn’t even facing her. He couldn’t seem to be able to tear his eyes away from the girl in plastic gloves brushing salt off his pretzel. Stop watching that, dumbass!
Serafine turned to him and, unfortunately, so did the woman next to them, obviously extremely curious to hear how all of this was going to pan out.
“Uh,” Serafine said, her bright eyes on the side of his face. It became immediately clear to Ty that he’d just clicked on a swinging light bulb in a dark room, tied himself to a chair and begged a concession’s line worth of Cyclones fans to mock him.
Tyler made himself meet her eyes. He was an eye-contact sort of person, dammit! He believed in introducing oneself with his full name, in firm handshakes, in looking a person full in the face when talking with them. He’d been doing it his entire life! Why was this so hard with her?
“If you want to,” he added on lamely. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Because I want to. Go out with you, I mean.”
She just sort of stared at him for a moment.
“I mean that I want to take you out,” he tried one more time. “I mean that if you’re into it, I’d love to take you out sometime.”
“Order’s up,” the kid with the food called. Ten seconds later, Tyler found himself with two arms full of food and drinks and no answer yet from Serafine. He looked down at the hot pretzel and popcorn, the beers balancing in a tray, and felt like he was tumbling through the air with his arms too full to catch himself as he fell. He wanted to toss the food in the trash and bike home. Why had he thought this was somehow a good idea?
She stood there, the water bottles under one arm and her fries in the other hand. “Tyler...”
Yikes. He could practically see the dot dot dot lingering in the air after his name. She’d dot dot dotted him. Not a good sign, my friend.
Copyright © 2020 by Cara Bastone
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank my husband, who is just as proud of my imagination and accomplishments as I am. Who walks our dog by himself when there is no pulling me out of whatever scene I’m currently cannon-balling into. Who did an actual happy dance when we found out this book was going to be published. If there’s a scene in this book that particularly rang true for you, reader, chances are my husband was in my heart when I wrote it.
I’d also like to thank all the readers of the romance genre. Without your voracious appetite for the written word, I wouldn’t have my dream job. What a positive, hopeful, hilarious community of people we are.
Lastly, to all of the people who have lent their brilliance and expertise to this book in order to get it where it needed to go: thank you. Tara Gelsomino, my unbelievably talented and hardworking agent, thank you for believing in this manuscript and fighting hard to get it published. Thank you, Jess Verdi, the very first person to take a chance on me in this industry! Thank you to Allison Carroll, my genius editor. I’m grateful for your vision and ideas every single day. Thank you to Chris Wolfgang and all the copyeditors at HQN who painstakingly strive for perfection. You’re my heroes! And finally, to the entire team at HQN, I’m so humbled, honored and grateful to be a part of your Harlequin family.
ISBN-13: 9781488055904
Just a Heartbeat Away
Copyright © 2020 by Cara Bastone
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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