Make Me Over_ Getting Real - Leslie Kelly [7]
Only she’d never seen nothin’ like this place. Rows and rows of shelves, all of ’em with nice pretty books…hardcover books without cracked spines or yellowed dog-eared pages. Ones that hadn’t been handled by half the population of Kruger County.
Keeping the lights low, just in case the butler had been funnin’ them about no cameras being in use tonight, Tori made her way to the shelf she’d been starin’ at earlier. She pulled down the exact book she wanted…Tom Sawyer, and turned around to curl up on one of the leather couches.
“I see we had the same idea.”
The voice startled her so much, she nearly dropped the book.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
A lamp on one of the rickety little tables clicked on, and Tori saw who’d been talkin’ in the dim light.
A man. A holy-moly-save-us-Mary-and-all-the-saints gorgeous-lookin’ man. He took her breath away, making it hard to even breathe, much less talk.
He had hair so dark it looked like fresh-laid black-top. Thick and shiny with a bit of wave. Dark brown eyes stared at her from a face that looked like it should be on a movie screen. Lean cheeks, strong jaw, lips just the right size for suckin’ on during a long, hot night of lovin’.
Please let the rest of him match, she whispered mentally before looking down. She almost sighed in relief, because the rest of him was as pretty as the top. All tall and lean. Not thick and bulky like so many of the boys she knew back home, who liked to get together and throw tree stumps to see who was strongest. The bulk’d turn to fat in five years, once those boys settled down.
No, this man was nothin’ like that. He was perfect and sexy and hotter ’n Satan’s housecoat.
And starin’.
With one of those stares. The kind men had been givin’ her since she turned fourteen or so and started gettin’ all bumpy under her jeans and baggy shirts. Hungry like.
Only, this time, for the first time in her whole entire twenty-three years, Tori felt ravenous-hungry, too.
2
D REW COULDN’T STOP STARING at the young woman who’d crept in here so quietly he hadn’t even realized she was here until she’d taken a book from the shelf. It was the brunette he’d been so captivated by earlier. He could tell by the jeans and red flannel shirt. Not to mention the long curly hair that rioted around one of the prettiest faces he’d ever seen.
He’d been wrong about one thing. Her eyes weren’t brown. They were blue. Deep, beautiful blue, surrounded by thick, black lashes. And as he stared into them, he felt something shift.
The earth beneath his feet, maybe. Or just his perception of it.
She watched him warily from a few feet away, saying nothing, her eyes wide and her lips parted as she drew in deep, even breaths. He half wondered if she was about to flee. Because she looked…hesitant. As if waiting for something.
“I guess we both needed to get away from the madness for a little while, hmm?” he finally managed to say.
She nodded.
A conversationalist she was not, leaving him more confused about who she was. It seemed impossible that she could be one of the women here to participate in the show. Because, though dressed casually, she’d seemed so very distant from the rest of the contestants earlier. Above it all, somehow, not even deigning to turn around when he’d been so raucously discovered.
And now, from the tilt of her pert chin to the sharp intelligence shining through those amazing blue eyes, she seemed already perfect. Certainly not in need of any improvement on a ridiculous reality show.
“Where is everyone else?”
She merely shrugged.
He tried again. “What book did you decide on?”
She held it up and stepped closer, then closer, until she stood only a foot away. He was able to make out the title in the semidarkness of the room.
More importantly, he could