Excerpt #1:
“So,” he says,
rubbing the palms of his hands on his jeans. “Are you going to tell me your
name?”
For a split second I
consider making one up, but even though he’s a complete stranger, it feels
wrong to want to lie to him.
“Callie. My name is
Callie.”
“Short for…” He draws
out the ‘r’ as he searches for a name to guess. “Calliope?” He seems really
proud of himself for thinking of another name, and it’s disarmingly cute.
“Good guess,” I tell
him. “It’s Callista. And your name is?”
“Nate.”
“Short for…Michael?”
It’s an idiotic thing to say, but he laughs anyway.
“It’s nice to meet
you, Callie.” My name sounds like heaven when he says it, and he takes my hand
in his. His palm is a little rough, and I imagine what it would feel like
sliding across the small of my back.
“It’s nice to meet
you, too,” I say. For a very brief moment, I think about asking him where he’s
headed, but I decide against it. One-night stands aren’t supposed to get
invested, and I don’t even want to know the slightest bit about his personal
life, including where he’s from or where he’s going. I wish there was a way for
me to turn off my mind and think with my vagina. Sex should be easy, but my
brain has a way of complicating things.
“I was pissed when my
flight got canceled, but now…” Nate says, looking down at our fingers which are
loosely entwined. Somewhere in the back of my head I know that he’s playing me,
but I don’t care. I just really don’t care.
When he looks up, I
catch his gaze, and we look at each other for a very long time. Butterflies
circle my stomach, flapping their wings against my insides, and I feel like it
might kill me to look away from him. It’s been forever since someone has made
me feel this way, and I want to keep feeling it. I’m trying to figure out a way
to ask him upstairs to my room without sounding like I’m asking him upstairs to
my room. I’m such a failure at casual sex.
Thankfully the
bartender interrupts my frenzied thoughts when he walks over and asks if we’d
like another round.
“No,” I reply softly,
still looking at Nate. His face falls with disappointment for just a split
second before understanding lights his eyes.
He holds up has hand
and shakes his head. The bartender walks away.
“Callie, I never do
this, but-”
“I have a room,” I
say, interrupting him to keep him from finishing that sentence. Because ‘I
never do this’ is the kind of thing that people who typically do this a lot
tend to say. And I’m okay with that, really. But I don’t want to hear it.
“Okay.” Nate flashes
a smile as he stands up and takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine.
Then, he slings his duffle bag over his shoulder and leads me out of the bar.
We make our way
through the crowded terminal to the hotel, looking at each other every few steps
and grinning like a couple of fools.
The elevator can’t
come quickly enough.
Excerpt #2:
Gabby looks at me
with wide eyes as she grabs my arm and leads me to a bench a few feet away
where we can talk without worrying about anyone overhearing us.
“What. Was. That?”
she asks. “I was hoping you two would hit it off, but I never thought…”
I’m not really sure
what to do now. I know I should tell her, because she’s my best friend and I’ve
never kept anything from her. I don’t think I could keep this from her, even if I tried. It’s bound to come out
at some point, and at least if I let her know now I can be the one who’s in
control of it. But once I tell her about my history with Nate, I know she’ll
start waxing philosophic about fate or something equally ridiculous. Gabby’s
such a hopeless romantic, bless her.
I might as well get
this over with.
“Nate’s the guy,” I
tell her. “The one from the airport.”
“Are you kidding me?”
She’s so excited that I’m a bit worried that she’s going to hyperventilate.
“What are the odds of that? Holy shit.”
“I bet they’re pretty
long,” I tell her. Seriously long. “But I know that look on your face, and it’s
not-”
“It’s fate,” she
says, clasping my hands in hers. “How can you think it’s anything but fate,
Callie?”
“I can think it’s a
coincidence, Gab. Because that’s what it is.” It’s a delightful, scary
coincidence.
“He likes you.” She’s
not going to give up very easily.
“Stop it.”
“Maybe one day-”
“No,” I say firmly. I
don’t want her getting any more ideas or thinking that she can just bulldoze
through my plans with her iron will. “You know I don’t want that.”
She rolls her eyes,
but I shoot her a death glare that lets her know that I’m not kidding.
“He’s the best man
and you’re the maid of honor. I paired the two of you up at the bridal party’s
table and everything.”
I sigh. “As long as
that’s all the pairing up you do, that’s fine.”
“It might be out of
my hands. He’s super charming,” she says slyly, looking at me out of the corner
of her eye. She’s always doubted my commitment to my new life goal of never
having my heart smashed again by someone I stupidly fall in love with. I wonder
what it’ll take to get her to believe that I’m serious.
“I think I’m aware of
how charming he is,” I tell her. I mean, the man charmed my pants right off.
“How come I haven’t met him before? I don’t even remember ever hearing about
him.”
“You knew Ben had a
brother,” she says in a not-so-subtle chastising tone.
“I knew he had a
brother, but I didn’t know he was hot.” I didn’t know he was Nate.
Gabby rolls her eyes.
“When was I supposed to tell you that? When you were dating Ethan or when you
were swearing off men?”
“Swearing off love,” I correct her. She has a point
though, I don’t try to argue that.
“Oh, excuse me,” she
says, smiling. “He lives in Boulder and manages a chain of sporting goods
stores, in case you wanted to know.”
“I didn’t,” I say,
even though that’s a tiny white lie. I shouldn’t want to know, that’s the real
issue here.
“The way he looked at
you, Callie,” she says dreamily, and I can tell that I’m not going to like
where that train of thought is heading.
“Can we please stop
talking about this now?”
“If we stop talking
about this, I’m dragging you to the garage to help me make centerpieces.”
Arts and crafts time
sounds like paradise compared to twenty questions. I stand and brush off my
pants.
“All right, let’s
go.”
Excerpt #3:
“He really did a
number on you, didn’t he?” Nate says, not even trying to hide his anger.
“You’re still torn up over it.” And the way the words come out, they’re a
statement of fact. I have to set the record straight.
“I’m not torn up over
it,” I tell him, looking him right in the eyes. And that’s the truth. I mean,
it’s part of the truth, but things aren’t that simple.
“Callie-”
“I’m not. See, the
thing is that I thought this would be us, you know? Me and Ethan getting
married. Having a wedding, spending the rest of our lives together. I thought
that’s where we were headed. I let myself believe I had forever with him, and
then I came home and found him in bed with another woman. In our bed. And I just…I couldn’t believe
it.”
“Cheating isn’t
usually about the sex,” he says, like that matters at all.
“That doesn’t make it
any better, Nate. That makes it worse.”
He nods, looking
down, and I’m not sure if he doesn’t say anything because he wants me to keep
going or because he just doesn’t know what else to say. There’s a part of me
that’s ready to say this, to admit it out loud, and I want to admit it to him.
“Six months later,
it’s not the sex that bothers me. Well, not really. It’s that I never thought
he could do something like that to me. I didn’t think he was even capable of
it. I was supposed to be the person who knew him better than anyone else, and I
wonder how deep would I have gotten before I found out? Would we have gotten
married? Would we have had children? How long would it have taken me to figure
out that I didn’t know him at all? That’s what scares the hell out of me. So
it’s not about him, you know? It’s about me. I don’t trust myself to know who
it’s safe to give my heart to.”
Nate takes a deep
breath, and his face is so full of understanding that I could cry. He reaches
up and pushes a strand of hair behind my ear, and his expression is so tender
that I can’t help but press my cheek into the palm of his hand and close my
eyes. He makes me feel safe, and I don’t know if it’s right, but I want to
allow myself the comfort that he offers, even though that’s so dangerous. It
would be so easy for me to let myself fall in love with him. So easy to let him
in. So easy for him to break my heart.
Nate’s hand slides
down the side of my neck, and he traces the strap of my swimsuit with his
fingertip. I can feel the trail of heat his touch leaves all the way down in my
toes. “You won’t ever know who it’s safe to give your heart to. Falling in love
is a risk.”
I laugh bitterly. “I
think it’s well documented that I’m not much of a risk taker.”
He smiles, putting
his hand back on the edge of the pool. “Not every guy is like Ethan.”
I know he’s dying to
tell me that he isn’t like Ethan, but
he doesn’t do that. I don’t know why his silence makes me believe him more than
his words ever could, but everything in my brain is just a big swirl of
confusion right now.
“But some guys are,
Nate. How will I know the difference?”
He waits for me to
look into his eyes before he speaks. “You’ll feel it.”
Excerpt #4:
I climb onto the bed,
and it’s softer than I thought it would be. My knees sink into the featherbed
as I crawl over to the other side, and I find that I’m glad that Ethan had
tacky loud sex with his new girlfriend, because this mattress is much nicer than
the one in my guest room. I try to tell myself that my comfort here has nothing
to do with the fact that Nate’s so close. He pulls the covers up over me, and
then his eyes meet mine, a tender smile on his face. His gaze lingers, and I
get the feeling that there’s something he wants to say, but instead he just
whispers “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Nate’s fingertips
slide along the duvet, and then he turns and walks into the bathroom, shutting
the door behind him. I turn onto my side and watch the shadows of his feet in
the slit beneath the door. The whole bed smells like him, and I turn my head
against the pillow and breathe in. It’s not cologne or anything you can buy,
it’s some combination of clean and outdoorsy that’s uniquely him, and I want to
bottle it so I can bring it home with me. Somehow I get the feeling that smell
wouldn’t be nearly as attractive if Nate wasn’t around, but I push that thought
down deep.
Nate walks out of the
bathroom wearing a grey tee and navy blue shorts, and when he reaches over to
turn out the light, I call his name.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to
sleep down there,” I say, pursing my lips together as I pull the sheet back to
make room for him to get in.
“Are you sure?”
I’m sure that this is
probably a stupid move on my part. But I want him in this bed next to me, I
can’t deny that.
“You’ve already been
inside of me,” I say, trying to tease him. “Sharing a bed is nothing.”
When his eyes meet
mine, my intended joke seems a little too serious. But Nate’s mouth quirks up
in a half smile, and he climbs in anyway.
I’m on my side and
he’s on his back, though I can tell he wants to turn toward me. Maybe because
I’m in the bed or maybe because he always sleeps that way, I don’t know. He
looks over at me and I grin, hoping he’ll understand that it’s okay for him to
move. We’re being all awkward about this like a couple of teenagers; it’s kind
of cute and definitely maddening. Finally he turns toward me, his eyes still
locked with mine, and I can’t look away. I don’t want to. The moonlight shining
through the window behind me casts the most beautiful light on his face. Bluish
and kind of dreamy, like I’m in some kind of a haze. Nate smiles this
comfortable, lazy smile, like there’s nowhere in the world he’d rather be than
here in this bed with me.
“Are you going to be
here when I wake up?” he asks.
It could’ve been a
vindictive question, given the way I behaved the last time we were like this.
But he asks it so softly that it sounds more like a wish than anything.
“Yes,” I whisper.
Meeting Mr. Wright by Cassie Cross
Publication date: April 17th 2014
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Publication date: April 17th 2014
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Synopsis:
Callie Kirkpatrick promised herself she’d never fall in love again.
After catching her boyfriend Ethan cheating on her, Callie decides to retire from the dating game at the ripe old age of twenty-four. Unfortunately for Callie, she’s going to have to see Ethan at her best friend’s upcoming wedding. Stranded in the airport during a weather delay on her way to the nuptials, Callie meets Nate Wright. He’s sexy and uncomplicated, and a one-night stand is just what the doctor ordered for a girl with a broken heart. Callie thinks she’ll never see Nate again —until he shows up at the wedding.
Nate is hell-bent on making Callie forget about her ex, and he makes her question whether she was ever really in love with Ethan at all. As she begins to fall for Nate, Callie wonders if promises were meant to be broken…
Nate is hell-bent on making Callie forget about her ex, and he makes her question whether she was ever really in love with Ethan at all. As she begins to fall for Nate, Callie wonders if promises were meant to be broken…
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AUTHOR BIO:
Cassie Cross is a Maryland native and a romantic at heart, who lives outside of Baltimore with her two dogs and a closet full of shoes. Cassie's fondness for swoon-worthy men and strong women are the inspiration for most of her stories, and when she's not busy writing a book, you'll probably find her eating takeout and indulging in her love of 80′s sitcoms.
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