Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
Joe goes on to say other wonderful things about him, but I tune it out as I watch him slip into his celebrity mode. He goes from being Shepard Thorne to the Wrecking Thorn in the blink of an eye. A gracious smile, relaxed but confident features. This is how he is in front of the cameras. Somehow both approachable and mysterious. Charming and arrogant. A celebrity through and through, who you think you know but want to know more about. That’s why the media love him, or rather love to talk about him.
“I’m so sorry about last season, man. That sucked balls,” Joe seems to be saying when I decide to pay attention, and I watch him go rigid. It’s a subtle change and I don’t think Joe notices, which is why he continues on the same topic, and Shepard grows more frozen by the second.
Until I can’t stand it anymore and I decide to interrupt Joe. “Joe, I think we should—”
“Take a seat.”
At his voice, I fist my hands at my sides. Does he have to sound so commanding? Especially when he’s the one crashing my date. I turn to him to give him a piece of my mind, Joe be damned, but he doesn’t let me get in a word. “You don’t want poor Joe here to keep standing for you for the rest of the night, do you? Doesn’t make you look like a very good date.”
At which point I realize Joe is still standing, and I immediately feel bad. I look over at Joe and apologize before taking a seat and declaring to the table in general, “Joe’s the proof chivalry isn’t dead. He’s a gentleman through and through. But not everyone can say the same these days, can they?”
Yes, I’m making a dig at him, given that he kept his seat the entire time I was standing. But it’s all true in Joe’s case. Joe is a gentleman. He’s always friendly and kind, open. He smiles at people. He makes them feel at ease. He doesn’t insult people to their face. He isn’t arrogant and condescending, holding a grudge for days. Joe is everything he is not, and therefore, Joe is perfect. Despite the fact that he doesn’t like my freckles but again, I don’t like them either so I’m not going to let that bug me.
And neither am I going to let it bug me that Joe’s shoulders aren’t so broad that they dwarf the high-backed chair he’s sitting in. I don’t think he could ever pull off a dark t-shirt with the faded logo of a rock metal band that makes him look like he might be the lead singer of said band. No, his hair isn’t dark and isn’t perpetually mussed up, and no, his features aren’t sharp enough to give paper cuts to my heart just at the thought of their beauty.
But that doesn’t matter. What matters is, Joe is a good person. Joe would never let amusement and condescension drip from his words like he does when he says, “Definitely not. Although I don’t think you really know the kind of assholes walking around these days. If you did, you wouldn’t leave the house looking like that.”
At this, I snap my eyes over to him once again. “Looking like what?”
And to my dismay, that intimacy I spied in his eyes before only grows. He lets his stare—intimate and intense—wander over my face, my hair. He looks at the pulse fluttering in my neck and my heaving chest, the lacy neck of my emerald dress. Then, coming back to my eyes, “Dazzling.”
See? Joe is a good person. Joe would never do what he just did. Put a strange emphasis on ‘dazzling.’ The kind you do when you’re cursing. Like the word dazzle is a bad word and he meant something entirely different by it.
Asshole.
“So how did you guys meet?” he asks next, but this time when I look away, I’m determined to keep my eyes away from him.
Joe jumps into the story right away. “We work together. At the coffee shop. Just off of Main. I’m the manager and she’s one of the baristas.”
“Ah, a little office romance,” he murmurs, but again it feels like cursing. “Not so chivalrous, after all.”
Embarrassed, Joe rubs the back of his neck with his hand. “Well, I know it’s not the most kosher thing. I am in a position of authority, but”—he shakes his head—“I couldn’t stop myself.”
He hums. “I bet you couldn’t.”
Asshole, asshole, asshole!
“So I broke down and asked her,” Joe continues with the story. “But of course, she said no.”
“Did she now?”
“I kept asking. To the point where I’m sure it got annoying for her. But then, two days ago, she surprisingly said yes, and here we are.”
“Two days ago, huh?” he murmurs with interest. “Well, lucky you.”