Page 36 of Art of Love

Chapter Eleven

What in the hell was that? Dylan kept asking herself as she paced in the living room shortly after sunset. What. In. The. Hell!

Her entire body had… What? Been hijacked? Body. Mind. Heart. Soul. She’d almost sunk directly into him.

The scary thing was, she would have willingly gone.

She’d never felt anything like it before. Staring into Abe’s eyes was like… well, circling a black hole. No one and nothing could stop her from being sucked in, completely.

After they had been interrupted, he’d listened to their conversation for a moment before she’d made excuses and had made a fast getaway, leaving Abe to head back towards the bookstore while she snuck away towards her car.

When she arrived back to her car, there was a new message on her phone from Kevin, who wanted to meet in an hour at his motel in Edgeview.

Why in the hell was he in Edgeview? When she tried to call him, she got his voicemail. She left him a few text messages but didn’t receive a reply.

So she drove the thirty minutes to Edgeview and knocked on his hotel room door for almost half an hour. Then she sent him three more messages and tried to call him a half dozen times with no luck. So she left him a message telling him that she had to get back to Pride and to call her when he could.

From what she knew about the man, he was a flake. He often missed important meetings, getting fired from job after job. It was only thanks to his family’s wealth and power that he had any money to live on. But they were rolling in it, so Kevin’s life was posh.

Since she was in Edgeview, she hit the larger grocery store for some necessities. She groaned when she spotted Tommy. He saw her and made a beeline towards her across the meat section. Fitting.

“There you are,” Tommy said with a grin. He tried to wrap his arm around her shoulder, which she easily ducked. Placing her cart between their bodies, she pasted on a grin.

“Tommy.” She was pleased when his eyes narrowed at her use of his old name.

“Tom.” He laughed. “Remember?” His eyes turned mean, and she figured it wouldn’t be long before she would see the real man behind his fake charm. “I was about to head out and meet up with some buddies at a club in town. Why don’t you⁠—”

“No, thank you.” She tried to sidestep him again.

“Oh, come on, Dylan. You can’t still be holding a grudge for putting cream cheese in your locker all those years ago. It was a silly childhood prank.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Well, until now I had no idea who had done that, so no, I haven’t been holding a grudge against you.”

This time she was successful in getting away from him and losing him somewhere in the deli section. She finished her shopping and headed back to Pride without running into Tommy again or hearing from Kevin.

Back at home, she paced, frustrated at having wasted her entire evening.

Abe had left her body wanting, while her mind swirled about why Kevin hadn’t shown and why he wasn’t answering her messages. Not to mention she was now pissed at Tommy for the prank all those years ago.

She felt like punching something or someone.

She was just about to sit down at her computer and send Kevin an email when there was a knock on her door.

She assumed it was Kevin, but when she opened the door, she saw Abe. The porch light cast a bright glow over his broad shoulders and shadowed jaw, making him look more like trouble than any man had a right to.

“Hey,” Abe said, his voice softer than she expected. “You left in a bit of a hurry.”

She stepped aside, letting him in without thinking. “Yeah… I wasn’t feeling great.” Not technically a lie since her nerves were still rattled.

He stepped inside, glancing around like he was making sure she was alone. She expected him to keep questioning her fast escape or read too much into it, but he just looked at the bags on her counter.

“Need help putting those away?”

She gave a small shrug, grateful for the shift in attention. “Sure.”

“Edgeview Market?” he asked, seeing the bag.

“They have the cereal and frozen meals I like,” she said quickly. That wasn’t a lie either, just not the whole truth of why she’d gone to town.