Page 212 of Sweet Nightmare

Ten minutes.

Fuck.

I’m actually nervous.

And I know exactly why.

I want her to like it.

Not because it’s a five five star Michelin but because I made it.

For her.

A knock sounds against the open kitchen doorway.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

There goes my fucking heart.

This woman is going to be my heart’s funeral.

I just know it.

I slowly lift my eyes from the table and find her.

I forget how to breathe and I’m pretty sure my mouth hit the floor.

Because fuck… she’s gorgeous.

Artemis stands there in the doorway in all her impossible beauty, looking nothing like the woman who walked into my life days ago with thirteen suitcases, an attitude sharp enough to cut glass, and every intention of leaving the second the roads opened.

I don’t see now what I saw that very first night.

I just see a woman who is beautiful without even trying to be. A woman so beautiful that makes every thought in my head go completely fucking black.

Yeah… I’m so fucked and there’s no going back to the days before her. Because this isn’t just the woman staying with me until we finish a business collaboration. No. She’s already the woman I look for when I walk into a room. The woman I listen for in the hallway. The pretty princess whose smile I remember even when she’s not near. Fuck, she’s even the woman I write songs about.

And judging by the way my heart is pounding right now, it already knows something my stubborn ass is still refusing to say out loud.

Artemis’s wearing baggy, light-blue jeans that hang loosely around her hips and a tight white tee with a giant woman’s mouth printed across the front, complete with blood-red lips and a row of vicious-looking teeth.

Beneath it, in bold black letters:

I EAT WEAK MEN FOR DINNER.

I stare at the shirt and a laugh escapes before I can stop it.

A deep and unfiltered one pulled straight out of somewhere I thought had died years ago.

And fuck, I love how it feels.

Artemis narrows her eyes.

“What’s so funny?”

I shake my head, fighting another laugh.

“You’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met, Artemis Volpe.”