Page 26 of Leah

She scanned me up and down for a moment, her gaze lingering distastefully on my old purse. Ah, yes, the look of a girl assessing me, doing her own comparing. Probably trying to evaluate how much of a threat I was, and I certainly wasn’t by the end of her perusal; she didn’t look very impressed.

“Nice to meet you too,” she replied slowly, like I was five years old and hanging on to every word. Obviously, I was just a peasant, fortunate to even be chatting to such a goddess.

Excuse me while I count my lucky stars.

“Rome’s said… lots of things about you to Molly and me.”

I stilled just then.

The girl was friends with Molly?

What, the same Molly that Carter was apparently screwing? The same long-legged Molly from all over the tabloids? With the famous dad that saved a bunch of elephants on his safari trip recently? Or maybe he was in the news for posing with a dead elephant, the slimy fuck.

I was dumbfounded.

I just stared at her incredulously, and she must have wondered why because her brows came together in question.

“Right,” I eventually muttered.

If they expected me to make conversation, I had nothing in me. I wasn't that kind of girl. Friendly chatter was a thing of the past for me. Besides, my mind was blank. It was an absolutely empty, desolate canvas that was more focused on the fact I didn’t have the courage yet to look at the rest of the room where I knewhewas.

I am not ready.

This is not what I signed up for.

But that was life, wasn’t it? It didn’t wait for you to be ready.

“Leah, I have the coffee table filled with snacks and treats,” Marlena then said. “Harold’s out getting dinner. I didn’t have time to cook after the surprise. Help yourself, darling.”

“Thanks,” I told her as my eyes automatically wandered to the coffee table.

I saw two pairs of legs a foot away from the table. One pair was slender and long, tanned and smooth. The other was in a pair of jeans, and one leg was bopping up and down, restlessly.With incredible hesitation, I glimpsed up and saw him. My breath left my lungs and I trembled as my eyes connected with the blues of his.

There was no emotion on his face.

That damn face that did things to me now in the same way they did years ago.

I felt like someone had stepped on my chest and was squeezing the life out of me. He looked so good, so defined. And while my glimpse was barely half a second long, I saw all of him with incredible depth.

Casually dressed in a basic tee and jeans, he was much bigger than I thought, and I knew straightaway those shirtless pictures of him online were certainly not created in the land of Photoshop.

I tried as best as I could to look casual, while my gaze then shifted to the girl sitting next to him. It was indeed the Molly I was thinking of with those endless long legs and conditioned auburn curls.

She looked at me with bored interest.

“That’s Molly,” Rome then said, catching my gaze. It felt silly he was introducing me to a celebrity, like I had no idea who she was. If I’d stuck with not stalking Carter online, I wouldn’t have known who she was at all. But all I saw, as I stared at her, were the ridiculous fucking photoshoots she’d done. I’m pretty sure the most shocking one involved her dressed in a scantily-clad pig’s costume—try to imagine that—while tied and roasted over a pit of fire. It wasn’t real fire, of course, and whoever added that part in needed to be fired because what in the fuck?

I still to this day have no idea what the message of that photoshoot was. But artsy-fartsy people, right? Nowadays, it could’ve been about fucking lotion, or something ridiculously random like that.

“Hi,” I said to her, seemingly filled with words today.

She forced a smile on her face before looking down at her cell phone, sliding its screen with her manicured nails. At least she wasn’t assessing me. Maybe I just wasn’t assessment material looking the way I was.

Carter didn’t say a word to me.

Then again, I didn’t say a word to him, either, and I was too scared to look at him.

Deflated and confused by this entire situation, I turned away from them and clasped my hands together. With nerves raging through me, I stared about the room, wondering where the rest of the guys were. I could use a distraction, and I was sure I’d feel more relaxed talking to them instead.

---