Page 19 of Book Boyfriends
Each man looks at me with a different expression. Owen’s is warm. Lord James is bored, as if he’s already tired of this. Lars doesn’t smile as much as smirk, like this is just a game.
“What do you mean you’re here to help me get my happy ending?” I repeat, curling my fingers a little tighter around the bat’s base as I rest the barrel on my shoulder, prepared to swing fast and hard, if needed. While something inside me recognizes these men, I still don’t trustit,or them.
“Just that…” Owen raises his palms, taking a hesitant step toward me. “We’ve been sent here to help you.”
“Who sent you?” I motion at him with the bat.
His blond eyebrows knit, and he steps back. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? How are you here? How do you even know who I am? How do youknowyou’re here to help me if you don’t know who sent you?” Each question sprints out of me more high-pitched than the last.
“We just know,” Lord James offers.
I scoff. “You just know?”
He shrugs.
I wave the bat. “How? And how are you so calm?”
Somehow, these three men poofed into existence, and they’re chill about this. If I found myself in an unfamiliar world, I wouldn’t be all like,Oh, let’s hang out and bake muffins until this woman we’ve never met and are on a mission to help comes home. I’d be freaking out. Hell, that’s what I’m doing now.
They look between each other as if trying to decide what to say or who should say it. With a head tilt, Lars gestures to Owen. He appears to be their unofficial spokesperson, which is wise. Not only is Owen Sugarville’s de facto statesman, but he’s also the least intimidating of the three men. He’s the cinnamon roll book boyfriend, after all.
He shifts foot-to-foot before meeting my stare. “I was in my bakery’s kitchen. Selena left last night, and I was going to bake away my feelings with some pumpkin tarts. Then suddenly, this image popped into my head of a woman with big brown eyes, the color of warm caramel. She sat in a black dress, her long dark hair in a messy bun, on the edge of a stone fountain.”
Realization jolts through me. The description melds with the memory of me perched on the edge of the SPN fountain. I was alone. How did they…
My wish.
It couldn’t be.
Could it?
My pulse ticks up, and the splash of the penny after I’d tossed it into the fountain flashes in my mind’s eye.
“Sadness swam in those beautiful—yet dulled—eyes as if the flames of hope flickered to mere embers about to be extinguished,” Lord James adds, his timbre reminiscent of a gentling breeze.
“It was you, rabbit. The vision of the woman we saw was you,” Lars juts his chin at me.
“You all had the same vision?”
“Yeah,” they say in unison.
Eyes blinking, I loosen my grip on the bat. “How did you know it was me?”
One dark brow quirked, Lars waves at me. “Besides thatexactwoman’s photographs on these walls, and thenshe–AKAyou–waltzes into this apartment, you mean?”
“Yes, smartass.”
A lazy grin kicks across his face. “Look at that; my little rabbit has given me a pet name.”
Lord Jamestsks. “Now is not the appropriate time for flirtation.”
“The pink crawling up her neck says otherwise, Lord Fancy Pants,” Lars’s deep voice is filled with playful seductiveness.
“Focus, gentlemen.” I clear my throat, hoping to tamp down the flush that is apparently visible and not just inching up my internal temp.
It’s foolish to pretend that the impact these three men have on me doesn’t exist. The flutter in my chest with each of their different gazes locked on me reinforces their seductive power. Owen’s icy-blue gaze is filled with sweet sincerity. Lord James’s green eyes are as lush as a clover field with a glint of wicked promise. Lars’s violet eyes are somehow playful but steady. Each man’s gaze offers something a little different but tantalizing.
