Page 21 of Like A Daydream
“That’s the avocado toast people, not me,” he replies. “I’m man enough to admit that I like a little flavor in my coffee. Oat milk is good for digestion.”
“So is kombucha.”
“Kombucha tastes like vinegar,” he says, already walking away, following Danielle as she shelves another book.
Her just-below-shoulder-length cinnamon brow hair catches in the light as she continues down the shelves, walking toward him a step with legs that go on for miles, before stopping and scanning again. She’s got curves for days, and her eyes sparkle in satisfaction when she finds what she’s looking for.
Seriously, she’s a total knock-out.
Andrew clears his throat, wanting, noneedingher attention, if only to hear what her voice sounds like.
He’s been near this woman for three seconds and he’s already borderline obsessed with her.
This can’t be good.
She turns, her hazel eyes meeting his smoky blue ones and he’s not sure who’s supposed to talk first.
“I—”
“Can I help you find something?” she asks, raising a perfect eyebrow at him.
She’s staring at him like he’s about to waste her time and that’s not normally the effect he has on women.
“Your number?” he blurts. He’s off his game. “I lost it.”
“You can get lost right along with it,” the girl, Danielle, says, turning and walking in the opposite direction.
He pulls his hat off and runs a hand through his hair. He’s always kept his dark hair long enough, but he’s regretting it now. His fingers tangle in the ends, caught in a knot that’s taking him longer than it should to pull apart.
He groans, frustrated, before he darts to catch up with her, shoving his hat back on and flipping it backwards before moving in front of her.
He blocks her path like a creep, even though he’s definitely not that, and stops when he’s in front of her. A stack of books on the floor separates them and keeps him from doing something stupid, like invading her personal space to find out what she smells like.
What the fuck is wrong with him?
“Seriously, what?” she asks.
He’s next to one of the ladders so he leans against it, going for a Fabio ‘guy-of-your-dreams’ kind of look. Girls love when guys lean against things in a sexy way, right?
“I—” he starts again, but before he can get his sentence out, the ladder moves, rolling along its track above the shelf.
Andrew loses his balance and falls forward, trying to catch himself on the stack of books at her feet. He not only knocks them over, he also ends up flat on his face on the hardwood and he thinks he could die right here and it would be fine.
JT is howling with laughter at the counter, and getting egged outside of PNC Arena was nowhere near as bad as this.
“Bro,what?” JT asks, doubling over and wiping a tear from his eye. Andrew says nothing, he just stands, mumbles an apology, and leaves the store as fast as he can.
He doesn’t even stop to grab his coffee that was sitting on the counter, too busy feeling the racing of his heart and shame that he hadn’t needed building in his chest.
Danielle
“I am so sorry about him,” Jet Thompson says, through laughter as he wipes a tear out of his eye. “He hasn’t been in town very long. I would have told him to take it easy if I’d known you were here.”
Danielle is restacking the books that Jet’s friend had so brilliantly toppled over, and he comes over to help her. She had made sure they were alphabetical by author when she had stacked them and now they’re just going to be a pile until she could fix it.
“It’s fine,” she says, trying to keep her tone from being annoyed. “It happens. He’s not the first guy to come here and try to get my number, and he won’t be the last.”
He was definitely one of the more attractive ones she had seen, though. All things considered.
