Page 10 of Rescued Hearts
I gasped. “Oh my God! No!” I glanced at Levi again, unable to help it. “He’s my lawyer, Brittany,” I murmured in case he could hear me talking now that he was in the backyard with the rest of us.
“You don’t look at him like he’s your lawyer.”
Only because most lawyers didn’t look likethat. At least not the ones I’d been around. Levi was gorgeous, to put it bluntly. Effortlessly so. All the guys here were attractive in their own right. But there was something…extra about Levi. Something that pulled at me like gravity.
Maybe it was because he was so different from them. He wasn’t a cowboy, roughened up and dripping with that certain brand of masculinity. Anna’s husband, Joseph, had the same polished quality as Levi, but he also worked with his hands, training elite racing horses.
Levi worked purely with his mind.
And it was attractive. Incredibly so.
My breath caught in the back of my throat when he looked in my direction. The corner of his mouth tilted up in a tiny smile, and he waved.
I wanted to disintegrate, not knowing how to react. Were we just lawyer and client? Friends? I didn’t know. We didn’t talk about anything other than my case in the week since we got ice cream, so I guess that was my answer.
But I wanted more, even if I knew I couldn’t have it.
For all I knew, he could’ve had a girlfriend. Someone smart and confident like my sister, Savannah, who he was now talking to. He’d want someone like her, I bet. Another lawyer he could have intellectual conversations with. Not a single mom, four years younger than him, who had more baggage than life experience.
Colt stood on a lawn chair, banging a pair of tongs against his beer bottle. “Hey!” he called out.
Brittany stood up next to me, grinning like she had a dirty secret. “That’s my cue.” My brows furrowed, watching as she dug something out of her shorts pocket.
“Show us your tits!” Delilah, Savannah’s best friend and practically my third sister, yelled at him. Colt flipped her off, making me smile.
Levi laughed at her joke, and my stomach sank. Did he like girls like her? Who were loud and hilarious and spoke their minds? Because I could never be like that. Or any of the other women here, for that matter.
I was…damaged goods. Meek. Broken.
“I have something to say,” Colt started, pulling me out of my thoughts. “We asked you all here because…” He looked down at Brittany, his smile widening. “Because I asked the love of my life to marry me and she said yes.”
I gasped, my hands flying to my mouth, while I looked around. Everyone seemed just as shocked as me, and something about that made me feel better. There had been a lot I felt like I was playing catch-up on this past month I’d been home, but with this, we were on equal footing.
We all rushed towards them to give our congratulations. “You didn’t say anything!” I laughed, hugging Brittany.
“You were off in la la lawyer land anyway,” she teased quietly, waggling her brows.
I rolled my eyes, brushing her comment off. “Let me see the ring!” The marquise diamond sparkled in the sunlight. “Oh, Brittany, it’s gorgeous.”
“It is. Congrats, Brittany,” a smooth voice said from behind me. Levi. I hadn’t even noticed he was standing right behind me. Normally, I was more observant than that.
I turned around, unable to stop my smile when I tilted my head back to look at him. “Hi.”
Another thing I liked about Levi? The height difference. He was tall, but not so tall that he towered over me like Jeremy did. It was enough to make me feel safe, but not intimidated.
Nothing about Levi intimidated me. Nothing except for the feelings I had for him. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I reminded myself it was inappropriate; they stayed and continued to grow.
“Hi, Tess,” he said softly, looking at me with those kind eyes that made my insides feel like freshly poured champagne.
My smile grew. “Hi.” My voice betrayed me. It was too soft. Too warm.
One of his dimples popped out. “You said that already,” he chuckled.
Heat crept up my neck, and I giggled. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”Yeah, not thinking because you can’t stop looking at his eyes!I scolded myself. “How are you?”
His amusement faded to something softer. “Better now.”
The champagne feeling inside me overflowed until my whole body was buzzing with it. Did he mean better now because he was talking to me? There was no way.
