Page 15 of Five Minute Man
Chapter 8
There. She had saidit. Holly stared hard at the tabletop, braced for his reaction. A laugh, perhaps an awkward cough, followed by either a polite suggestion to call it a night or a poorly veiled offer to help her with some “research.”
Seconds ticked by in silence. He didn’t say or do anything.
Was he shocked? Stunned into silence because he had thought she seemed like such a nice, intelligent, sensible woman? Or maybe he had been taken aback by the fact that he could have been so wrong.
Holly felt the color creeping up her neck, hating that she still cared so much what other people thought.
No, not other people, she corrected. Him.Because, she realized, she really liked this guy, and for whatever reason, his opinion mattered.
Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore and raised her eyes.
Adam was watching her intently, his face relatively neutral, but his eyes sparkled with ... something. What was that? Interest? Amusement?
* * *
HOLY SHIT, he thought.That look. Those eyes.Like those of someone already found guilty and awaiting sentence, knowing it was going to be bad yet determined to take it with dignity. She was waiting for his reaction and clearly wasn’t expecting it to be good. She didn’t strike him as the type of person to care too much what other people thought. Dare he hope that he was different in her eyes? That she might be feeling the same unexplainable spark he was and care about his opinion?
“Do you like it?” he asked.
She blinked, nonplussed. “Like it?”
“Yeah. Do you like writing romance novels?”
“Yes,” she admitted warily.
“Does it pay your bills?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are among the fortunate minority who enjoy what they do for a living. It’s not really work if you love what you do, right?”
“Right,” she agreed, but her voice still held a trace of doubt. That hint of vulnerability tweaked something primal inside him, something that appealed to his inner caveman. Without conscious effort, this woman continued to draw him in further and further, and she didn’t even know it.
“What about you?” she asked, tossing the ball back into his court.
“I, too, am pretty fortunate. I love what I do.”
“And what is that?” she asked, her eyes less doubtful now and sparkling with ... mischief? “You’re not a Dom, are you? A real-life Christian Grey?”
He chuckled. “More like Ty Pennington.” He would be lying if he said the idea of dominating this particular woman in the bedroom didn’t hold some appeal. It was an effort to remember they were in a public coffee shop and had just met.
“I renovate old houses. The older, the better. They-don’t-make-them-like-they-used-to types. Real stone from local quarries. Huge, hand-hewn beams. Hardwood floors instead of sheets of plywood. Plaster walls instead of drywall ...” He paused, giving her a sheepish look when he realized he was running on. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she told him, “I love old houses. So much so, I bought one.”
Adam felt another twinge deep inside, like a lock tumbler clicking into place. Had he discovered something else they had in common?
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. A small stone cottage. It was built in the late 1700s, or so they say, to replace the original building, which was destroyed in a fire in the late 1600s. I’m still doing the research on that. It used to be part of a much bigger estate.”
“Not the gamekeeper’s cottage on the old Penn estate?”
She nodded. “Yep, that’s the one. You know of it?”
He laughed. “I do. I was actually hoping no one would buy it and I could talk them down on the price.” He shook his head in disbelief. Any moment now, he was going to wake up. “Tell me. What’s it like? The inside, I mean.”
