Page 58 of Where You Go (Whisper Lake 5)

“Still nothing?” Rasha asked as Liv put her phone back in her purse.

“No.”

“He’s probably just not bothering you.”

Liv nodded. Every day since she’d driven away from Whisper Lake with Grady in her rearview, they’d talked on the phone. Sometimes even twice a day. It felt strange that she hadn’t heard his voice. She missed his voice.

She missed a lot more than that. She missed the way she’d felt in his arms. She missed the touch of his hand on her lower back. She missed the way he smelled, the way he moved, the way he commanded a room.

She just missed him.

“Are you ever gonna tell him how you feel?” Rasha asked.

Liv sighed. She’d thought about it, but then stopped herself because she didn’t want him to stop calling and texting her every day. Right now there was no pressure, but if she told him that she’d developed real feelings for him, she was scared he’d back off.

She knew that if she told Rasha that, her friend wouldn’t understand. She was a take the bull by the horns kinda gal. Whereas Liv was a stay out of the bull’s way and hope he didn’t charge at her.

A knock sounded on the door before Susan opened it. “Do you mind if we start a little early? The line is getting pretty long.”

“Sure!” Liv popped up from the chair.

The crowd of people seemed a lot less scary than facing the feelings that she had for Grady, and her inability to act on them. Maybe one day she would… but today was not that day. She wasn’t going to borrow trouble from tomorrow. Today, she just needed to smile and get through the next few hours without having a panic attack.

* * *

“Ican’t believe the Duke doesn’t end up with Rebecca!”

“But I love Elizabeth!”

Grady stood in line where all around him women were discussing The Duke’s Destiny. He hadn’t ever been to a signing before, so he had no clue what to expect. He’d arrived half an hour early and the line was around the building.

In front of him, a woman who was part of the Romance-A-Holics book club, which Grady knew because the women had all come in matching shirts, turned to another book club member and asked, “Do you know if Harper’s writing Rebecca’s story?”

Grady knew. His mom had spilled the beans to him about the Duke’s HEA and relayed that Rebecca would be getting her own happily ever after in Liv’s next series, which had yet to be announced.

The line moved before the other woman answered and Grady finally made it inside the store. It had taken him over two hours to get to this point. For the most part his wait had been uneventful. He’d been asked if he was a cover model quite a few times, and even after he told them he wasn’t he’d been asked to take pictures with several women, which he didn’t understand.

As he entered the boutique bookstore that the signing was being held in, his palms dampened. He hadn’t seen Liv face to face in two months. They’d FaceTimed, but that wasn’t the same.

He hoped that Chrissy was right and that she’d be happy to see him. He figured if she wasn’t, he could just say that he was here to get a signed copy for his mom. Which wouldn’t actually make sense because Liv had graciously sent his mom a signed copy two weeks before it was released. He’d just say that he was there to get a signed copy for himself. Which he was. He was also there to tell Liv how he felt, but that was going to depend on how the first surprise of him being there went.

The line wound through a maze of aisles which blocked his view of the table Liv was signing at in the back of the store. But he could hear her voice, her laugh. It was the sweetest sound in the world.

For the last two months he’d heard it on a daily basis, and he hoped he’d keep up that streak for the rest of his life. He wanted to marry Liv. He wasn’t going to ask her tonight, but he was going to tell her how he felt.

As the line continued to move, he caught several glimpses of her but she hadn’t spotted him yet. As he rounded the final corner, he did see that he was on someone’s radar, though. He hadn’t met Liv’s best friend Rasha but he’d seen pictures of them together. She was standing off to the side of the store and had just clocked him.

Her brows rose in question, and he lifted his finger to his mouth, indicating that he wanted him being there to be a surprise. The knowing smile that spread on her face told him she approved of his top-secret mission.

It was another ten minutes before he made it to the front of the line. Thankfully, the Romance-A-Holics had rolled up twelve deep. They made the perfect barrier so he was hidden until they all got their copies signed, selfies taken and walked away together.

Liv waved at them as they left and then turned her head with a smile he’d never seen her wear before. It was wide open, yet impersonal. When their eyes met, there was a moment that her face went blank and his stomach dropped out from under him.

Maybe showing up like this wasn’t a great idea. Maybe Chrissy had been wrong. He felt like he’d just been sucker punched in the gut but he was trying to recover and not show how her reception had affected him.

Before he was able to, Liv blinked and her smile reappeared. This time it wasn’t impersonal at all. It was very personal.

She stood up shaking her head back and forth as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “What are you…why are you…?”

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