Dylan slides his fingers into my hair, resting his forehead against mine. “I don’t have any secrets about work. The business is great. If I’ve held anything back, it’s been not wanting you to know exactly how much I think about you.”
“What about the lawyer? You said you were talking legal stuff with her. I’m not cool with a female attorney who makes house calls.”
Dylan smirks. “Yvette? Gorgeous Girl, we were talking about you. Jordy told me the FBI was doing surveillance and I wanted to be prepared.”
I duck my head, embarrassed by my irrational jealousy. We’ve both guarded ourselves, afraid to let the other see we cared.
Because I knew once I let myself care, I’d hand him my heart.
He takes a finger and lifts my chin so I meet his gaze. “I thought if I didn’t look for love, I wouldn’t find it. I hurt so badly after Kate and Paisley died. I didn’t want to risk having my world taken away from me again. So, I told myself I could be with you and not be serious about it. You know…live each day without worrying about tomorrow. But I was wrong. I don’t want to wonder where we stand next week or next month. I want to commit to you. Denying love doesn’t work, ‘cause it sure doesn’t wait for an invitation. I know I’m in love with you and I’m positive that you love me.”
I grin at that. “You are so cocky.”
He laughs. “Yeah. It’s one of the things you love about me.”
Then he threads his fingers through my hair and kisses me with all the cockiness of a man without doubts.
THE END
Keep reading for a preview of The Beauty of Lies.
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Thank you for reading Magnetic Love. I loved writing about Dylan and Emerson. If you’d like to read more about this group of friends, you can see them in the companion books of this series.
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Keep reading for a preview of The Beauty of Lies.
Preview of The Beauty of Lies
(A Stand By Me Novel #1)
Secrets are exposed, trust is betrayed and two people face the beauty of lies.
Leo Jensen has a secret—he is Mr. Expose, a blogger that reveals the truth about liars and frauds. It's a way to make a living, and he's had a motherlode of experience with liars. Cheaters. Women who live for drama and carry more hidden baggage than a Boeing 747. Even his twin sister can't seem to admit the truth about her relationships, so finding an honest woman is about as likely as finding a unicorn in the middle of Nashville.
Harper Wade wishes life had a do-over button. She'd press that sucker and reset the last four years. Now, she has the chance to start fresh and make things right, but first she has to retrieve the damning evidence of her past from an annoying blogger. She's doing all the things she knows she shouldn't--breaking and entering, lying by omission, falling for the hot guy next door. Too bad he holds the key to her clean slate.
Turn the page to read the beginning of The Beauty of Lies.
The Beauty of Lies
Chapter One
Toe the line
Leo Jensen
I scroll down the list of unopened emails and wonder why bat-shit crazy seems to follow me.
“SUBJECT: You must like getting your toes sucked.” The subject line alone forces me to grimace. I can guess what’s coming next. I’ll open the email and find some misguided blog follower who wants to rant at me for my latest post. Or maybe the sender is making an offer.
At least my toes would be getting some action.
Yesterday, I wrote a blog post about a teacher who was fired for inappropriate behavior. Why did she lose her job? She’d chronicled about toe affection on her personal, yet public, blog. A fetish post for certain, but pretty tame by internet standards.
I wrote that her romantic preferences were her business, and certainly didn’t merit getting canned. It’s not like she fondled a student’s little piggies. Teachers certainly don’t deserve scarlet letters for admitting they have a love life.
Love and romance.
These are topics I have no business talking about, since I’m officially on strike when it comes to women. My A Torrid Toe Affair post garnered over two hundred comments, some more snarky than others. Blog traffic spikes with sex-related topics.
Last week, I exposed a restaurant owner taking advantage of underage employees. The week before, I featured a postcard submission from a woman who’d been fired by her employer for not letting him give her dictation. Naked. Him, not her.
I seem to be a regular employee advocate this month. The month before, my posts were all about politics.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a masked marauder for justice. No cape in my closet. My talent for revealing truth seems to be accidental. It’s not what I really want out of life. I want to write books that entertain and thrill and keep you awake at night, turning pages.
I spend all my daytime hours working on my paying gig using my pseudonym, Mr. Expose. In the middle of the night, I hammer out my latest manuscript called The Incident, a political thriller on its third rewrite.
I click the boxes of at least twenty emails. Delete, delete, delete. I have more pressing things to do than read this shit.
The postcards on my desk pull at my attention. I pick up the top one. It’s a plain, white postcard with a picture of a crow on the front. I flip the card over to study the back. The sender’s handwriting tells me that he or she was in a hurry. The connective strokes between each letter are broken and thready. Barely there. The breaks between the letters indicate the person is impatient.
Handwriting analysis experts say our writing is like a fingerprint. The lines and curlicues can reveal the personality of the sender—whether they are open and honest or if they’re hiding something.
I took a class on graphology, because writers are like that. We like to know what makes people tick.
Some people don’t like my requirement for a postcard submission. They say my rule is archaic. That an online columnist shouldn’t act like a Luddite. The requirement does stop most impulsive people who would send an electronic submission in the same way they post a Facebook status—without taking time to think about repercussions.
The world is full of crazies.
Case in point. My cursor hovers over a new email in a thread of messages from one particular woman over the course of the past month. Even though I should delete these as quickly as I do the other spammy emails in my box, I don’t. I can’t help myself. Sometimes, it’s good to read one or two to remind myself of the reason I stay anonymous.
From: [email protected]