Awakened (Intimate Relations) Read Free Page B

night Jake and Kaz got back, after Jake saved her from the kidnapper. You came over to go out to dinner with us. I’ll never forget the first time you walked in our front door.”
    “Neither will I. When Kaz opened the door and invited me in, she introduced herself first and then Lola, but when you walked into the room…”
    “You were the only one I saw.” Mandy’s eyes sparkled and he realized she was fighting tears. She reached for him, ran her fingers across his eyebrow, down the line of his jaw. “I already knew you.”
    No, she didn’t. He would have remembered her. “How? I don’t remember. I would never have forgotten you.”
    “I knew you, but you didn’t know me. This guy used to ride by the coffee shop when I was working, but it was years ago. I didn’t know who he was on an old beat-up Schwinn, but I’d watch him go by.” Laughing, she glanced sideways at him.
    “I had an apartment out on Irving for a couple of years. Not far from the coffee shop. I was probably riding home from buying groceries. It was a while before I got around to buying a car.”
    Mandy laughed. “Well, I thought this guy was so hot, and I wondered who he was. A couple of years later, I saw a picture of Marcus Reed in People magazine , an article naming him as one of the year’s ‘sexiest young multi-millionaires,’ and I thought he looked like the guy on the bike, but I figured Reed was really rich and wouldn’t ride an old Schwinn.”
    She laughed self-consciously. “I cut it out, though.” Blushing, she lowered her head and covered her eyes. “It was on my bulletin board for a long time. I took it down when we met you so you wouldn’t see it and think I was some kind of crazy stalker, but I still wasn’t sure the guy on the bike was you. Then, when you moved in here, I saw you putting that old Schwinn in the garage. That’s when I knew for sure you were the one I’d had a crush on, and I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it.”
    He laughed and pulled her into his arms. “I will keep that bike until I’m old and gray. I paid for it myself, with money I earned tutoring kids in my computer class in high school. My first job.”
    She gave him a deadpan look. “You’ve done well, Mr. Reed.”
    “I’ve done okay. So, you thought I was hot, eh?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah.”
    “I never knew.” He held her face in his hands, kissed her quickly, ending it before he got carried away. “Mandy, I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you, but I can’t make any promises. There are things about me that you don’t know, that I’m not sure I’m ready to share with anyone, that…”
    She covered his lips with her fingers. “It’s okay. We can do this and know that we’re friends, first. Nothing will hurt that, Marc. We won’t let it.”
    “Do you think we can we do that?” He traced the line of her jaw with a single fingertip. “You’re special to me, Mandy.” He laughed, knew he sounded self-conscious, but didn’t try to cover it up. “More special than you can possibly know.”
    She pressed her hand against his chest and her eyes twinkled. “Thank you. But I just had a thought that could screw up any plans we might be considering. I’m not using birth control, and I don’t have any condoms. Do you?”
    He tried not to. There was no stopping it. The laughter exploded out of him, and once it started there was no stopping. At least not right away. When he finally got it under control, he was lying on his back on Mandy’s bed, staring into an expression he wished he could capture.
    “Are you okay?” She tilted her head and stared down at him, but from the way her lips were twitching, she was fighting a smile. “I had no idea there was anything remotely funny about not having condoms.”
    He reached up, wrapped his hand around her neck and pulled her down for a kiss. When he turned her loose, she had a wonderfully glazed expression in her eyes. “Mandy, if I had any condoms they