Worth The Wait: A Nature Of Desire Series Novel Read Free Page A

articulated.
    “The ladies tend to be distracting. A friend was practicing her craft on me Friday night. They’re temporaries. They should wash off when I’m in the mood to give them a good scrubbing, but I haven’t had the heart to do that yet.”
    When her gaze slid up to his face, she changed her mind about rock star. He was more like the guy in charge of all the roadies. She could see him in the shadows, absorbing the vibe, his sharp eyes, extensive experience and fully tuned intuition pulling in every detail. He was the guy who elevated the show from merely good to fully awesome.
    He had dark brown long hair, loose around his tanned face. The natural curl in it made it thick and touchable. While a woman would despair of that thickness in the Southern humidity, Julie expected he tied it back with insouciant care and let it be a contained chaos of waves.
    His face wasn’t classically handsome, nor pretty, but it was charismatic, interesting. He had a scar on his chin, it and his jaw layered by a couple days of dark stubble. A good jaw, strong, not weak. Great cheekbones enhanced it.
    When she reached his eyes, she wasn’t sorry to have saved them for last, because she might have been caught there and missed all the rest. The irises were like the bands of a Grand Canyon wall. Shades of brown, gold and rust with a dark ring around the irises. The longer she looked, the more earth colors she saw, shifting with the light as he moved to stand before her.
    “Your eyes detract from the ladies,” she said practically. “If someone looks at your face first.”
    “Yet you didn’t.”
    “You were coming down the aisle. I started with what I saw first.” She considered his work shoes. “You need new laces.” She counted three knottings where the strands had broken.
    “These still work.” His deep set eyes lifted from the laces. As he traveled to her face, she realized he was giving her as studied an appraisal as she had given him.
    That was unexpected. An auditioning performer was used to her scrutiny, but when she unconsciously did it to a lay person, usually they became uncomfortable. They’d snap her out of the habit by shifting, or launching into purposed discussion. He did neither. He simply kept looking at her.
    Well, she wished him joy in his perusal. The building in which they were standing had at different times been church, private school, homeless shelter and haven for victims of domestic violence. Madison had done a great job renovating the main areas before Julie arrived, sending Julie pictures of the layouts for her step-by-step input. But yesterday Julie had decided two small rooms that had been administrative offices for the school would be perfect as conference rooms for read-throughs, meetings with investors or between production staff.
    However, since the rooms hadn’t yet been cleaned out or prepped, she’d been up since four, painting, sanding and hauling trash. She probably smelled like a teenage boys’ basketball team after practice, and looked like she’d been dipped in a glaze of sweat and rolled through dust, cobwebs and God knew what else. Contain your lust or take me now, honey.
    Her hair was scraped into a ponytail. She too had naturally curly, thick hair, which turned into a rat’s nest without the aid of more hair products than she had time or patience to pursue.
    “Are you scared of spiders?” He asked it in a conversational tone, but she noticed his glance had stilled on her shoulder. It reminded her of how her old cat, Meteor, would look when she saw a cockroach scuttling across the ceiling.
    She would not look. She would not . “No. As long as it’s no bigger than a pencil tip, legs and all. If there’s something bigger on me, you’re about to see me freak out.” Okay, she was going to look.
    He lifted a hand, drawing her attention, and caught her in his extraordinary gaze again. “Don’t freak,” he said in that same casual voice. “And don’t look away from my