She slipped the backpack off her shoulder and dropped it onto her sofa. In a week she had made the place feel warm and inviting. There wasn’t a lot of fussy shit around, and there were no pictures of her with friends or family, which was odd. Wasn’t that, like, a girl thing?

“How did your classes go?” I asked, knowing if I didn’t control the conversation, we would stand there in silence. Another thing I wasn’t used to with girls. Normally, they talked my f**king ear off.

She filled the coffeepot with water then glanced up at me. “Good, but I wasn’t worried about these two courses. Wednesday, I have to face Fundamentals of Public Speaking, and, well . . .” She trailed off.

The pink color in her cheeks was enough. I knew what she meant. She didn’t like attention on her. I had seen that myself at my party. But damn, how did she manage to get this far in life without being the center of attention wherever she went? “You baffle me,” I said. “You don’t want attention.” I let my eyes trail back down to her legs in those jeans and heels, and my blood pumped harder just thinking about those legs and the things I could do with them. “Yet you have got to be used to drawing attention.”

I lifted my gaze back up to see her face as she turned away from me and stared out the window instead.

“I’m working on blending in and hoping people will let me be,” she replied

The pain in her voice didn’t sit well with me. Had someone hurt her? And if someone had, who the f**k were they and how could they do anything to hurt someone so incredibly vulnerable and sweet?

There should be a dad or older brother or boyfriend making sure no one ever mistreated her. But I had seen no one with her or near her since she moved in. Why the hell was that? I didn’t know her family, but I decided that I really didn’t like them.

“Blythe,” I said, liking just a little too much the way her name rolled across my tongue.

She turned her head to look at me. “Yes?”

I took a step toward her and then stopped. She would spook easily, and that wasn’t what I wanted. I also didn’t want her getting the wrong idea, because there was no way in hell I was taking on someone like her. I didn’t do relationships. I had tried to have one, and I had f**ked it up. Jess had been in love with someone else, so it hadn’t mattered, but it had just about killed me.

I wasn’t ever doing that again. I didn’t do it well. But I could be her friend. I could be a damn good friend. I was good at that. “If you need anything, or anyone, you call me.”

She studied me a moment then slowly nodded. She didn’t ask me why or bat her eyelashes at me in a flirty way. Instead she just smiled. “Okay, thank you” was the only response I got.

“Give me your phone,” I told her.

She walked over to her backpack, pulled out a smartphone, and handed it to me. I added my number then texted myself so I would have hers. “Here,” I told her as I handed it back to her. “Promise me, if you ever need me, you’ll call.”

She nodded again. “I promise.”

“Good.” I grinned at her and walked over to sit down on her sofa. I propped my feet up on the table. “Now, come tell me all about your new classes.”

She didn’t move at first, and I wondered if I had pushed her too hard. I waited. Finally she moved and walked back to the coffeepot and poured two cups.

“How do you take yours?”

“Black,” I replied.

She grinned as she brought the cups over and handed me one. “I didn’t figure you for a cream-and-sugar guy,” she said.

I was making her feel comfortable around me. Good. That was my plan. I wanted her to feel like she could trust me, because she needed someone to f**king trust. “What’s your major?” I asked.

She frowned and stared down at her coffee for a moment. I thought maybe she was done opening up to me. Then she sighed. “I want to write books. But first I need a degree so I can have something to fall back on in case I’m a horrible writer and no one buys my books. So, I’m majoring in English.”

Chapter Five

BLYTHE

For the next two weeks I found a rhythm. Classes, work, study, and occasional visits from Krit. My classes weren’t bad, except for the public speaking one. I wasn’t ready for that. I was trying to prepare myself for the day I had to actually stand in front of everyone and talk, but so far the professor hadn’t called me out.

Work was great. Pastor Keenan had several counseling sessions in the afternoons, and I was left alone to handle the filing, answer the phones, and work on the different things he left on my desk to type up. A few times Linc had dropped by with doughnuts and a friendly smile. He even brought sandwiches one day from a deli in town and convinced me to take my break outside with him. He put me at ease, and for the first time in my life I wasn’t constantly worried about what he might think of me. He just seemed accepting of my faults and he was nice.

I finally had a friend.

Then there was Krit. He also seemed to want to be my friend, and I was grateful that he was so nice. He always stopped by to check on me, and more than once he had brought Chinese food with him and said he needed my help eating it. He was curious about school, and he asked a lot of questions. Then he told me funny stories about his friends and things that had happened to them during performances. I always laughed so hard with Krit. But . . . there was a difference. I was always on edge with him. I couldn’t stop my head from escaping with images of Krit and playing out scenarios that I shouldn’t think about with a friend.

I was attracted to Krit. I had been since the first time I met him, and while he was trying so hard to be a good friend, I was lying in my bed at night bringing myself pleasure with images of Krit in my head. That was the evil in me. It made me feel guilty every time I saw him. Especially on the mornings he stopped by and I was still dealing with the dream I’d had of him the night before.

Not one time had Krit flirted with me or given me any indication he was attracted to me. He was just a nice guy. A really sexy nice guy. I could stare at him for hours and never get bored. On nights that he did have his parties, there was a sick knot in my stomach. I knew he had a girl up there, and he was going to do to her the things I would never experience. Things that scared me, yet fascinated me. Things that I had only ever thought about since meeting Krit.

This infatuation I had with him was only getting worse. When he’d come down to my apartment and asked my opinion on two different shirts, he’d stripped off one to try on the other. I had lost my voice. The sight of his well-defined chest covered in colorful tattoos and the desire to touch them made my face heat up. I had felt flush and slightly off center. When he had left I felt so guilty. He saw me as his friend, not another girl that wanted something from him. Krit didn’t make me uncomfortable by gawking at my body, so doing that to him was wrong and unfair. But then I didn’t have a body like his. The kind that stops traffic.

This was where my head was when Linc showed up at work with a box of chocolate cupcakes. I pushed thoughts of Krit to the back of my mind and focused on Linc. If I could only look at Krit like I looked at Linc, my life would be so much easier.

“Break time? I have it on good authority from my sister that cupcakes don’t get any better than these,” he said with a serious expression and a sparkle in his eyes.

I glanced back at his dad’s office door. He had just gone in there with a married couple, and if the phone rang and I wasn’t there to answer it, then it would interrupt him. “Can we have the break in here so I can get the phone if it rings?” I asked him.

Linc nodded and pulled a chair up to my desk. “No problem,” he replied. “Dad has a counseling session?”

“Yeah, and it just started,” I explained.

“Then I have an hour of your time to waste.” He winked at me and handed me a cupcake.

I was going to gain weight with all the sweets he brought me. But then I decided it didn’t matter. I had gone most of my life without sweets, and I really liked them. The buttercream icing melted on my tongue, and I let out a small moan. So good. How I had lived my life without these kind of treats, I didn’t know.

I opened my eyes to tell Linc thank you, but the intensity of his gaze stopped me. He wasn’t eating his cupcake. His eyes were locked on my lips as he sat frozen. The only movements were the pupils in his eyes as they grew, and the vein pulsing in his neck.

“Blythe,” he said in a deep voice that startled me.

“Yes?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. His eyes lifted only briefly to meet mine before they went back to my lips. I lifted my hand to touch my mouth to make sure there was no icing clinging to them that he didn’t want to tell me about and risk embarrassing me.

He reached over and pulled my hand away from my mouth gently, then moved in closer. His eyes never leaving my lips. My heart rate picked up and I nervously bit my bottom lip wondering if I should move or say something.

“I’m going to kiss you,” he told me, and before I could let what he said register, his mouth was on mine.

It was my first kiss. His lips were warm and tasted like the mint of his chewing gum. I wasn’t sure what I should do. I was curious about kissing, and I liked Linc—he was nice—but he was my boss’s son. We were also in a church.

Mrs. Wilson would hate that I was kissing a man in a church. She would call me filthy and dirty. But she was dead. I slipped a hand into Linc’s hair and decided that I liked doing something that that woman would hate. When Linc’s tongue ran across my bottom lip and pressed between my lips, I opened my mouth and let him inside.

“Told you those cupcakes were good,” a female voice said, and then Linc’s mouth was gone.

I dropped my hand back into my lap and turned around to see a female version of Linc standing in front of my desk, a knowing grin on her face. This was his sister. I had seen the pictures in the pastor’s office. She hadn’t stopped by in the two weeks I had been there, even though Pastor Keenan had said more than once that she would love me.

“You couldn’t stand it, could you?” Linc said in an annoyed tone as he stared at his sister.

She cocked an eyebrow at him and shrugged. “You spend all your free time coming to visit here, and I knew it wasn’t Dad you were bringing treats for. So I thought I would visit the new secretary and introduce myself.”

Linc’s hand moved to clamp down on my thigh.

His sister’s eyes saw it, and she laughed and shook her head. “Seems you’ve got my brother all kinds of worked up,” she said, then smiled at me. “I’m Lilah. Sorry I haven’t been here to meet you yet. I’ve been busy getting things moved into my dorm, and I knew Linc was keeping you company every chance he got.”

Lilah had the same dark hair as Linc, but it was longer and curled around her shoulders. She also had the same green eyes and long eyelashes. But she had a dimple in her right cheek that Linc didn’t have. “It’s nice to meet you,” I replied. “And the cupcakes are amazing.”

She beamed at me. “I know, right?” Then she shifted her attention to Linc. “You weren’t exaggerating,” she said to him.

I glanced at him, and he was covering up a grin with his hand and trying to make it look like he was casually rubbing it over his mouth. The laughter in his eyes told me differently.

I was missing something here.

“I have to go. I’ve got a lunch meeting in thirty minutes. I’ll be back to visit when I’m in town next time. Be careful with him. He isn’t as nice as he looks.” Lilah winked, spun around, and then left the office.

“I would like to say she’s not normally so annoyingly dramatic but I’d be lying,” Linc said.

I was alone with Linc again, and this time we had a kiss between us. What did I say to him now?