LITMIR.BIZ

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time, or why he’d missed attending one class or another.

      There’d been a teacher, a dour looking professor with thick gray hair and an even thicker Scottish brogue, who’d told him that he might be better off putting his fertile mind to some sort of productive use that didn’t involve fabricating elaborate excuses. After a bit, he’d decided to take the professor’s words to heart and, as people liked to say, the rest was history.

      They’d entered Laguna Beach proper, with its tiny, artsy shops, a couple of minutes ago. Brandon hadn’t even noticed. He took a second to orient himself. A pinch in his gut told him what time it was.

      “Are you hungry?” Brandon asked.

      The question had come out of left field. She glanced at her watch and realized that they had been driving around for almost an hour. If anything, she would have assumed he’d turn around to go back, not suggest staying out longer.

      Maybe he really didn’t want to go back and stare at his blank computer screen, she thought. If that was the case, she was happy to play along and give him an excuse. Besides, she really was hungry. “Why, is my stomach growling?”

      “No, but I just realized we’re coming up on The Enchanted Cottage, and I don’t know about you, but I left without having any lunch.”

      She hadn’t eaten lunch, either, and breakfast was a blur. But she was more interested right now in the name he’d just casually dropped. “The Enchanted Cottage?” she repeated. “Isn’t that an old movie with Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire?”

      They were at a light, and he took the opportunity to stare at her in wonder. “I’ve never met anyone else who’d ever heard of the movie. Did you even have a childhood?” he asked.

      “Yes, and that was it, watching old movies.” Getting lost in stories that were larger than life had helped her deal with a cold upbringing.

      “Well, I’m impressed,” he freely admitted. “So, are you hungry?”

      She could literally feel her stomach tightening in both protest and anticipation. She nodded. “I could eat, yes.”

      That was all he wanted to hear. Brandon grinned. “Great.”

      As it turned out, the restaurant, which looked like a quaint cottage, was just up ahead, nestled on the corner to his left at the next traffic light. It was timed to turn red as he approached and then took its own sweet time turning green again, despite the fact that there was no through traffic to merit the long wait.

      The moment it turned green, Brandon drove down the side street and searched for a place to park. Half a block later, he found it. He carefully slipped his vehicle between a truck and a sports car with an ease she couldn’t help admiring.

      “You parallel park.” There was no missing the note of awe in her voice. She was lucky to manage head-in parking. Wedging a vehicle between two tight places was definitely not one of her favorite activities. She was fairly certain that she couldn’t do it.

      “I also know all the stanzas to ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’” Brandon quipped as he pulled up the emergency brake and turned off the ignition.

      “A man with endless talents,” Isabelle remarked with only partially feigned admiration.

      Getting out of the vehicle, he laughed. “I guess that accurately sums me up.”

      The next moment, the laugh faded as he quickly jumped into action. Grabbing Isabelle by the shoulder, he yanked her back, away from the street.

      Caught off guard, she stumbled, and her body slammed into his. All their parts fitted together splendidly, leaving no space for even a glimmer of daylight.

      The reason for the sudden action was to prevent Isabelle from being hit by a careening, all-but-out-of-control sports car whose driver had obviously taken to celebrating heavily a little early in the day. The sound of tires screeching and wailing as the driver narrowly avoided smashing into several parked cars on the next block vaguely registered along the outer perimeter of her mind.

      What registered in the foreground was heat.

      Lots and lots of heat.

      None of which was emanating from the beach a mere block away as the crow flew. It was being created from the very firm, very enticing contact of their two bodies momentarily sealed against one another in the most natural, albeit the most sensually provocative, of ways.

      Was that his heart beating like a wild drum, or hers? At this point, she couldn’t tell. She only knew that she was in very real danger of melting as the feeling of excitement all but roared through her veins like a charging rhino.

      “Sorry,” Brandon murmured, looking down into her eyes, making no effort to pull away.

      “Nothing to be sorry about,” she replied, the words leaving her mouth in what felt like slow motion, in direct contrast to the wild throbbing of her pulse. It beat so hard, she thought it would shatter her wrists. “You just saved me from being flattened,” she managed to conclude. She congratulated herself on not sounding too breathless.

      Shaking himself free of the spell that she’d woven around him, he pretended to look up and down the rurallike street.

      “Never a cop around when you need one,” he complained under his breath.

      She was just now coming to grips with what could have happened. “Good thing you were here.”

      His eyes skimmed over her body, none the worse for wear, he decided. “Yeah. Good thing,” he parroted.

      God, but the conversation was inane. It had to be brought up two notches before it could even qualify as “lame.”

      He could do so much better on paper, Brandon told himself. Had done so much better in real life. But that was when his brain was functioning, capable of forming complete sentences. Right now, all he could think of was that he wanted to kiss this woman. Wanted to kiss her in the very worst possible way. Kiss her for a very long time.

      But she was his mother’s physical therapist, and some how, kissing her just didn’t seem right.

      The next moment, he rebelled at the restriction. The hell with right.

      The last phrase echoed in his head as he cupped the sides of Isabelle’s face with his hands. By turns he saw the surprise, the wonder and then the surrender in her eyes. She tilted her head back ever so slightly.

      The silent invitation was clear.

      Brandon brought his mouth down on hers.

      Her pulse was already fast because she’d just barely escaped being struck by the careening sports car. But it might as well have stopped beating altogether in comparison to its speed the moment Brandon began kissing her.

      Fireworks went off in her veins as his kiss registered and then deepened. Her head spun.

      She’d read that exact sort of description once, had even mulled over it wistfully, despite telling herself that feelings like that didn’t happen in real life. Kisses were just that. Kisses. Lips touching lips. Skin on skin. Nothing more. Kisses had no secret powers, no ability to set rockets ricocheting through the heavens and through her as they simultaneously wiped out all ability to think. That was just literary license run amok.

      But here she was, having it happen. To her. One moment, she was almost roadkill, the next, soaring through the afternoon sky, no longer bound by something so mundane as a mortal body.

      He made her feel positively giddy, and she absolutely loved the sensation.

      The attraction Brandon had initially felt for her flared. Momentarily vulnerable by the very real possibility of losing her had his reaction been a nanosecond slower, he’d kissed her.

      And discovered himself in a whole different place than he thought he would be.

      Control was extremely important to Brandon, because there’d been so little of it available to him when he was younger. When he

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