Free Carried Away: A Small Town Romance (The Moore Brothers Book 2) by Abby Brooks Page A

lips as his eyes left burning trails of hotness in their wake. “It would have been a shame to ruin that shirt. You look amazing.”
    Something akin to joy rushed through Ellie’s heart and rustled up a bunch of butterflies in her stomach. “Take that, Parasite Steve,” Ellie muttered.
    “What?” James looked baffled.
    Embarrassment took a lawnmower to the field of butterflies in her stomach, shredding the whole thing to pieces. “There I go again,” she said, barely able to see through the flames of humiliation on her cheeks. “Saying dumb shit out loud that nobody needs to hear.” She shrugged and hoped he’d move on.
    He didn’t. “Did you call me a parasite?”
    “No. I wasn’t talking about you.” Ellie flexed her hands and rubbed them together. “My ex. Steve. He said I looked like a hooker in this shirt.”
    “Parasite Steve.” Humor lit James’s eyes and he chuckled. “I take it he didn’t rate much on the provider scale?”
    “Nope. Not unless that scale had negative numbers.”
    James paused and looked thoughtful before his eyes met hers again. “I brought you flowers.” He gestured towards a bouquet upended on the floor next to the spreading pool of mayonnaise and other condiments. “I sacrificed them to save you.”
    “Well, thank you on both counts.” Ellie steepled her fingers and put them under her chin, contemplating what to do with the mess of a kitchen now that James was here.
    “So, uh,” James said, looking around with wide eyes. “This place is a disaster. I don’t feel quite so bad about letting you inside my house now, if this is how you keep your shop.”
    “It shouldn’t look like this, but it seems like I’m down a cook as of about…” Ellie looked at her wrist as if checking a watch. “...about a half an hour or so ago.”
    James looked baffled and Ellie explained. “You mean this guy got all shitty and walked out because you had a date?” he asked when she was done.
    “Yup. That about sums it up.”
    “Were you two messing around?”
    Ellie snorted. “With Ben? No. Not that he wasn’t interested. Apparently very interested. But no. I made sure to make it abundantly clear that I was nothing more than his boss.”
    James made a face that said he wasn’t so sure her message got across and then scanned the kitchen. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that you’re going to want to clean some of this up before we leave?”
    He didn’t look at all interested in waiting around while she scooped mayonnaise off the floor, and the truth of it was that she wasn’t at all interested in actually having to scoop mayonnaise off the floor, either. Like, not at all. She’d been waiting days to get her ass to the Shrimp Fest and apparently, felt like her responsibility quota had already been met for the day.
    “Nope.” Ellie shrugged. “I’ll pay for it tonight when it stinks and I have to scrape it all off the floor, but I am so ready to get out of here.”
    “Atta girl,” said James and offered her his elbow. “Let’s get going.”
    “Just one thing before we go.” Ellie bent and picked up the flowers and smoothed out the petals and broken stems as best as she could. “They’re very pretty. Thank you. This was very thoughtful of you.”
    “I didn’t know if you would have any customers or not. I thought it’d look extra good if I showed up with presents.”
    Oh. That’s right. None of this is real.
    Ellie brought the flowers up to her face to cover the reaction she couldn’t hide. She’d gotten all swept up in the compliments about her shirt, the heat in his gaze as it traveled over her body, his hands wrapped around her when she fell. She forgot it was all a farce. All for show. Nothing he said or did meant anything.
    Except that kiss the other day meant something.
    It meant something all right. It meant that James was a man and men lived and died by their penises. What was the statistic? They thought about sex every other second or something?