Free Finding the Right Girl (A Nice GUY to Love spin-off) by Violet Duke

almost fell off her chair. He’d never seen her without those colorful weekly-changing streaks in her hair—without it, her ink black hair framed her face with a softness that made her look more delicate, vulnerable. Infinitely more memorable.
    And when she laughed. Jesus. The effect could stop traffic. It didn’t take much for her dainty fairy-like features—dark cat-like eyes, petal soft skin, and full, just-kissed lips that curved up at the corners even when she wasn’t smiling—to become the picture of unabashed pleasure, joy. That’s what it was. Joy. Her eyes would absolutely fill with joy, turning into ‘rainbow eyes,’ Beth used to call it—a phenomena he’d only ever seen in a few cherubic children. Shining with humor, arched like two little half-moons over high, laughing cheekbones, those eyes alone could make a stranger smile.
    A stark contrast to the week prior.
    For days after that night, he hadn’t been able to shake the image of her telling him about her heartbreaking past, her eyes brimming with tears she simply refused to shed, her broken-angel features almost haunting in its pain.
    He stared at her in wonder. “Seriously, Tessa, how is it that you can you still laugh like that?”
    “Like what?” She blinked, little bursts of laughter still seeping into her voice.
    “Like the universe hasn’t taken everything out of you and crushed your spirit, like it hasn’t squeezed the humor out of your soul with its selective cruelty.”
    She looked startled for a moment, but then recovered with a slow nod. “Sometimes I forget you know exactly what that feels like.” Shaking her head, she said softly. “For a while, I couldn’t laugh. Especially after Willow died. It’s not easy. To keep laughing. You have to be open to surprises, not shut yourself off to it. When you focus so much on surviving, nothing is a surprise because you’ve prepared yourself for everything. Nothing is funny anymore. You can’t laugh if you don’t let the unexpected sneak up on you and take you by surprise.”
    “Here, try this—look out that window and catalog everything you see.”
    He looked out at the pitch black scenery outside. “Everything I see in the dark?”
    “Just do it. There’s enough street light. Be quiet and concentrate.”
    He stared off into the night and took inventory of the neighbor’s fence off to the right, the house with the weird rock garden out front, three SUVs… He heard her shuffling around behind him. “What are you doing back there?”
    “Stop getting distracted. Keep going,” she said sternly.
    When she fell all but silent behind him, he focused back on the bizarre task at hand. Street curb, tree, fire hydrant…
    “Okay, now turn around and tell me what you see.”
    He pivoted toward her and heard it before he saw it—the airy hiss that registered in his brain a split-second too late.
    Followed by an ice-cold splatter webbing over his face.
    Incredulous, he swiped a hand down his face to clear the whipped cream out of his eye.
    The woman had actually sprayed him with a can of whipped cream.
    Tessa’s jaw fell open and she backed up a step. “I swear, I didn’t know it was going to do that. I was just aiming for your mouth.”
    With a slow, simmering smile, he wiped the rest of the cream off on the sleeve of his shirt as he stalked toward her. “You’re so going to get it.”
    Her eyes flicked down to take in just how much white foam was now staining his partly rolled sleeves and her lips twitched in a flagrant lack of remorse.
    Despite the fact that she was laughing at his expense, he smiled wider. Mostly because he’d just added that escaped grin to the tally of things he was going to collect on.
    “Now, Brian. Let’s be rational,” she tried reasoning. “You can’t blame me for that food canister malfunction.”
    Another tiny giggle.
    Check.
    The closer he got, the more he wondered why exactly she wasn’t even trying to run—
    He found out moments later when