Free The Trouble With Snowmen by Dorlana Vann

was and see what happened. How could she be demanding of his intentions when she knew she had never actually been in love with him? If she had loved Travis, she wouldn’t have fell so fast and so hard for Larry. She wasn’t sure what that had been with Larry, but she did know her feelings for him were on a different level than what she felt for Travis . . . or any other guy.
    “Okay,” she whispered to Travis, thinking this might be the only way she would ever get over the Larry White, once and for all. “Show me.”

Chapter 14
    “Don’t do that,” Brenda whispered from across the table.
    “What?” Larry said, confused for a second but then remembered smelling his bite of Eggs Benedict. “You don’t think it’s adorable?” He winked at her.
    “This is a four-star restaurant. Please don’t smell your food. You’re going to insult the chef.” She was dressed as her lawyer-self this morning. Hair up, glasses on her nose, dark-gray power suit.
    He dabbed the sides of his mouth with his napkin and in his best uptight butler voice, he said, “I apologize, madam, for my obscenely rude breakfast manners.”
    She stared at him, unblinking, not kidding.
    Larry frowned. Did she really have no sense of humor? She used to, didn’t she? When they were in college?
    But then she sat back and smiled. “Oh, I’m just kidding. Look at you. You can get by with anything.”
    “Well, I don’t know about anything. You’d be surprised.”
    “Speaking of surprises, I have one for you.”
    “A surprise?” He had begun to feel like a kept man. She drove him around, paid for everything. “What is it?”
    “A surprise. I can’t tell you. Not yet, after breakfast.”
    “Well, you do have my curiosity stirred,” he mumbled.
    Her phone rang but she managed to say, “Excellent,” before answering it. She spoke with authority on the phone, and Larry zoned out of the conversation as he thought about their evening.
    The climax had been pleasurable enough, but up until that moment, it had all been routine. Brenda was the only woman he’d ever been with that just wanted to get down to business, which he usually appreciated, but last night it had all seemed a bit colder. And she’d seemed a bit frail and fragile. He couldn’t really blame that one on Brenda because he knew he was comparing her to Haley. Then, seconds later, he had finished comparing and only thought about Haley. Every time his mind eased into the memory of the movement of her body against his, an explosion of feelings roused every inch of his body and mind. Making love to Haley had been— Wait! What? Had he ever used that word before to describe sex? Love. Where the hell had that come from?
    “Larry!”
    “What?”
    Brenda narrowed her eyes at him. “Wow, where were you?”
    “Sorry. You know, book stuff. I have that signing on the fifteenth.”
    “Oh. Don’t worry, I’ll be there. Are you finished eating? I’ve got to meet with a client.”
    “It’s Saturday.”
    “I know,” she said as if she talked to a two-year-old. “I know, I promised to spend the day with you but this is an emergency. But I do have time to take you to your surprise first.”
    “You sure? It can wait. I’m a big boy.” He actually needed some time to himself. He had to stop worrying about if he sat up straight or used the right freaking fork. Their relationship had taken a strange turn, even before the sex last night. Usually it was just a one-night thing. It almost felt as if they were dating, and that made him a bit uncomfortable.
    She smiled. “No, it can’t. You are going to love it.”
    But everything was cool because he planned on going home today. At least they were on the same page when it came to work. She would understand. And after he went home, they would text, he would escort her to a party or two, maybe even answer a couple of ‘let’s have sex’ calls, and soon they would be back to the same relationship they’d had for years.
    Thirty minutes later,