Free All I Want by Natalie Ann Page B

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    Make bread. Did he just say make bread? “ Don’t go to any trouble.”
    “Okay, now you sound just like me. I tell my mom that all the time when she says she is going to send me food and I don’t want her to.”
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” Crap, so much for keeping up the teasing. “Of course I’d love to come to dinner. I just thought homemade bread is a lot of work. I’ve tried it a few times and it’s one of the few fails I’ve had. I can’t seem to master it.”
    “Really? Then I guess you can try mine, and if you like it, I can show you how to make it.”
    “I’d like that.” She breathed a sigh of relief that he didn’t take offense to what she had said.
    Dinner went off without a hitch. Why she was nervous, she didn’t have a clue. He was just so easy to talk to. So easy to be around—and so easy to fall for.
    She had to remind herself to step back. She was crazy to be having those thoughts this soon. She normally didn’t have them much when she was dating someone.
    Never had she wanted to let her mind drift that way until she knew the guy was someone she could feel completely comfortable around. For some reason, Sean knocked down the wall she always put up in the beginning. Walls that most people didn’t even know she had.
    There was a smoothness to the way Sean talked, dressed and acted. Not in a creepy way, and not in a fake way either. He was open, honest, and simple, for lack of a better explanation. Nothing about him seemed a pretense. Almost like what you saw was what you got, no holds barred.
    He was funny and sweet, tender even. Most men wouldn’t like to be described that way, she knew. But she’d bet he didn’t mind either.
    Considerate, that was another thing about Sean that she liked. He was always trying to put her at ease and she appreciated that quality in him. More than anyone could understand. More than she ever wanted to tell people. She’d lived too much of her life in fear, and she didn’t want to do it anymore.
    She’d worked so hard to put it all behind and help others do the same. At the first sign that someone might pull her back into that world, she broke it off, and fled fast without a backward glance.
    But Sean didn’t show any signs of anything to tip her off. Nothing to lead her to be fearful. Of course they hadn’t known each other that long. But still, he’d worked for the Harpers for years, and that alone said something. They didn’t tolerate shadiness from anyone.
    So at the end of the night when he drove her home, then walked her to her door, she didn’t hesitate to ask him in for coffee. His ready agreement didn’t shock her in the least. “Just coffee,” she clarified. She didn’t want to lead him on or give him any false hope of anything else, because coffee was all he was getting.
    “I didn’t think otherwise.”
    “Seriously? Or are you just saying that?”
    “I’m serious. Really, Carly, I don’t picture you as the type of girl to bring a man home on the first or second date. Even though you actually did.”
    He was joking, she knew that, and laughed right along with him. “True. I’m not that way. I’m not even the third-date type of girl.” She tossed that out there too, just to see his reaction. There had to be something wrong with him. He almost seemed too good to be true.
    “Thank God for that, because my mother told me never to get involved with a third-date girl.”
    She couldn’t help smiling. It was just the thing to say, and the right time to say it. She wasn’t stupid. She knew if she offered to bring him upstairs, he wouldn’t turn her down. Just the same, she replied with, “Good. I wouldn’t want to get on your mother’s bad side.”
    “Oh, I’m not sure that is even possible.”
    She wasn’t sure what he meant by that—and was afraid to ask.

Shoe To Drop
     
    Sean lay in bed hours later, wide awake and thinking about his date with Carly. He was right when he said she couldn’t