Page 45 of The Law of Attraction
They sat there together, holding hands in silence. Keeping each other company and giving each other space at the same time. Olivia didn’t even know how much time they spent that way before Adam cleared his throat with a sound like a rusty chainsaw.
She lifted her head and her eyes met his.
Oh man, those eyes.
She was in no way prepared to stare directly into those eyes of his. Especially the way they were looking at her now, deeper and darker than she’d ever seen.
For a moment Olivia was paralyzed, unable to look away even though looking was almost more than she could stand.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow,” Adam said.
It took her incapacitated brain a second to register the meaning behind his words.
His hand slipped out of hers and he stood up. “We should get an early start in the morning. Like, crack of dawn early.”
Jesus everloving Christ, did he think she was coming on to him? Was that how it had seemed? Because that was not how she’d meant it.
Not that she was disinterested, necessarily.
To be honest, she was having trouble parsing how she felt about him. It seemed to change from moment to moment. One second she wanted to sock him in his annoying, sexy mouth, and the next she was imagining what it would be like to kiss him. It was starting to give her whiplash, all this pinging from one extreme to the other.
And now she’d accidentally given him the impression she was coming on to him, when she was just trying to be a friend.
Fine. Whatever. She couldn’t be held responsible for his misapprehensions.
“Do we know what time the auto shop opens?” she asked, trying to play it cool as he backed away from her.
“Seven, I think.”
“Okay,” she nodded. “I’ll be ready.”
“Well, goodnight. And thanks for—” He waved his hand at the snacks on the table, but she suspected he was talking about more than just the food.
“Anytime,” she told him, hoping he knew what she meant.
When he got to the doorway he paused and half turned back. “You want to get some breakfast while we wait for the car?”
“Sure. Sounds great.”
Adam stepped into his room and started to close the door.
“Do you mind leaving the door open a little?” she called out.
His eyebrows drew together in confused surprise. “Why?”
“This’ll sound dumb, but that guy at the desk creeped me out the way he stared at me when we asked for separate rooms. I just—I’d feel better if the door were cracked a little. Just in case—you know—so you’d be able to hear if anything…”
Adam’s face went all hard and protective, like she’d inadvertently engaged some sort of alpha male Terminator mode. “You think he’s going to try to come into your room or something?”
“No, not really. I’m just being paranoid, probably.”
“Did you do the extra latch on the door?” He walked over to her door and double-checked all the locks. Then he went to the window and checked that too. “I’ll make sure my room’s secure too, just in case.”
“I know it’s weird that I'm worried about it.”
“It's not weird,” he assured her.
What was weird was that she trusted Adam so much without really knowing him. If you'd told her yesterday that tonight she'd be asking him to leave the door between their rooms open, she'd have called you a raging nutbar.
