Page 13 of Wild Hope

“This is just the beginning of something incredible.Something perfect.”

She’d never met anyone so confident.It was addictive and maybe even a little contagious.

“Perfect,” she repeated.This time, Andi initiated the kiss.It was a hungry kiss, full of passion and desire, and for a moment, she forgot they were in a very public place.

She broke off the kiss, flushing.That was when she saw Joel blinking, trying to regain his own focus.It was nice to know she wasn’t the only one getting carried away.

“Say yes, Andi.To visiting New York.To recording the song.To giving me a chance to prove to you just how right this thing between us is.”

She prided herself on being a rational, logical woman.Everything she did was done with introspection, with a lot of careful consideration, and even a list of pros and cons.

With Joel, all she wanted to do was dream and hope and dive into those pretty pictures he was drawing in her mind.

She looked into his dark brown eyes, framed with lines that told her he was a man who smiled and laughed often.Trust wasn’t something she’d ever managed to give easily, that ability broken when her dad took off and her mother started drinking, losing jobs, constantly leaving them on the brink of poverty.

However, none of her usual doubts appeared as she looked at his handsome, kind face.All she saw in him was someone she could trust, someone she could rely on.Someone she could love.

He was right.It was crazy fast, but after a lifetime of simply going through the motions, Joel was offering her the chance at something extraordinary.

So she tossed caution to the wind, the answer painfully obvious.

“Say yes,” he murmured again when the silence lingered too long.

“Yes.”

ChapterFour

Andi wasn’t sure how she’d gotten here, but as she stepped out of the taxi in front of the fancy hotel Joel had put her and her family up in for the weekend, she refused to pinch herself.There was no way she was running the risk of waking herself from this dream.

She’d moved Heaven and Earth to rearrange her work schedule so that she could make this weekend trip.

Actually, she rethought that.

Because it hadn’t been that hard.

All those years of covering other people’s shifts had paid off, her friends from work happy to help her out, excited when she told them about the trip and the opportunity to record one of her songs.

Padraig hadn’t blinked twice when she asked for the days off, claiming he knew the moment he met Joel that he was about to lose a great waitress.Then the crazy—wonderful—man started bragging to a few of the regulars sitting at the bar that Pat’s Pub had struck again, discovering another talented musician.

She assured Padraig she would be back waiting tables by Tuesday night, but—in true Collins style—he had disagreed, then gone straight to a wager.The Collins family was always placing friendly bets on pretty much everything under the sun.Padraig bet her twenty bucks that she would be living in New York by the end of the year.Then he said when he won, he also wanted two front row seats—and backstage passes—to her first concert for him and his wife, Emmy.

Andi had taken the bet, certain she was in no danger of losing.

But after this weekend in New York, that conviction was wavering.

Probably because of the sexy man standing next to her.It had only been one week since they met at the convenience store.

Just seven days.

Yet, it felt as if they’d spent every second of this past week talking and…yeah…dreaming.Joel asked her what she wanted in life and once she told him, he had grabbed hold of that list like it had been chiseled in stone.Despite him returning to New York on Tuesday, he had texted, Facetimed, and called her every single day since.Initially, he claimed it was simply to get all the details of her visit nailed down, but he had confessed this morning that he’d kept the lines of communication open due to his fear that she would find a reason to cancel.

And to be honest, she had tried, worried she was making a big mistake in trusting a man who was essentially a stranger.

Sure.He was a stranger who kissed like pure sin and set her heart racing with a mere look, but he was still a stranger, nonetheless.

The original plan had been for her and her brother to visit.Joel knew she’d be more comfortable coming to stay if she had family with her, so he had sweetened the pot in a way she simply couldn’t refuse.It turned out Joel had a friend who was a professor at NYC, and the man graciously agreed to join them for lunch on Saturday, followed by a private tour of the campus.Dylan had flipped his lid when she told him she’d secured an opportunity for them to not only travel to the city, but to also tour his dream school.She wasn’t sure Joel realized that he had won himself a fan for life in her brother after this weekend.

What they hadn’t planned for was her mother joining them.Despite the college tour carrot, Dylan had refused to come if Mom didn’t, determined that one of them needed to remain in Baltimore with her.Andi had expected the trip to fall through at that point but Joel, the magnificent man, had simply told them to bring her along.