The back of Aurora’s neck prickled an instant before she realized she wasn’t alone. It wasn’t so simple as registering the presence of another person—the atmosphere shifted and rolled in a different direction, as if the newcomer commanded the very molecules of the air.
“Can I help you?”
That voice.
She turned her head and locked eyes with the man who had interrupted her ill-timed pity party outside of the grocery store yesterday. Yep. He was still the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes on in real life. He was almost too pretty to look at and came with his own soundtrack, or at least she heard music in her head that shouldn’t be there. He blinked ridiculously long lashes that belonged on a magazine cover model, not a flesh and blood man a scant few feet from her.
Especially not one who had seen her at her absolute worst. And now he’d caught her skulking around like a lame Peeping Tom. Strike two. She didn’t relish a third.
This was the part where she was supposed to talk. “We meet again. This time without the waterworks.”
As far as he knew anyway. She might tear up at any given moment based on how often it had happened thus far. Who knew that grief would sneak up on you when you were totally unprepared for a song to come on the radio that reminded you of your mom? The one she’d lost, not the one she hadn’t found yet.
“A fact I’m most appreciative of,” he rumbled in that voice, which should clearly be recruited to sell stuff to women. Washing machines. Dog food. It didn’t matter. They’d line up in droves to purchase whatever he was peddling, especially if they got a glimpse of the full package.
Not that she was doing an excessive amount of soaking that part in or anything.
“I’m sorry. I’m not normally like that.”
“Don’t apologize. You cry all you want,” he said. “I just meant because I definitely don’t have any tissues to share with you this time. Just the hem of my shirt, which you are welcome to, but that might get a little awkward.”
Gah, a man who would whip the shirt off his back to hand over to a crying woman didn’t come along every day. Most men either wanted to immediately fix the problem or ignore the tears completely. Therefore, she had no context for how to conduct this conversation.
“Odds are high I’ll find a way to make it awkward whether you take off your shirt or not.”
For some reason, that made him smile. Note to self: never do that again. When he smiled, it took over his whole body and did zingy things to hers without her permission.
“Were you looking for someone?” he asked.
Yeah, herself. Her birth mother was irrevocably tied to that.
