He's the One: Winning a Groom in 10 Dates / Molly Cooper's Dream Date / Mr Right There All Along. Jackie Braun

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      And he liked hers. A whole lot more than he’d expected to. His sense of having sinned deeply grew more acute.

      “Well, Sophie,” the swagger was completely gone out of Gregg’s voice, “You know you’re welcome to come. Bring your new friend with you.”

      The invitation was issued now with the patent insincerity of a man who saw something he’d been using to puff himself up disappearing before his eyes.

      “We might just do that,” Brand said easily.

      Gregg got in his car and roared away, spitting stones as if they proved his testosterone levels were substantially higher than those of the next guy.

      Brand committed to getting rid of his own sports car sooner rather than later.

      “Were they to swine for?” Hilde demanded, mixing German and English.

      “What?” Sophie asked, dazed.

      “His lips!”

      “No. Yes.” She closed her eyes, gathered herself and then looked sternly at her grandmother. “Stop.”

      And then she turned to Brand. The dazed expression was completely gone from her face.

      “What did you do that for?” she demanded.

      He tried not to smile. The girl was transparent! It was written all over her that she was torn between yes and no, stop and go, hitting him or thanking him.

      And it was written all over her that that kiss had rocked her tidy world in a way she would never want him to know. But then again, he didn’t really want her to suspect it had rocked his, too.

      “Your ex was just gloating over your discomfort at his arrival a little too much,” he said quietly. “It bugged me.”

      “How did you know he was my ex?” she asked, aghast.

      “I’m good at reading people,” he said. He didn’t add that it was a survival mechanism, that over the past few years his life had depended on that skill. “I’m glad about the ex part, Sophie. I didn’t care for him much.”

      Her grandmother snickered with approval and Sophie shot her a quelling look.

      “You only saw him for thirty seconds!”

      “Like I said,” he lifted a shoulder elaborately, “I have a gift for reading people.”

      “He looked like a good kisser,” her grandmother insisted in German.

      “Stop it!” Sophie said in English.

      “Stop what?” Brand asked innocently.

      She looked him straight in the face. “Stop rescuing me, Brand. I’m not fifteen anymore. I don’t need your help with my personal affairs.”

      She blushed when she said affairs in just about the way she had when she’d said dork all those years ago, as if she was fifteen and had just used a risqué word. It was very sweet. She was very sweet. The kind of girl he knew nothing about.

      She was right. He needed to stop rescuing her.

      “It was just an impulse,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”

      She struggled to look composed. Instead she looked crushed.

      “Unless you want it to,” he couldn’t resist tossing out silkily.

      “I want it to,” Hilde said, all in English. She reached across the table, touched Brand’s hand. The mischief was gone from her eyes. “The whole town is whispering about my Sophie and him. I’d much rather they whispered about my Sophie and you.”

       Chapter Four

      SOPHIE was still stuck on the unless you want it to part. Good God, she thought, she might be super-nerd of national-speech-contest fame, but of course she wanted it to. Happen again.

      Sophie’s lips were tingling from being kissed. She felt exactly like a princess who had been sleeping, the touch of those lips bringing her fully to life. She was aware some part of her had waited, longed for, wanted what had just happened since she was a scrawny flat-chested teen in braces and glasses.

      His lips had tasted of passion and promises and of worlds she had never been to. Had not even known existed. Places she wanted desperately, suddenly, now that she did know of their existence, to visit.

      Who wouldn’t want more of that?

      But, unless she was mistaken, Brand was enjoying her discomfort as much as he had just accused Gregg of doing.

      Men!

      Not that any man could hold a candle to her grandmother, who apparently felt driven to share with Brand Sophie’s closely guarded secret, that she was somehow becoming pathetic.

      Sophie struggled through her embarrassment to remember her mission last night. To be free of all her romantic notions and nonsense.

      She wasn’t letting Mr. Brand Sheridan think she was still the starry-eyed fifteen-year-old she had once been.

      She wasn’t letting him know that one tiny ultra-casual brushing of lips had her ready to pack her bags and travel to unknown territory.

      No! Sophie Holtzheim was taking back control and she was doing it right now. If Brand thought she was weak and pathetic and in need of his big, strong, arrogant self to rescue her, he’d better think again!

      But Brand was looking at her grandmother, and suddenly he didn’t look as if he was enjoying her discomfort over that kiss.

      “It’s a bad thing to lose face in a small town,” he said quietly.

      “Yes!” her grandmother crowed, delighted that he had understood her so completely.

      “It would be good for Sophie to have a romance so heated it would make the whole town forget she ever knew him,” Brand said thoughtfully

      “Yes!” Her grandmother was beaming at his astuteness.

      “Okay, I’ll do it,” Brand said, casually, as if he had agreed to his good deed for the day.

      “Do what?” Sophie demanded.

      “Romance you.”

      “You will not!”

      “It will convince Gregg and the whole town that you’re over him,” Brand said with aggravating confidence, as if it was already decided.

      “It’s deceptive,” Sophie said, and then realized that wasn’t the out-and-out no that such an outlandish suggestion deserved.

      “It could be fun,” Brand said.

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