Close To My Heart: A Forced Proximity Collection by Kait Nolan

Author:Kait Nolan [Nolan, Kait]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Take The Leap Publishing
Published: 2023-07-21T04:00:00+00:00

SIX

She hadn’t been looking for the book. She hadn’t been deliberately poking around Ty’s place at all beyond what was necessary to find a wooden bowl for the fruit that would ruin in that bag on top of the microwave or the basket she’d found for the pretty greenery and pinecones she’d gathered on her afternoon walk. And, okay, she’d needed the extra blankets she’d finally located in a chest because the wood stove had gone out and she didn’t know how to relight it. But how was she to know his library, such as it was, would be in the cleverly concealed drawers beneath the sofa? And why shouldn’t she have looked? She was an author, a reader. She loved books. He had several of Ivy’s thrillers, some of Harrison’s sci-fi, an assortment of fantasy she wasn’t as familiar with. And many of hers.

He’d told her that weekend of the wedding that he’d read and liked her books. She’d been utterly mortified, not only because he was far from her target audience, but because she’d been writing thinly veiled versions of him all this time. Or the him she’d imagined he’d become. If he’d recognized himself, he hadn’t called her out on it, and Paisley had let that detail go.

She remembered it now as she lifted the battered volume. The edges were stained, the pages wavy, as if it had gotten wet at some point. The cover was a little frayed and white around the corners, with a multitude of bends and folds, like maybe it had been shoved into a rucksack in a hurry. Maybe it had been. The spine was creased in the way of a favorite that had been visited again and again. Running a finger over her own name, she wondered why this one? There were a few others in the box, but none that had been this well read. It was one of her few romantic suspense novels, part of a series about a private security firm run by former military types. What was it about this story that had made him come back to it over and over? The redemption arc? The friends-to-lovers plot? Flipping pages, she let the book fall open. But before she could see what scene he’d reread, she heard a key in the lock.

Feeling guilty, she hurriedly put the book back and shoved the drawer back under the sofa, throwing herself back into the nest of blankets.

Ty came in laden with grocery bags. His gaze automatically swept the cabin, pausing on the fruit bowl she’d placed on the tiny butcher block island and the basket of greenery on the coffee table beside her laptop. The mouth that had already been frowning seemed to dip further.

“What’s with the green stuff?”

“I picked it on my walk this afternoon. I thought it smelled nice.”

On a grunt, he navigated around Duke to put the groceries down on the kitchen counter. When he began unloading food instead of kissing her hello or otherwise acknowledging her presence, Paisley knit her fingers together.

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