An Unexpected Love Story (Love Story Book Two) by Rachel Schurig

into me, he also seemed to sincerely want to get to know me—and not just between the sheets. We had stayed awake for hours last night, just talking; favorite books we had read, movies we had liked, teasing each other about our respective favorite sports teams. I had been surprised by how much I enjoyed it, lying there in the dark talking of inconsequential things.
    You’re getting ridiculous , I told myself. Mooning over someone who’s leaving in two days. You’ll only end up hurting yourself.
    I knew my inner critic had a point. I should definitely try to get ahold of myself. Unfortunately, John walked into the restaurant at that moment, and I completely forgot my good intentions.
    “Hey,” he said, walking over to me. “I was hoping I would find you in here.”
    “Did your meeting go well?”
    “Yup, pretty well. I’m all yours now. Are you done working?”
    “Yup,” I said, feeling a little fission of excitement at the prospect of getting to spend so much time with him. “Let me just find my dad and tell him I’m heading out.”
    My dad had been thrilled at the prospect of running things when we had a full house. Granted, there wasn’t much to do that afternoon. The gamers were wrapped up in tournaments. There was a theme dinner that evening to get ready for, followed by a marathon of role-playing games, but I planned to be back in plenty of time for all that.
    “So,” John said as we stepped out of the front doors of the inn. “What are we gonna do today?”
    “It’s a surprise,” I said.
    “Okay,” John said evenly. “Just tell me this. Will lunch be involved? I’m starving.”
    “Lunch will be involved.”
    “Then I’m in,” he said. “Want me to drive?”
    “I can drive.” I pointed to my truck at the end of the parking lot. John took one look at it and shook his head.
    “I’ll drive,” he said firmly, taking my arm and leading me to a shiny black Lexus.
    “Do you have a problem with my truck?” I asked, feeling stung.
    “I would like to get to our destination in one piece, if that’s alright with you.” John opened the passenger door, but I just stared at him.
    “I’ll have you know that’s a great truck,” I told him. “It never fails me. They don’t build them like that anymore.”
    “That may be true,” he said, kissing my nose. “And there’s probably a good reason for it. Now get in, please. I’ll turn up the seat warmers and let you control the radio.”
    “You have seat warmers?” I asked, feeling excited in spite of myself. Emily’s friend Ryan had seat warmers in the leather seats of his car, and I had always considered them the height of luxury, insisting that he drove me around whenever I came down to visit.
    A few minutes later we were off, John navigating smoothly through the sparse Saturday afternoon traffic of Alpena. “Just stay on this,” I said. “I’ll tell you where to turn.”
    Our trip was a short one. About fifteen minutes later, I was directing John to pull into a parking lot in front of a large, non-descript building. John got out of the car and came around to open my door—an unnecessary touch, but a nice one. He squinted up at the sign over the large glass doors.
    “Ice arena?” he asked, turning to look at me. “Are you serious?”
    “What, haven’t you ever ice-skated before?” I asked, reaching out to take his hand. He shook his head wordlessly. “Seriously, dude? Aren’t you from Chicago?”
    “I was more into soccer growing up.”
    I thought about his lean, wiry build, as displayed so pleasantly to me the previous night, and smiled. “That doesn’t surprise me,” I said, tugging on his hand a little. “Come on, this will be fun. I promise.”

    Chapter Nine
    Ten minutes later, we were sitting on a bench inside, lacing up our rented skates. “It’s freezing in here,” John muttered.
    “Well, yeah,” I said. “That’s so the ice doesn’t melt. What, did you think it would be warm?”
    “Shut up,” he said,