The Boyfriend List by R.S. Novelle, Renee Novelle Page B

break considering the circumstances.
And if she’d sounded somewhat annoyed, it was merely due to the fact that when
she met Brett for the first time – well, the first time officially
– she’d wanted it to be a moment of magic, when she was at her best and
hopeful for the best outcome. Not when she had an egg growing on her forehead
and she’d been knocked to the ground.
    “You
new here? I haven’t seen you before.”
    It
occurred to her that her hand was lingering inside of his for longer than was
necessary to get to her feet, and that she was beginning to sweat from
excitement and nerves. Snatching her hand quickly away again, she rubbed her
palm against her shorts, hoping he hadn’t noticed.
      “Um, yeah?” She tried, hoping it sounded
more convincing than her story about being a journalist. Clearly he hadn’t
gotten a good look at her on the field. For that, at least, she could be
thankful.
      “Cool, welcome.” He nodded
enthusiastically. “We usually try not to injure the new people until they’ve
been around a while, but in your case…”
    Reagan
couldn’t help the little laugh that escaped.
    “Well,
hey, since you’re sure you’re okay, let me show you to the girls locker room.”
    “Oh,
yeah, that might be good.”
    She
let him point her in the right direction, and slipped quickly inside. Then,
after waiting a few minutes to give Brett enough time to leave again, then
slipped right back out, not stopping this time until she was cleared from the
building and standing on the sidewalk.
    Now
the question on the table was, where did she go from here? The initial meeting
was already over. He hadn’t asked for her number or left it open for future
discussions, so it was hard to tell the kind of impression that she left. But
she had discovered he was
considerate, and even a little witty. At least, he’d tried to be, which was
kind of adorable.
    Immediately,
Reagan picked up her phone to call Ian and fill him in on the details.

 
 
CHAPTER TEN

 
    When
Ian got the call from Reagan, he’d been rummaging around the little antique
bookstore for at least a half an hour. His mother was a difficult woman to
impress, he mused to himself, but a first edition by one of her favorite
obscure authors usually did the trick on her birthday. Picking up a fragile
binding, he flipped gently through pages ripe with historical significance.
    Having
instinctively switched his phone to silent when he walked in the store, he
could feel it vibrating in his back pocket as Reagan’s call came through.
    Carefully
replacing the volume back onto the shelf in its given slot, he withdrew his
phone and smiled at the name on the id.
    “Sexy!”
    Reagan
tried to stop her lips from turning up at his greeting, but they weren’t
cooperating very well. “Busy?” She inquired, almost forgetting why she’d called
in the first place.
      “Tryin’ to be,” he admitted, “but
beautiful women keep calling and interrupting me. How’s it all going?”
    Suddenly
Reagan’s lips felt like cooperating after all, and immediately drooped into a
frown. Women, in the plural form, was not what she wanted to hear. Though
she couldn’t figure out why it’d surprised her, or why at the very sound of the
phrase she felt a tingling of irritation run up her spine when he’d said it
teasingly at least a hundred times before. It was an expression, she reminded
herself firmly, and Ian was a single man. He was perfectly entitled to have
every beautiful woman in the world call him if he wanted them to. But that
thought was irking her even more, and it didn’t seem to want to go away.
    She
must’ve been dwelling in her dark thoughts longer than she’d realized –
Ian’s voice abruptly brought her back to the present moment.
    “Rae?
You there?”
    Reagan
shuddered, and returned her focus to the call. Now she was having a hard time remembering why she’d called him to begin
with. “Sorry. How’s what going?”
    “You’re
private