Catching Hell: A Hot Contemporary Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t tell him? You just decided it was finally time to jump his bones? Get him into bed first and worry about confessing your lifelong crush in the morning? But you said it was the worst. What happened? Was it too fast? It couldn’t be too fast. He’s thirty-seven years old. Oh my God, Anna. Was he not able to get it up? Did he—?”
    “I didn’t get him into bed!” Anna protested, finally cutting off her friend’s torrent of questions.
    Emily regrouped quickly. “But you did it somewhere else, right? Maybe on your couch?”
    “I didn’t sleep with Zach Ormond!” Anna’s protest was sharper than she intended. A quick glance at the tables on either side of them confirmed that the other Club Joe patrons were fascinated by the shape of their coffee mugs, or absolutely captivated by nearby sugar dispensers.
    “If you didn’t sleep with him, then what exactly are we talking about here? What’s the Coffee Crisis that was worth my getting out of bed at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning?”
    “It wasn’t the crack of dawn,” Anna said sourly.
    “Don’t try to change the topic now. What exactly did you do with Zach Ormond?”
    “ I cried all over him! ” Anna’s embarrassment made her voice climb an octave.
    Emily’s laugh sounded like a seal. She barely turned her exclamation into a question. “You what?”
    “It’s not funny,” Anna insisted. “I cried all over him. I soaked his shirt.” When Emily only shrugged to indicate confusion, Anna stifled a sigh. She rushed through an explanation of the game, Cody’s injury, the resulting chaos that Anna had handled just fine, like the mature, professional adult her grandfather had raised her to be. And then, she’d ruined it all by sobbing like a little girl.
    Emily looked fascinated. “Do you realize what this means?” she asked when Anna finally finished her confession. “I’ve know you for what? Eight years? Since Freshman Week. And in all that time, I have not once seen you cry. Not when you sprained your ankle falling on the ice. Not when you failed out of French I and had to change your language requirement. Not when you couldn’t get into that upperclass seminar on The Cultural History of Baseball in Asia.”
    Anna rolled her eyes. Rather than respond to Emily’s absurd comments, she took a long pull from her Coke. The ice cubes had melted, turning the carbonated soft drink into lukewarm sugar-water.
    But Emily was on a roll now. “Now you come to me, and you tell me you finally found the nerve to reach out to the one man you’ve been crushing on since you were what? Ten years old? And you let him get an actual glimpse of the real Anna Elizabeth Benson? And he didn’t run away screaming in terror, but instead he bought you a soft drink and spent the rest of the night with you? And that’s the worst thing that ever could have happened?”
    “What am I supposed to say to him now?” Anna asked miserably.
    “Good morning? Thanks for listening to me last night? I really appreciate your being there when I needed you?”
    Anna glared. “Right. Like I want to remind him what an idiot I was.”
    “You are acting like you just had the most disgusting, drunken one-night stand in the history of disastrous relationships.”
    “I’ve had one-night stands that didn’t make me feel this bad.” Anna winced. She’d had one one-night stand. And she’d vowed never to subject herself to that sort of embarrassed morning after, ever again.
    Emily shook her head. “Mountain,” she said, indicating a height far above her latte. “Molehill.” She pointed at Anna. “Really. So the guy knows you aren’t perfect. That’s not the end of the world. It might even be the beginning. Come on. What’s this really all about?”
    Anna shook her head, searching for words to describe her feelings. She hadn’t needed to fight for any words in the long hours before dawn. She’d been perfectly comfortable, sitting in silence with Zach.  
    But she had