Fearless: No. 2 - Sam (Fearless) Read Online Free PDF Page A

tied me down and . . ." It was that band again -- Fearless. For a fleeting moment Gaia wanted to shout through the window and ask them where they got their bizarrely Gaia-centric name, but she had to keep moving.
    She didn't have much time. CJ probably wasn't crazy enough to open fire on her in daylight, but once the sun got really low, she had to be ready for it, especially hanging around the park. How typical of her new life in the biggest city in the United States that the guy she wanted to seduce and the guy who wanted to shoot her hung out in exactly the same space.
    Her stomach started to churn as she got close. What was she going to say to Sam?
    "Hi, I know you have a girlfriend and don't like me at all, but do you want to have sex?"
    On the one-in-ten-billion chance that he agreed to her insane scheme, what then? They couldn't just do it on a park bench.
    Suddenly the actual, three-dimensional Sam, sitting on a bench with a clunky-looking textbook open on his lap, replaced the Sam in her mind.
    Oh, crap. Was it too late? Had he seen her?
    "Gaia?"
    That would mean yes.
    Swallow. "Hi." She tried out a friendly smile that came off more like the expression a person might make when burning a finger on the top of the toaster.
    He stood up, his smile looking equally pained. "How's it going?"
    She hooked her thumbs in the front pockets of her pants. "Oh, fine. Fine." What was she? A farmer?
    "Yeah?"
    "Yeah."
    "Great."
    Oh, this was awful. This come-hither Gaia was a complete disaster. Why couldn't she be cute and flirty
and
have a personality?
    He was clearly at a loss. "Do you, uh . . . want to play a game of chess?"
    She would have agreed to pull out her toenails to escape this awkward situation.
    "Yeah, sure, whatever," she said lightly. God, what a wordsmith she was.
    "Or we could just, like, take a walk. Or something."
    "Great. Sure," she said. Had her vocabulary shrunk to four words?
    "Or we could even sit here for a couple of minutes."
    "Yeah," she proclaimed.
    "Fine," he countered.
    "Great," she said.
    They both stayed standing.
    This was pathetic. How was she possibly going to have sex with him when simply sitting on the same bench involved a whole choreography of commitment?
    She sat. There.
    He sat, too.
    Well, this was progress.
    She crossed her legs and inadvertently brushed the heel of his shoe. With lightning-fast-reflex speed they both swung their respective feet to opposite sides of the bench.
    Or not.
    Gaia studied Sam's face in profile. It made her a little giddy to realize what a hunk he was. A classic knee weakener. He belonged on television or in a magazine ad for cologne. What was he doing sitting near
her
?
    He looked up and caught her staring (slack jawed) at him. She quickly looked away. She pressed her hand, palm down, on the bench and realized her pinky was touching the outer edge of his thigh.
Uh-oh
.
    Should she move it? Had he noticed? Did he think she had done it on purpose? Suddenly she had more feeling, more nerve endings (billions and billions at least) in her pinky than she ever thought possible. All of the awareness in her body was crammed into that pinky.
    Now it felt clammy and weirdly twitchy. A pinky wasn't accustomed to all this attention. Did Sam feel it twitching? That would be awful. He'd think it was some kind of lame come-on. Either that or she'd lost muscle control.
    Well, actually, this
was
some kind of lame come-on and she
had
lost control.
    The problem was, if she took away her pinky, he would know she noticed that she was touching him, and that would be embarrassing, too.
    He moved his leg. Suddenly Gaia's pinky was touching cold, lonely, uncharged air. She felt the piercing sting of rejection. Jerk. Loser. She was ready to give up on the whole project.
    Then he moved it back and practically covered her entire pinky. Oh, faith! Love! Destiny! Could she propose to him right there?
    He smiled at her. This time it was sweet, open, real.
    Her stomach rolled. She smiled back,