Kiss and Confess (Love Unscripted Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the boundaries she’d been given, to avoid running into her match before the big meeting at dinner tomorrow.
    The rays’ warmth felt good, a gentle kiss from a sun she didn’t often see in Seattle. Glancing around, she thought the estate was huge. Colorful flowers bloomed in carefully tended beds, and large trees across expanses of lawn provided shade. Under one of these trees, Charley spotted a wrought-iron bench.
    On the far end of that bench, sitting with his head down and his hands clasped between his knees, was Luke. His clipboard lay at an awkward angle on the grass in front of him, either dropped or thrown.
    He didn’t seem to have heard her approach, which meant she had a choice to make. Move forward or go back as quietly as she had arrived.
    She chose to stay in place, watching as he buried his long fingers into his dark unruly hair, pressing hard against his scalp. She didn’t have to see his face to know that his eyes were shut tight against the world, his forehead creasing as he tried to solve whatever dilemma had him out here on a bench. Alone.
    She wondered whether that dilemma had to do with her. She wondered whether he still thought much about her at all.
    That lean body—elbows now digging into his knees—was still familiar after twelve long years. The way he carried himself, interacted with others. He’d always had an easy, masculine stride and presence that allowed him to move through a room as the most confident person in it. She’d envied that, wanted nothing more than to be a part of his orbit.
    They’d been good together, happy together. Ready to take on the world together. Until he’d left her without an explanation. Without an apology. Without a single word. For someone or something else? She could only guess.
    And she’d come up with every guess she could possibly imagine, none of them good.
    She hadn’t ever Googled his name—had made a deliberate choice not to. It had been easier to deal with her imagined possibilities than to know the truth.
    Now he was right here, a few yards from her, and she could finally get an answer. A swirl of doubt, relief, anger, dread, and happiness began inside her stomach and spiraled upward, delivering knockout punches as it traveled.
    Her brain sent a signal to her legs to move, but her legs ignored it, staying rooted in place.
    She must have made some kind of sound or he felt her presence, because suddenly he turned, his dark eyes startled, and let his hands fall to the seat of the bench. “Charley. I didn’t see you.”
    They watched each other warily for a moment then Luke moved to one side of the bench and indicated the space next to him. “Would you like to sit down?”
    “I don’t know.” Her legs, being independent thinkers apparently, began moving. Toward Luke. And the bench.
    She sat, inhaling the nearness of him. Evergreen soap and Good & Plenty candy. The mixed scents triggered a series of flashbacks in her mind—Charley and Luke dancing together in the fraternity house, pressed as close as they could possibly be and moving slowly as one, though the song was a fast one; laughing until their stomachs hurt while gripping hot lattes on a cold day; making tender, passionate love in his bed under a striped comforter. Blue and white stripes.
    She shook her head to block the memories, to send them back into the lending library part of her brain where their covers had grown dusty.
    “What are you doing out here?” She stared at the ground, not trusting herself to look him in the eyes again, afraid of what he’d see there.
    “Thinking.”
    She scuffed at a piece of dirt cluttering the otherwise pristine grass, waiting for him to say more.
    He didn’t for several minutes. Her pulse had finally begun to beat normally when he said, “Okay. Real apology this time.”
    “I’m listening.” With every part of her being.
    “I’m sorry for leaving without telling you. For not getting in touch after.” He crossed his leg to put his ankle on