Page 38 of His Surrender

I’d spent years wondering if he’d ever notice me.

As a teenager, I imagined a thousand different scenarios where he suddenly realized Noah’s little sister wasn’t so little anymore.

None of them looked anything like today.

There wasn’t anything smooth or practiced about it.

He looked caught off guard. His gaze lingered for only a heartbeat before he forced himself to look away, but it was long enough for me to notice.

Long enough for something deep inside me to flutter awake.

I sink onto the edge of my bed, pressing both palms against the comforter.

He looked at me, not through me. Not like Noah’s little sister, but like a woman.

The realization sends another wave of warmth through me, settling somewhere beneath my ribs.

I shouldn’t be smiling. I definitely shouldn’t be replaying the moment over and over in my head, but I can’t seem to stop.

My fingertips brush absently across my damp hair as I laugh at myself.

“Get it together, Aubrey.”

One accidental moment doesn’t change anything. Any man would react to someone’s nipples so obviously showing through their shirt.

He isn’t going to all of a sudden start crushing on me because I’m a woman with boobs that he just noticed.

I spent seven years convincing myself Dean Ledger would never look at me that way. I’m not about to undo all that progress over three seconds of him looking at me like he wanted me.

The apartment is unusually quiet for a Sunday morning.

I pour myself a bowl of cereal, grab the milk from the refrigerator, and hop onto one of the stools at the island.

It’s almost funny.

A week ago, I was eating cereal at my parents’ kitchen table, wondering if I’d ever find a job.

Now I’m eating breakfast in a billionaire’s penthouse while a baby sleeps down the hall.

Life is weird.

Suddenly, the elevator dings. My spoon pauses halfway to my mouth.

Don’t be weird. He’s just coming upstairs.

I focus on my cereal as the footsteps grow closer.

“Morning.”

I glance up. “Morning,” I reply, noticing the package in one hand and baby monitor in the other.

Dean looks different today. Not because of what he’s wearing. Gray sweatpants and a navy T-shirt.

It’s the way he’s acting.

Normally, he meets my eyes when we talk.

Today, he doesn’t.