Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 22483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
He sat down with a very audible sigh, which wasn’t meant to catch her attention but to ease the pain he expected to feel when the hard plastic hit his underside. Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as he’d expected, which caused him some relief. The flight wouldn’t be entirely so bad, especially once he got some booze into his system.
It was now or never. Christian needed to say something to this woman. He cleared his throat, hoping she’d look at him. She continued to thumb through her magazine. The subtlety of him taking the seat next to her clearly didn’t get her attention. Maybe she wasn’t Holly Saint from North Pole, New York after all.
Except the way his skin zinged and the hairs on his arm stood told him otherwise. No one, not even his wife, could ever elicit that sort of response from him. Christian and Holly had a deeply rooted connection that his ex-wife had loathed. Skye was always jealous of Holly and made many mentions of this through high school. Christian never understood why. They had always been friends, nothing more.
Christian cleared his throat and leaned toward her, which was also very frowned upon. “I’ve always wondered where you ran off to, and now, after twelve, well, almost thirteen years, I’ve found you in an airport in Miami, at Christmas, no less. How are you, Holly?”
He held his breath and waited for the woman next to him to respond. She slowly closed her magazine and shifted in her chair to look at him. As soon as their eyes met, he knew deep within his bones that it was Holly Saint sitting next to him. He hadn’t seen her since they posed for a picture in their cap and gown at their high school graduation, surprised when she left for the summer and hurt when he got to the college they agreed to go to, and she wasn’t there.
She rested her hands on the magazine in her lap and studied the man next to her. He waited anxiously for her to say something—anything—yet all she could do was stare at him. Had he gotten it so terribly wrong that this woman couldn’t find the words to tell him to take a hike?
Slowly, her lips turned upward, and she smiled. “Hello, Christian.”
two
Holly
There he was—the love of her life—or the life she had before she left her hometown and vowed to never return as long as he lived. It was dramatic, but it was the only way to keep her heart from breaking into a million pieces each time she saw him. She swore she’d seen him earlier when she waited in line for coffee but wasn’t about to walk up to him and ask. It had been almost thirteen years since she had last seen him in person, because seeing him in her dreams didn’t count. Holly didn’t believe in happenstance or fate, and it made little sense for him to be in Miami when he should’ve been back in their hometown for vacation. Thanks to her mother, she knew when he returned every year, and Holly was sure to avoid visiting—that was, until this year. Her mother needed help at their family store, and Holly couldn’t say no to her mom. Besides, she’d been there before when Christian was in town and successfully managed to avoid him. That’s what she was going to do again, except she never expected to run into him at the airport.
Scratch that—they hadn’t run into each other yet, and there was no way she was going to go out of her way to speak to him. Besides, it was unlikely that he even remembered her, and she wanted to keep it that way.
Except, she remembered him and how she longed for him to look at her the way he had looked at Skye Reynolds when she arrived at their school, interrupting everything Holly and Christian had. She would also never forget how nasty Skye was to her when Christian wasn’t around. Skye was a bully, a mean girl, who pushed Holly so far out of Christian’s path, she had no choice but to remove herself from the equation.
At first, she was the third wheel, the one who tagged along on Christian and Skye’s dates. The one who sat in the car under the streetlight, while the two of them made out behind the bushes at their end of their dates when Christian dropped Skye off home. Skye, of course, would throw a fit when Christian wouldn’t drop Holly off first. It didn’t make sense when Holly only lived a block away from him. Christian was practical. Skye, not so much. Of course, it was Skye who told Holly that she and Christian had done the deed. Holly cried for two straight weeks. Every chance Skye had, she reminded Holly that Christian had chosen her.