The Summer Girlfriend (Heart Beach, #1)(35)

She reached toward the bedside table and grabbed the dainty gold necklace with a heart pendant that she’d also bought in SoHo. She’d added it to her overall purchase at the last minute when she’d realized she didn’t have jewelry to wear this weekend.

A knock sounded at the door.

“Hey, can I come in?” Jeremiah asked. He’d waited downstairs while Noelle got dressed in order to give her privacy.

“Yeah, I’m dressed,” she called.

Jeremiah opened the door and took a tentative step inside. He wore a navy blue polo, tan chinos, and navy blue and white low-top Dunks. He was holding a hand over his eyes, and he pretended to stumble as he walked.

Noelle laughed. “You can open your eyes.”

“You sure?” He peeked through his fingers, smiling.

“Promise.”

He dropped his hand, and whatever he was about to say died on his lips. He gazed at Noelle and blinked slowly.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

She bit her lip, suddenly bashful. She’d felt the same way earlier when he’d said that her beauty took his breath away. It had been a line for his family then. But the way he was looking at her now, like the sight of her made his breath catch, seemed genuine. Especially since he hadn’t complimented her for the benefit of any witnesses. Her inner butterflies were trying to break themselves out of prison and flood her brain again.

“Thank you,” she said, forcing herself to turn to the mirror. “You don’t look so bad yourself. I’ll be ready in a second.”

She tried to clasp the necklace around her neck, but she kept missing the tiny hole.

“Let me help you,” Jeremiah said. He walked over and stood behind her. Their fingers brushed as she released the necklace ends into his hands. Warmth radiated from his skin. He smelled good too, of course. He probably never smelled bad, even when he sweated.

Great, now she was picturing him shirtless and glistening with sweat.

STOP, brain. Please!

“I like this,” he said, focusing on the necklace. “Is it new too?”

“Yeah, but it’s not real gold,” she hastened to say. “It didn’t cost that much.”

He just smirked and shook his head. “I told you to buy whatever you needed for the weekend. Real gold or not.”

He’d also told her to keep his credit card until the weekend ended, just in case. It was nothing to him. That must be nice.

He finished fastening her necklace, but he didn’t move from behind her. She didn’t move either. Their gazes held in the mirror.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Pretty okay,” she said. “Your family seems to believe us, right?”

“Yeah, I think so.” His attention traveled from her face to her collarbone and hovered there, like he didn’t want to lower his eyes and openly ogle her. The neckline of her dress was modest, but a bit of cleavage was still visible.

“We look good together,” he said, meeting her eyes again in the mirror.

“We do,” she agreed.

For a second, she let herself imagine that she was living in an alternate reality where she was Jeremiah’s real girlfriend and they were about to have dinner with his family. They’d met at the bookstore weeks ago and had fallen madly in love, hard and fast. She hadn’t lost her job, and she was all squared away to start classes in the fall. No, wait. In this scenario she was already a librarian. (Her alternate reality, her rules.) She didn’t have to worry about Jeremiah distracting her because she had achieved landing her dream job. He wasn’t moving to California anymore either, and on her lunch breaks, he picked her up in his sleek, fast car and they made out in his back seat. In this reality, pigs also flew, she was best friends with Beyoncé, and the sky was purple. Because why not.

It was best to stay grounded in real life, though.

She turned around to face Jeremiah.

“I’ve decided that if your mom offers me sweets for dessert, I’m going to tell her that I don’t eat them,” she said with a regretful sigh. “I don’t think I’ve been doing a good enough job at not endearing myself to them. They don’t need to know how obsessed I am with Smith’s Sweets.”

“I’ll sneak you some later,” he said. “I got you.”

“Thank you.” She grinned up at him, and he winked.

She didn’t know how she was going to manage sleeping in this room with him without wanting to jump his bones, but she’d figure that out later.

“Ready?” he asked.

He held out his hand, and she placed her hand in his.

“Ready.”

Palms pressed together, they walked downstairs. She heard the chef and his team bustling around in the kitchen. The voices of Jeremiah’s family members drifted down the hall from the dining room. Noelle leaned in closer to Jeremiah.

“We haven’t kissed yet today,” she whispered. “I thought I’d ask if that’s fine with you, or if you’d like to plan a kiss for sometime tonight.”

His eyes immediately went to her mouth, and her heart started doing jumping jacks.

“You’re right,” he said. “We should probably kiss tonight, shouldn’t we?”

“For believability’s sake, yeah,” she answered, trying to remain purely professional. “That way when we break up tomorrow, it will be all the more shocking. And your family will want to give you space because they’ll think you’re really heartbroken.”