Calling It Read Online Free Page A

“I think you need another minute.”

Chapter Four
    Making conversation with the object of her seventeen-year-long obsession wasn’t easy. It was even harder, Dorie was realizing, after nearly getting herself off while fantasizing about him in the bathtub only moments before meeting him in the cold, hard flesh.
    Or, rather, in the not-at-all cold, but mouthwateringly hard flesh.
    That she’d managed not to lay herself down on that bed and invite him to join her was a miracle. Either that or the dumbest thing she’d ever done in her entire life.
    Really. A night with Nate Hawkins? Who turned down a chance like that?
    Dorie Donelli, apparently.
    The problem, she realized as she headed to the kitchen, was that she’d seen the haunted look in his eyes when she’d handed him the phone. She knew more than enough of his backstory thanks to the media being all over him for the past six weeks, plus there was the whole obsession thing. Put all that together and it equaled Bad Idea. In flashing red letters.
    “So how about some meatballs?” he asked from so close behind her that he almost made her jump. Again.
    She turned to look at him. Holy crap, the man was truly that beautiful. “I’m sorry?”
    “Meatballs,” he said again. “Unless you’re saving them for Tommy, of course.”
    Losing every ounce of cool she’d managed to maintain up to that point, she blurted out, “Tommy’s my brother. In Boston. And please don’t use the word balls again.” Then she whirled around and opened the fridge.
    She got out the meatballs, threw them in some gravy on the stove and made Nate Hawkins a sandwich. After he ate that one, she made him two more. At various points, she also managed to speak. But it was the most surreal experience of her life. And, possibly, the most difficult. Because he was funny . Nice. Not at all the coldish, aloof Master of his Domain-type he’d seemed like in recent years.
    “So, um, time for bed.” If she didn’t remove herself from his presence soon, she’d lose her resolve and jump him right here.
    Maybe she would have if he’d admitted who he was, bad idea be damned. He was Nate Hawkins, after all. But he didn’t, which meant she couldn’t, and so she resolutely ignored his grin, glared and then directed him to the couch before locking herself in her room.
    When she woke up the next morning to find him gone, she was grateful. She wasn’t sure she’d have been able to keep up the charade, especially when she came upon the thoughtfully folded stack of sheets and blankets. The bat was sitting on top of them, holding a note in place: Thanks for keeping me off the street . And thanks for the meatball ( hoping you’ll make an exception for my use of the word here ) sandwiches . Rather than a signature, there was an arrow pointing to the initials on the bat. She was not at all pleased that it made her laugh out loud.
    She spent her first two hours at work in a daze, finally calling it quits when she realized she’d shelved fourteen infant board books alongside some erotica. Thank goodness she still had a few weeks before there were patrons around.
    Taking her cup of coffee into her office, she sat in her chair and booted up her laptop. Plugging Nate Hawkins into Google pulled up the headlines from the past six weeks: the picture of the upside down SUV at the top, right next to one of Courtney, clearly shaken, being escorted out of the hospital by a bodyguard the following day, then one of them together in happier times.
    Moving past the accompanying headline, Courtney Smacks Hawk Down, she skimmed through all the NateGate ridiculousness, the heartbreaking part about Courtney losing her baby and the speculation over whether his career was over due to the injury of his knee in the crash—and whether that meant the end-before-they’d-even-begun of the Chicago Watchmen, who had signed him as an anchor of their new expansion team. Instead, she skipped down to the part about the Iowa Dream.
    The