The Hookup Hoax Read Online Free

innocent and unassuming, even as they plotted to tear the clothes from her body to ravish her. Or at least that’s what they did in her daydreams. Dimples, combined with that raised eyebrow thing he’d apparently mastered and was doing right now… wow .
    “Not older as in old. Just you grew up. Matured.” He ran his fingers through his hair while his gaze skimmed her top to bottom and back, leaving a wake of heat behind.
    Did he just check me out? No. Not likely. It was the dimple effect causing her brain and body to malfunction, nothing more.
    “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”
    “Fifteen years, I think. Crazy. I still remember when you fell and skinned your knee that time we went riding on the bike trails through Sherwood Park. Or that time you insisted your parents said it was okay for you to use the waffle iron, and then you almost set the kitchen on fire. I was turned off waffles for years.”
    “One time I leave the plastic spatula touching the waffle maker, and no one forgets, but the other millions of times I made perfect waffles, no one remembers.” She laughed at the memories of happier times before everything in their worlds changed. Not long after that, Sawyer’s parents had their accident, and then her parents decided to suddenly call it quits, moving her to California while Aidan stayed in New York.
    Just another reason she’d come back here. This time, she wasn’t leaving.
    “I’m sure you learned how to make delicious waffles. Eventually.”
    “People beg for a taste of my waffles.” She raised an eyebrow teasingly.
    “I bet they do.” His eyes glimmered mischievously, like she’d seen so many times when he’d plotted something devious with her brother. “Did you bring one this time? I wouldn’t mind a taste.”
    His words lingered between them as her pulse suddenly raced.
    He straightened and glanced around as if he’d been caught looking at a dirty magazine in church.
    That wasn’t an innuendo… was it? Surely it was her imagination, and his discomfort was from something else. She laughed off his comment. “No room in my backpack for a waffle iron, I’m afraid. I’ve learned to live with less in my old age.”
    “I gather you didn’t have any trouble finding the apartment.” As he folded his arms across his chest, she couldn’t help but notice how tightly his fitted T-shirt clung to his muscular form.
    “I found you hot. Here. Fine! I found your apartment fine.” Apparently her tongue and brain were both on the fritz.
    His lips turned up slightly, as if he were trying to hide a grin. She attempted to channel the inner calm she’d learned to tap into during meditation in Thailand. She’d never been the kind of girl who got flustered around a guy before, and she sure as hell wasn’t about to start now.
    “I made you an apartment key this afternoon.” He placed it in her outstretched hand, his fingers gliding across her palm like a breeze on the surface of a lake. The sensation sent a tremble rippling through her. She gripped the key tightly, steadying her hand and her nerves.
    He wasn’t allowed to have this effect on her. He was safe, temporary, and unsuitable for her future. She repeated the words in her head, hoping they’d stick.
    “Let me take this for you. It looks heavy.” Sawyer lifted the backpack from her shoulders.
    “I carried that around the world. I’m sure I could have managed to get it to the guest room too.”
    “The ability to go anywhere you wanted with only what you could carry on your back, to not be tied down to one place, that must have been amazingly…freeing.” His voice held such a tone of longing as he peered at her backpack. But why would he long for that life? He had so much here—his family, his friends, a successful company, and a gorgeous apartment.
    “It was nice. For a while.”
    He led her down the hall to her new room. It was larger than any space she’d been able to call her own in almost ten years, between college dorms