Page 87 of The Publicity Stunt

This time he doesn’t act surprised. Instead, he just turns to me with narrowed eyes. “Yes, April. That’s precisely what I’m doing,” he says, the twist of his mouth deepening into a semi-scowl.

I don’t even blink.

“No, I’m not following you,” he clarifies. “I’m catching a flight. What are you doing here?”

I’m about to say “Uh, the same thing?” but an ominous realization stops the words in my throat. He’s at the same gate. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. “You’re going to LA too?”

He nods. “Marcus wanted to shoot a few extra stunts near one of the canyons.”

My “oh” comes out much more disappointed than I meant it to be.

Parker smiles, at which point all I want to do is grab my handbag and make a run for it, but the last few remnants of self-respect keep me seated. “Well, for what it’s worth, seeing your face at Gate 25 is the best thing to happen to me all morning,” he says.

“That bad, huh?”

He shakes his head and leans back. “I spent all morning trying to look for my airport sweatshirt.” He looks at me likeduhand I nod, even though I have no freaking clue what he’s talking about. His “airport sweatshirt”? Who is this man?

“After an hour and a half of turning my entire place upside down, I found it stashed at the back of my closet—”

My face contorts. “You didn’t look there first?”

Parker squeezes in a quick “shut up” and carries on with his story. “Then I spent the next two hours looking for my ironing board.”

As one does.

“In the midst of all that chaos, Dog managed to get himself stuck in the sleeve of one of my sweatshirts. In the sleeve. How does one get stuck inside a sleeve? Anyway, long story short—” He takes off his brown jacket, revealing the white T-shirt and lean, muscular arms underneath. His arms. God, he has such great arms.

“I had to rush to the ER to get this cleaned up.”

I clear my throat and look down at his wrist, seeing two decent-sized scratch marks. “Of course, he scratched you, Parker. You named Satan’s favorite animal after God’s favorite.”

“Shut up. He’s adorable.”

“As evidenced by the scratch marks on your wrist,” I say.

“He was stuck in a sleeve, April.” He brings his good arm around my shoulder and everything in me goes limp. “And he saw two huge hands that he doesn’t even know are hands approaching him. Of course, he scratched me.”

“As we all do.”

“Okay, let’s try it.” He reels his arm back in and grabs his jacket, bringing it up to my face. “You two aren’t all that different in size.” He opens up the sleeve and tries shoving it over my head.

I smack his hand away and guffaw. “Get your filthy paws off me!”

Leaning back in laughter, he sets his jacket down on his lap, sweeping a few strands of hair across my face in the process. He brings his hand up to my forehead, pushing the hair aside gently. A simple gesture. But the little spark that lights up in the pit of my stomach and makes its way right up to my heart, leaving teeny-tiny explosions in its wake, is anything but simple.

I look at him; he looks at me. I laugh, and he smiles a little. There’s a colossal four inches between us. Neither of us moves. His eyes dip to my mouth and my throat squeezes, every nerve ending set on fire. My brain goes,kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.

Of course, the very next second, Parker backs away.

A heaviness settles in the little space between us. He stretches his neck against the bendy backrest of his seat, then bends over and takes a comic book from his bag. “Do you mind if I read for a bit?”

My stomach hardens. “Depends. Is it DC or Marvel?”

He chuckles. “I wouldn’t dare read DC in public, Chere.”

“Then, by all means. Go ahead.”

Smiling, he flips it open and settles against the back of his seat, legs slightly stretched out, and starts skimming through the pages.