Cross My Heart (A Contemporary Romance Novel)

made him perfect friend-and-neighbor material. Michael was a great guy with a terrific daughter. He was smart and thoughtful and interesting, someone whose company she could enjoy for the short time she was living here.
    But she definitely shouldn’t think about anything more. She was leaving town in a month and a half. As soon as the summer ended, she was out of here.
    So it would be crazy to get tangled up in something that could get…complicated. And something in Michael’s serious brown eyes told her that a relationship with him could get very complicated. She already liked him, and she’d known him less than a day.
    And she was really, really attracted to him. She wanted to move closer. She wanted to feel that long, hard-muscled body against hers.
    She wanted to kiss him.
    She should probably pull her hand away. But his touch felt good—really good—and he wasn’t making any kind of pass at her.
    So Jenna didn’t move a muscle. She sat still, and felt Michael’s warm fingers tighten around hers, and let desire bloom in her body, slow and lazy and intoxicating.
    It was a few minutes before Michael could trust himself to speak. He was overwhelmed by a feeling so powerful it seemed almost animalistic.
    He wanted Jenna Landry. He wanted to lay her down on the grass and cover her body with his. He imagined doing that, imagined her looking up at him with those soft lips parted as his weight pinned her to the ground, her blue eyes filled with the same desire he was feeling.
    His left hand, the one not holding hers, tightened into a fist. He was hard, his whole body aching, and wanted her so much he was sure she could see it, feel it, even smell it somehow.
    He’d been in love with Angela, in the beginning at least, but even with her he’d never felt like this.
    But long years of emotional discipline won out. When he knew he was under control again, he spoke, asking a question he’d wanted to ask earlier.
    “How did you know that was Claire’s favorite song?” he asked. “Before dinner, when you signed that CD for her.”
    “Because she’s a teenager,” Jenna said. As soon as he heard her voice he was glad he hadn’t dragged her close and kissed her, because she sounded completely unaffected by the lust he was drowning in.
    “ Alive was the first song I ever wrote,” she was saying now. “I was seventeen and it just poured out of me. Whenever I meet a teenager who likes the Red Mollies, that’s always their favorite song. It’s a teen thing, I guess.”
    “The words were beautiful,” he said, remembering. “But I don’t think I understood them.”
    “They’re not meant to be understood. They’re meant to be felt. I think that’s why teenagers love music so much, you know? It’s all about raw emotion. All the things they don’t have words for yet.”
    “I always had words for it.”
    She smiled a little. In the moonlight, her eyes were as dark as her hair. “All that science stuff, you mean?”
    “Yeah, all that science stuff.”
    “You said it was like an antidote, when you were Claire’s age. An antidote for what?”
    He thought about brushing the question off, but something about the quiet intimacy of the night, the intimacy of holding Jenna’s hand, made him answer honestly. “I didn’t exactly have a stable childhood. My mother drank a lot, and my dad was a professional gambler. It made for a pretty chaotic household. Science was a refuge from that. A part of my life that always made sense. Where there was order and logic and meaning.”
    Jenna didn’t say anything, but he could feel her understanding and empathy like a current flowing between them.
     “And then came adolescence and all those raging hormones. It seemed like everyone around me was at the mercy of their feelings and impulses. The kids at school, my own parents...and I knew I never wanted to be like that. I never wanted any impulse to have power over me. So I learned as much as I could about how the body works, how the mind works. I studied the chemistry of emotion. And the more I understood, the more confident I felt that my mind was stronger than any urge my body might have.” He sighed. “I don’t know why it doesn’t help Claire. To know what all those feelings are.”
    Jenna shifted a little on the bench, as if looking for a more comfortable position. It would have been a perfect opportunity for her to drop his hand, but she didn’t. He felt ridiculously pleased by that.
    “But chemistry and