Scenes From the City: A Knitting in the City Wintertime Surprise (12 page)

Despite all the raging emotions and fluttering and twistings and hot flashes and yearning, his words struck me as hysterically funny. I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing.

His tone turned mock-stern, “Prepare yourself. I’m going to kiss you now.”

I nodded once as I searched his eyes, found them slightly hazy, dark and hot; and I knew—despite his protests to the contrary—his motives weren’t entirely selfish. He’d guessed how I felt about him. He might be taking something, but he was also giving me a gift in return.

Greg paused, giving me a chance to push him away, though I sensed something like desperation behind his stare. I didn’t push him away.

He closed his eyes.

I held my breath.

His generous mouth brushed mine.

A spike of something new and warm raced through me, making me tremble.

My eyelids drifted closed.

His fingers tightened on my legs.

I pressed my mouth to his.

He retreated a fraction, our lips separating, then returned, his head tilted slightly to the side, his mouth moving against mine, massaging.

I breathed him in, lifted my hands, and cupped his jaw, feeling like I needed to hold him in place.

He retreated again, again just a fraction, and returned to bite me lightly, lick my bottom lip.

I moaned.

His hands slid up my thighs, sending shivers straight to my lower belly.

I arched my back.

His grip settled on my waist, his palms on the bare skin of my midriff, his thumbs stroking my lower ribs.

I pressed my mouth more firmly to his, feeling a building sense of urgency.

But then, he retreated a third time, and this time he did not return.

I groaned.

He chuckled.

I opened one eye.

He was grinning.

I frowned. “No tongue?”

He laughed, obviously surprised, his smile brilliant, and cocked his head to the side as my hands moved to his shoulders.

“No guy should give you tongue for your first kiss. Tongue requires practice and feels a bit like a slimy alien creature if you’re not prepared for it or if it’s not done properly.”

I laughed at his description. “So what do I need to do? How do I prepare for it?”

“Well…” he glanced over my shoulder, and his voice took on an instructional air. “First you have to want it-”

“I want it.”

His smile was quick and just as quickly suppressed. He cleared his throat. “Well, then, I shall give it to you.”

I closed my eyes immediately and lifted my chin in offering, expecting him to lean forward as he’d done before, feeling giddy and excited and a little intoxicated. I waited, my hands on his shoulders, his on my stomach.

When he didn’t come to me, my lashes fluttered open. I found Greg watching me, his brown eyes looking lost, almost mournful, as they moved over my face.

“Ask me when I knew,” he said.

I frowned, confused by his request, and studied him, hoping I’d discover his meaning. At length, still perplexed, I did as he instructed.

“When did you know?”

I watched him take a breath, and with it all pretense fell away. All his walls, all his cleverness, all his grandstanding and pretending. He looked vulnerable, and it made my chest ache.

“When I saw you…” he whispered, leaning forward, his eyes on mine until he became blurry. He slid his nose against my nose, nipped my bottom lip. My mouth parted in response.

“I saw you…” he kissed my parted lips, “you’d bent over to pick up your pen, or some such item…” he kissed me again, this time on the corner of my mouth, and my eyelids fell, my heart swelling, my breath catching, “and I thought to myself…” one more press of his lips on my jaw, “I thought, I am going to tap that ass.”

My eyes flew open, as did my mouth, and my head reared back, “Greg!”

“And other things!” He grinned, wagging his eyebrows, pulling me forward, “I thought,
I am going to tap that ass,
as well as other things all having to do with how lovely you are and how much I respect you as a person.”

Uncontainable laughter erupted from my chest, and I pushed him away, “You are unbelievable!”

“Yes, darling.” He kissed my neck as I leaned away. “I hear that all the time.”

I barked another laugh and shook my head, his kisses hot against my neck, sending tremors of delight racing through me. “Get off of me!”

“I will, but first I must taste you…” He bit my neck, making me moan.

He did this for a while, kneeling before me, his hands roaming, my limbs growing limp, and heat gathering in my stomach. Eventually his mouth found its way back to mine, and he kissed me, this time with tongue.

He was right.

It did feel like a slimy alien creature—for about three seconds.

Then it felt wonderful.

THE END… for now. ;-)

Happily Ever Ninja
(book #5 in the Knitting in the City series) releases in Summer/Fall 2015

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed the quick scenes and glimpses into the lives of Janie and Quinn, Elizabeth and Nico, Sandra and Alex, Drew and Ashley, and Fiona and Greg.

When I started on this crazy, inexplicable journey back in March 2013, I honestly had no idea these characters and their stories would garner such interest. Truly, I couldn’t (and still can’t) imagine that anyone would want to read about my weird characters. Watching the reviews come in for
Neanderthal Seeks Human
and the subsequent attention for each of the following books (especially
Love Hacked
back in March 2014) has been completely flabbergasting.

I’ve often felt like this is all happening to another person, or that I’ll wake up with a mustache and someone telling me to make the doughnuts.

Therefore, you can understand how grateful I am to each of you for your existence. These scenes were written and this small collection published because I wanted to express how enormously humbled and appreciative I am.

I often tell other authors that I have THE BEST readers. I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true. I do have the best readers. I used to doubt my ability to write; however, now that I’ve interacted with so many of you, I’ve realized that my writing must be smart, funny, witty, heartfelt, and engaging—because that’s who my readers are.

All my love, Penny Reid

Penny Reid’s days are spent writing federal grant proposals for biomedical research; her evenings are either spent playing dress-up or mad-scientist with her two people-children (boy-7, girl-4) or knitting with her knitting group at the local coffee shop. Please feel free to drop her a line. She'd be happy to hijack your thoughts!

Come find me-

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Knitting in the City Series

Neanderthal Seeks Human: A Smart Romance
(#1)

Neanderthal Marries Human: A Smarter Romance
(#1.5)

Friends without Benefits: An Unrequited Romance
(#2)

Love Hacked: A Reluctant Romance
(#3)

Beauty and the Mustache: A Philosophical Romance
(#4)

Happily Ever Ninja
:
A Matrimonial Romance
(#5)

Book #6 - TBD

Book #7 - TBD

The Hypothesis Series

Elements of Chemistry
#1

(Coming February 2015; continuation of
Bunsen Burner Bingo
)

The Winston Brothers Series

Truth or Beard
(Winston Brothers, #1)

Grin and Beard It
(Winston Brothers, #2)

Beard Science
(Winston Brothers, #3)

(Coming in 2015)

Releasing February 2015

Chapter One

The Email Checker
: When one pretends to be checking his/her email on a smartphone, but is instead actually taking a picture of a person/the people directly in front of him/her.

Best for
: Most situations where it is socially acceptable to be checking email, e.g. coffee shops, while dining alone at a restaurant, waiting for public transportation.

Do not use
: In locations with no cell phone or internet reception.

*Annie*

I’m not going to pretend that I have pristine intentions. But to be fair, when he initially entered the restaurant I was already checking my email.

In fact, I didn’t look up from my phone until I heard the kerfuffle and squawking of excited females. These sounds—giggling, squeals,
oooohhhhh
, whispered
Oh My God!
and
Is that really him?—
typically accompanied the arrival of a male celebrity. I’m especially tuned into the signs and symptoms for two reasons: my job and my hobby.

I am the primary project lead of the Social Media Marketing division at Davidson & Croft Media. My specialty is transforming reputations in the court of public opinion. Give me a disgraced celebrity, politician, or public figure—sex tape scandal, DUIs, arrests, the great rehab escape, sex-ting an intern (what I call ‘Donkey Donging’)—and I will transform that person’s image.

I will make her sparkle. I will make him shine. I am legendary in my field. I am the best at what I do.

And I admit this as truth with absolutely no conceit or vanity, because I’m terrible at almost everything else in life. Take walking or talking for instance, never mind attempting both at the same time. Or smiling. Or not being weird. Or not creeping people out. Or not being the cause of every awkward silence in a five mile radius.

The only other things at which I excel in life are: 1) responsible financial planning, 2) my hobby blog, and 3) eating.

Which brings me to now and Tom’s Southern Kitchen and the group of ladies molting feathers left and right as they try to dry hump the remarkably attractive and muscular man who has just entered.

I’d lifted just my eyes, peering at him and the women as I tried to place his face. He was standing in profile and his handsome mouth was curved in a patient, polite smile. I couldn’t tell if he was enjoying the attention or if he just had exceedingly excellent manners.

Regardless, he looked quite a lot like the Irish actor Colin Farrell, except a Colin Farrell who’d been working out non-stop, had thighs like tree trunks, and was ten to fifteen years younger. So, maybe a Colin Farrell just back from a visit to the plastic surgeon and a CrossFit boot camp. This glorious specimen of maleness had dark brown hair, spiky and short. His nose was perfect, almost adorable, but somehow fit his face. His jaw was angular and strong. He even had the actor’s high cheekbones, dark brown eyebrows, thick lashes, and doe eyes.

I couldn’t decide if this guy was a doppelganger or if he was the real deal; but it didn’t really matter. He would be perfect for my Saturday Celebrity Stalker post. It was, without fail, the most popular post every week.

Which leads me to my greatest and most closely held secret. The truth is that I, Annie Catrel, am The Socialmedialite, the owner and purveyor of the blog,
New York’s Finest
.

That’s right.

I’m the Socialmedialite

I’m that girl, the most influential infotainment blogger in the world.

And, because I am meticulous about my security protocols, no one knows who I am… that I am she… that she is me.

Never mind. You know what I mean.

Anyway, Saturday Celebrity Stalker is my weekly post dedicated to celebrities or their look-alikes wherein their physical features are picked apart John Madden style (John Madden being the famous American football coach then announcer who loved to draw on the home viewers’ TV screen with circles, arrows, and random lines to demonstrate errors in football plays).

Except, I do this to celebrities (almost exclusively male celebrities) and question their judgment regarding grooming, makeup (yes, makeup), clothes, and accessory choices. And, if they’re walking a dog, I do it to their little dog too.

The level to which I pick apart the celebrity’s lack of judgment depends on several factors, and I’m the first to admit I’m a good deal easier or/nicer to those people with talent than I am to celebriturds (people who are famous because they’re famous/rich, with no redeeming qualities to offer society) and celebritrash (celebriturds who are also fame whores).

However, I try not to comment too much on bodies or facial features. Personally I feel like we—western culture—are so body obsessed, there’s no need for me to add to the hysteria. Especially since these famous people already give me so much fodder with their ridiculous million dollar fanny packs (made in third world sweat shops) and their gold plated floss holders.

Why does anyone need a gold plated floss holder? Tell me. Why? Why? Why?

I don’t know. I don’t get it.

Most men
loved
being featured on my blog. My posts typically resulted in emails of praise and thanks from publicity hungry agents and celebrities. Sometimes they’d make a donation to charity in the name of the blog or respond with a self-deprecating parody on YouTube.

I took care to focus on satire, poking fun at the extremes, playfully objectifying these untouchable gods among men. Women, especially females of notoriety, in our society had to suck up and swallow daily doses of criticism about
everything
—too fat, too skinny, wearing the same outfit twice in public, having an opinion—from fake TV personalities and tabloid vultures.

In comparison to these self-esteem vampires, I provided a public service. So I make fun of these famous-people-specific idiosyncrasies on a blog followed by twenty million people. It was all in good fun.

The lookalike continued to smile and sign napkins for the group of ladies. He might not have actually been the Irish actor, but he was definitely a somebody. Luckily for him, it was 3:30 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon; that meant Tom’s Southern Kitchen was virtually empty of customers. Surreptitiously, I angled my telephone and clicked out of my email, pulling up my smartphone’s camera.

I then took about forty or fifty shots over the next two minutes, until my view of the hubbub was blocked by a waiter bringing over my bag of takeout. I didn’t quite make eye contact with my server as I paid for the food, collected my belongings as leisurely as I could manage, and left the small restaurant.

Eye contact is difficult for me. I know that seems strange; it is strange. For the longest time I assumed I was just very shy; that is until I started engaging with people online. That’s when I discovered in-real-life-Annie is shy. She is reclusive and quiet. She observes. She seldom speaks. She dislikes attention of any kind.

But the Socialmedialite, my online handle, is gregarious and silly. She is opinionated. She craves interaction and attention. She is clever and witty (mostly because, online, wittiness is not a factor of time; in real life you have to be
quick
-witted in order to be considered witty).

My bag slung over my shoulder, I carried the takeout in one hand and held my phone in the other. I was eager to thumb through my new pictures on the short walk back to my apartment. I hadn’t taken notice of much except for the guy’s resemblance to the Irish actor while sitting at my table pretending to check my email.

Therefore I was anxious to analyze what he was wearing, what he was carrying, and any other potentially remarkable external manifestations of eccentricity. I turned the corner of XXX and XXX, now just a half block from my building, and studied the shots.

Initially, all I saw was a guy who looked like Colin Farrell with a strange looking, albeit small, apparatus strapped to his back, his feet in those God-awful toe-shoes that make the wearer look like a hobbit. His shirt was lime green, skin tight, highlighting his impressively muscled physique, and appeared to be made of Lycra; his thighs were chorded and thick, plainly visible because he wore spandex—black spandex, not lime green.

On 99.9% of people, this outfit would have looked completely ridiculous. But not on this guy. He looked hot. Really, really hot.

However, during my second, third, and fourth perusal—and especially in the pictures where his face was turned toward the natural light of the windows—I noted something remarkable about his eyes. Though his mouth held a wide, welcoming grin, his eyes struck me as sad. Terribly, terribly sad. And when I say
struck me
I mean they made my steps falter and slow, and a sudden involuntary intake of breath.

Here was this guy, physical perfection, obviously living a charmed life, walking around with mesmerizingly sad, soulful eyes. They were the kind of eyes that pull you in, ensnare you, bind you, hold you and your focus and your priorities hostage.

They took my breath away.

Some strange, long dormant and heavily suppressed instinct urged me to run back to the restaurant, wrap him in my arms, and cradle him to my bosom. My heart gave a little twist. I wanted to kiss away his hurts… or at least make his hurts some cookies.

I shook myself, forcing my feet to move purposefully forward toward home, and burry these arresting and unwelcomed instinctual reactions.

The critic in me reassessed the image and couldn’t ignore the toe-shoes, the lime green workout shirt, or the spandex—SPANDEX!—shorts. Even the top 1% of good looking men should know better than to wear spandex shorts outside of a sporting event.

Just… no.

Sad and soulful notwithstanding, this man needed an intervention.

Although, spandex is nice for highlighting…

Struck by sudden curiosity, and because I am a red-blooded woman, I zoomed in on the area of his groin.

That’s right, I’m a reclusive pervert and I make no apologies for it. And, giving the matter some thought, a reclusive, shy pervert is much preferable to an extroverted pervert. I might also be a tad sexually starved since I avoid all physical, real life human interaction.

Just a tad.

I walked past my doorman and into my building, keeping my attention affixed to the phone as I studied the bulge in the man’s spandex running shorts. Tearing my bottom lip between my teeth, I boarded the elevator and tried another picture; in this one he was angled toward the window, half facing the camera. I zoomed in a bit more.

“Whatever you’re looking at must be
really
interesting.”

I jumped back and away from the voice, sucking in a startled breath, jostling the bag of takeout in my hand and clutching my phone to my chest. I hadn’t realized that I was not alone on the elevator.

I found him, my companion, looking at me with an amused smile. His blue eyes were suspicious, but good-natured, slits. I recognized him immediately as my very tall, very nice looking, ambiguously single next door neighbor.

Ambiguously single because he always had a date, but it was never the same lady friend twice.

I didn’t blame him, not at all. By all outward appearances this guy was a hot commodity. Impeccably tailored designer suit and Italian leather shoes that announced both power and wealth; a chiseled jaw beneath perfectly formed lips framing stunningly white teeth; strong nose, bright blue eyes, expertly spiked and shaped blond hair. He looked like the type that subscribed to a beauty regimen. I was pretty sure his eyebrows were plucked and shaped by a professional.

I guesstimated his age as just cresting thirty; hard to tell with meterosexualizing of his appearance. Add to all this a body that reminded me of a cyclist or a runner—lean and well maintained—he was a well groomed wolf in wolf’s clothing and the females in Manhattan were helpless sheep.

After two seconds of stunned staring, I ripped my eyes from his amused half-lidded gaze and blinked around the mirrored space, trying to get my bearings.

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry; in fact, I was pretty sure he was trying not to laugh. “Sorry I scared you.”

I shook my head, my phone still clutched to my chest, and affixed my attention to the floor of the elevator.

“It’s fine. I was just startled.” I said, swallowing.

We were quiet for a beat but I could feel his eyes on me. I glanced at the display above the floor buttons, trying to gauge how much longer I was going to have to share the elevator with Mr. Ambiguously Single.

To my dismay, he spoke again. “You’re Annie, right?”

I nodded, my eyes flickering to the side to glance at him then back to the display.

“I’m your neighbor, Kurt.” In my peripheral vision I saw that he’d turned completely toward me and offered his hand.

I glanced at him again, at his friendly, easy smile and friendly, easy eyes. Then I glanced at the takeout bag in my right hand and the phone held to my chest. I seriously debated whether or not to shrug and say nothing.

See, the problem with being a really well paid shy person is that you have no incentive to ascribe to social niceties and norms. My company loves me (most of the time), the clients love me, they love the magic I work. I seldom go into the office—only Wednesdays and Fridays. I have an office, I just prefer to work from home.