Four Day Fling Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Four Day Fling

  CHAPTER ONE – POPPY

  CHAPTER TWO – POPPY

  CHAPTER THREE – POPPY

  CHAPTER FOUR - POPPY

  CHAPTER FIVE – POPPY

  CHAPTER SIX – POPPY

  CHAPTER SEVEN – POPPY

  CHAPTER EIGHT – POPPY

  CHAPTER NINE – POPPY

  CHAPTER TEN – ADAM

  CHAPTER ELEVEN – POPPY

  CHAPTER TWELVE – POPPY

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN – POPPY

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN – ADAM

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN – POPPY

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN – POPPY

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – ADAM

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – POPPY

  CHAPTER NINETEEN – POPPY

  CHAPTER TWENTY – POPPY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE – POPPY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO – POPPY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE – ADAM

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR – POPPY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE – POPPY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX – POPPY

  EPILOGUE – POPPY

  COMING SOON

  BOOKS BY EMMA HART

  ABOUT EMMA HART

  F O U R D A Y F L I N G

  E M M A H A R T

  Copyright © by Emma Hart 2018

  First Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover Design and Formatting by Emma Hart

  FOUR DAY FLING

  CHAPTER ONE – POPPY

  The Morning After

  I’d been in a lot of awkward situations in my life.

  In fact, you could almost say I was an expert in awkwardness. If it were a degree, I’d have finished it by age ten and been handed my PhD on my sweet sixteen.

  Which, as history dictated, wasn’t all that sweet. Mostly because I walked in on my then-boyfriend playing a pretty intense round of tonsil tennis with my twenty-seven-year-old cousin.

  That was partly my fault for dating a senior who was legal to put his snake in a girl’s basket who wasn’t legally able to be the basket, but still.

  Awkward.

  Then, there was the day in third grade where I’d gotten into a very serious fight—as serious as an argument could be in third grade—with Millie Turner. Something about who was quicker on the monkey bars.

  Turned out, it didn’t matter. I was quicker but a hell of a lot clumsier. Halfway along, my hands slipped, and that was all she wrote.

  Actually, it wasn’t. What she wrote was how I ended up on my back, my dress around my waist, and my Barbie panties on show to my entire class.

  I wasn’t even going to get into all the things that happened between then. Starting my period while wearing white shorts in the middle of an airport… Kissing a boy on the lips in ninth grade to find out he was only going in for a hug… Finding out your parents had a genuine bias toward your perfectly put together, non-clumsy older sister who was just one week away from marrying her high school sweetheart.

  Who happened to be a doctor—the youngest doctor in our state to open his own pediatric office and employ four other doctors, if you please.

  I mean, who gave a shit that Daddy had bought the building? Not my parents. Not anyone in our town. Nope. Everyone loved Dr. Mark Perkins.

  Even I did. Mostly because he was just a really nice freaking person—and not because he’d never told anyone he’d once walked in on me masturbating.

  See?

  Awk. Ward.

  But, hands down, nothing was quite as awkward as the situation I faced right now.

  As in, the hot guy sleeping in his bed.

  He was pretty. Oh, so fucking pretty. His bedhead was the perfect, dark-brown mess of hair that spread badly across his cream pillow. Here, there, everywhere, it was all kinds of did-you-wake-up-like-that?

  Ignoring that his bold, blue eyes were closed as he slept and dark-brown eyelashes fanned across obnoxiously high cheekbones, I—

  Well, I had nothing, because I couldn’t freaking well ignore that.

  He coughed in his sleep, rolling from his side to his back. He threw one arm over his face, covering his eyes. The five o’clock shadow that coated his entire jaw seemed extra shadowy thanks to the sliver of sunlight that made it into the room through the dark-gray curtains.

  God, he was beautiful. I’ll-chisel-you-into-marble kinda beautiful. The kind of beautiful that should be displayed in museums for years to come. In a hundred years, people would marvel at the statue of him the way we did the Mona Lisa today.

  God, what was I doing, standing here staring at him like the idiot I was? I needed to either write the note or leave.

  And, no, it wasn’t a note to apologize for leaving him, it was to leave my number.

  If my life was a TV sitcom, the audience would gasp at this very point. Or do that low “oooh” thing they did.

  I sighed and leaned against the wall. Was I crazy? Leaving my number with a one-night stand and asking him to be my date for my sister’s wedding this weekend?

  Yes. I mean, I knew that. It was weird. Definitely not something a normal person did.

  God. There was a hockey stick on the wall above his bed, and it was looking ever more tempting as a weapon to whack myself in the head with.

  I couldn’t ask a stranger to be my date. It didn’t matter how desperate I was. I’d just take the stick from my mother instead, or I’d claim my non-existent date had a family emergency and couldn’t make it.

  I sure as hell couldn’t ask Mr. Hottie McTottie with the body of a Greek god to come with me.

  If I was honest with myself, my mother would take one look at him and know it wasn’t real. I was nowhere near put together enough to get a guy like him.

  Hell. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and I was standing, staring at him, wearing a graphic tee that proclaimed I ran on coffee, chaos, and cuss words.

  I’d worn it to the bar last night, too.

  That was how fancy I was.

  In my defense, it was only supposed to be one drink, and it was all my best friend’s fault. If my best friend, Avery, hadn’t taken us to the place with a happy hour…

  Well, it didn’t matter now.

  Unless someone invented time travel in the next two-point-five seconds, this was the situation I was stuck with.

  Now how did I write this note?

  “Do you often stare at people while they sleep?”

  I jumped, pressing my hand to my chest. Apparently, I’d zoned out while staring at Hottie McTottie at some point during my inner monologue, and he’d woken up.

  Well, shit.

  Now this was awkward.

  Queen of Awkward strikes again…

  “Well?” He sat up in bed, lips twisting to one side. “I know you’re not mute. If you were, you wouldn’t have made as much noise as you did last night.”

  I opened my mouth, but my cheeks burned hot before I could say anything.

  Hottie McTottie chuckled. “Sorry. I thought you might shoot me down, and I’m trying to get you to speak.” He paused, his dark-blue eyes glancing over my shirt. “Or do you need coffee to make your mouth work?”

  “What?”

  “There she is.” He grinned. “Your shirt. It says you run on coffee, chaos, and cuss words. I imagine you’ve got a few cuss words running through your head right now, and this is definitely a little chaos.” He
stood up, tossing the sheets aside…and giving me one hell of a look at his bare ass.

  And his cock.

  I blinked and looked away, blushing again. Why was I surprised? I’d been naked when I’d woken up. It stood to reason that he’d be naked, too.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, his deep voice barely able to conceal his restrained laughter. “I put on my boxers.”

  “Yes. Well.” I cleared my throat. “Um…”

  “Sweatpants are on. Come on.” He grabbed me by the shoulders and directed me toward the door. “I’ll make coffee, and then you might be able to string together a sentence.”

  His idea had merit. Not gonna lie.

  He guided me down the stairs, hands still on my shoulders, and steered me toward the kitchen. It was large and bright, with white cupboards and big-ass glass doors that let in the sunlight from the early morning sun.

  I looked out at the backyard. It was…so male. He had a decent-sized pool just off the deck that housed an impressive barbecue area, and I was pretty sure I could see the corner of a hot tub on the other side.

  “How do you take your coffee?” he asked, reaching up to the top cupboard. His back muscles flexed as he pulled down two mugs. “Cream? Sugar? Black? Or are you a latte or cappuccino girl?”

  “Jesus, do you have your own personal Starbucks in here?”

  “No.” He looked over his shoulder with another grin. “But it made you talk.”

  I pursed my lips. “Cream, one sugar. Please.”

  “You got it, Red.”

  “Red? What kind of a name is that?”

  “The kind I give to a redhead whose name I can’t remember,” he said simply, hitting the start button on his impressively big coffee machine.

  Oh, thank God. It wasn’t just me.

  What? Those happy hour cocktails had been strong.

  I knew he’d told me his name outside of Hottie McTottie. I think it started with…an E? No. He had an A-name. It was definitely an A.

  “Judging by the look on your face, it’s mutual.” He slid a full cup of coffee across the kitchen island. “You can sit down, Red. I’m not going to kick you out.”

  “My name is Poppy,” I said, perching on one of the black stools. “And I totally remember your name.”

  “All right. What’s my name?”

  I hesitated. “Aaron.”

  He shook his head, laughing. “Adam.”

  “What?”

  “Adam. My name is Adam.” He paused. “And, as pretty as Poppy is, I’ll stick to Red.”

  “Why?”

  “Because poppies are red, so it makes sense.”

  “Wow. How hungover are you?”

  “Hungover enough that I’m glad I don’t have to work,” he replied, hitting the button on the machine for the second time. He turned and looked at me, then said over the sound of the machine, “So. Care to tell me why you were staring at me while I slept?”

  No.

  Absolutely not.

  “I wasn’t staring at you. Not intentionally. I was…thinking.” That was lame, Poppy. So lame.

  “Thinking. I can’t say that’s something girls usually do in my bedroom.” He grabbed his coffee and put it on the island, leaning against the opposite side. His biceps tensed as he rested his forearms on the black marble countertop, and I flicked my attention to the veins running down his forearms.

  Why did I want to lick them?

  Was it the hangover?

  I needed this coffee.

  “Do you have many girls in your bedroom?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Not particularly. That made me sound a lot more of a man whore than I am.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, but I think you’re lying.”

  “Why?”

  “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

  Adam dropped his head and laughed. “On a daily basis,” he said, meeting my eyes again. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  I wiggled my finger at him. “I’m not falling for that. I’m just saying that you look like the kind of guy who thrusts his way through life, one woman at a time.”

  “That seems awfully judgey for a girl who can’t cope without coffee.”

  I snorted. “If you think this shirt is bad, you should see the rest of them.”

  “You have a collection?”

  “Some people collect, I don’t know, jigsaw puzzles. I collect snarky t-shirts.” I shrugged a shoulder.

  “I honestly don’t know anyone who collects jigsaw puzzles.”

  “It was a figure of speech.”

  “That was the best you could come up with?”

  “You know,” I said slowly. “I liked you a whole lot more when your face was between my legs.”

  Adam burst out laughing.

  And, oh God, it was a glorious laugh. Like Nutella on Belgian waffles. Chocolate sauce on ice cream. Icing on cake.

  Uhh. Now I was hungry.

  “I didn’t mind that much myself,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “But, that still doesn’t explain why you were watching me sleep.”

  “Okay. I wasn’t watching you sleep,” I insisted. “I was genuinely thinking, but I can understand how waking up to a hungover redhead standing in the middle of your room, looking at you in bed, might be construed as weird.”

  “Well, fuck that. I was worried I’d picked up a total crazy.”

  “Has that happened before?”

  “You don’t wanna know,” he muttered, taking a swig from his cup. “Why were you standing there, then?”

  I clicked my tongue. “I was hoping to avoid this conversation.”

  Adam stared at me. “Well, I know I used a condom, so that eliminates a whole bunch of problematic scenarios.”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Thanks for clearing that up. I didn’t know what a condom was for.”

  His lips curved.

  He had the most infectious smile. It reached his eyes every time, making them sparkle a little brighter.

  It annoyed me because I wasn’t in a situation to be smiling. Sure, I’d just had crazy hot sex with a hot as hell guy, but whatever.

  “Look, I should probably go,” I said, finishing my coffee.

  “You hungry?” Adam asked, straightening up.

  I stilled. “I…what?”

  He moved to a floor-to-ceiling cupboard and opened the door, revealing a fridge behind it. “Are you hungry? I have stuff for omelets. You want an omelet?”

  What was happening?

  “Uh…sure?”

  “You don’t sound sure. There’s bacon, tomato, ham, cheese, mushrooms…”

  “I hate mushrooms. And tomatoes.”

  He jerked his head around. “How is that possible?”

  I shrugged a shoulder. “They’re slimy.”

  “Fair enough. Bacon omelet? With ham? Cheese?”

  Seriously. What was happening?

  “Okay. I guess.”

  He pulled a bunch of stuff out of the fridge and dumped it on the island in front of me. “Don’t worry, I can cook. I’m not gonna kill you.”

  I stared at the myriad of ingredients on the counter. “Color me reassured.”

  CHAPTER TWO – POPPY

  Omelets and Awkwardness

  Turned out, Adam could cook.

  And my tummy was very, very happy about that.

  “So,” he said, pushing his plate to the side. “What were you thinking about?”

  I sighed, cradling my coffee cup. “I knew there was a catch to this.”

  “Hey, I cooked you breakfast and didn’t find you completely weird for the way I woke up. Give me some credit.” He grinned. “Are you done?”

  I nodded.

  He stood, abs tensing as he leaned over the counter and picked up my plate.

  God, this wasn’t fair. He was hot, had a great body, and knew how to use his very generously sized penis. Was there anything imperfect about him?

  “You’re staring at me again. Is that an issue you have?”
<
br />   “I have a lot of issues,” I said. “And they all start with my family, which is exactly why I was staring at you in the first place,” I finished on a mutter.

  “That sounds equal parts interesting and weird,” Adam admitted, swinging a stool back under him. He sat down, mirroring my pose with how he held his cup. “Why don’t you just tell me, and I’ll decide how weird I really think you are?”

  “Oh, boy. You’re opening a whole can of worms there. I mean, who wears a shirt like this on a night out?” I motioned to my gray shirt.

  His mouth twitched as he once again glanced down. “I didn’t want to mention it, but…”

  I pursed my lips and hit him with a dark look.

  “Kidding. I’m kidding.” He held up his hands with a laugh.

  I wasn’t getting out of this. Hell, the man had woken up to me staring at him like I was potentially plotting his murder, then he’d cooked me breakfast.

  He was obviously a nice guy, and shit—I had nothing left to lose, did I?

  I was going to Rosie’s wedding alone anyway, so what the hell?

  “Okay.” I glanced into my coffee cup. “I’m going to preface this by saying my mother is…an acquired taste for most people.”

  He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  “My sister is getting married to her high school sweetheart this weekend. He’s a stupidly successful doctor, and my mom is positively beside herself in joy that my sister didn’t fuck it up.” I paused. “And I’ve been told that if I show up without a date, I’m dead to her.”

  His left eyebrow joined his right one.

  “Okay, so I’m exaggerating, but that’s what she didn’t say.” I bit back a laugh, taking my bottom lip between my teeth. “Long story short, I’ve failed miserably at finding a date. So…the reason I was hovering over you like a weirdo this morning was because I was trying to figure out how I could leave you my number and explain this situation in a note without looking like… Uh, the weirdo I look like right now.”

  He laughed. “The note would have been weirder. Trust me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Waking up to find that someone I’d had sex with left me a note to ask me to their sister’s wedding? I’d be a little weirded out. I’d also hope that you never found me again.” He snorted.