Beginner's Luck (Chance of a Lifetime, #1)

by Kate Clayborn

“You’ll hate it for a while,” he’d tell them, “but then you’ll love it more for hating it.”

this is the kind of handsome

that gets you right in the stomach, that makes your knees feel weak.

First I ask him to my lab, now my house? I certainly hope my vagina doesn’t have a mind to issue invitations, but honestly the way Ben looks, it’s not entirely unlikely that she’ll speak up in the next five minutes or so.

He knows a lot, but he’s not a know-it-all, and he’s got a good sense of humor—he laughs easily, especially when I tell him I put a padlock on the door to the crawlspace because of spiders. But it doesn’t feel as if he’s laughing at me. He’s just—I don’t know. Enjoying me.

It’s interesting in and of itself, the rational part of me knows this. But I also know I’m finding it so interesting because it’s her telling me, because I feel as if I’m learning some of the most important stuff about her by being here.

God, this woman. She is fucking adorable when she gets shy.

and all I want is a cold beer and to sit right next to her for as long as she lets me hang around.

She orders for me—trust me, she says, in this bossy way she has, and for the first time in my life I think about asking a woman to tie me up,

infinitesimal

I’ve always loved women, have loved getting to know them, have loved sleeping with them, have loved making them feel good. But Kit makes me want everything, makes me want to be her best friend, her safe place, her family, and the guy who can fuck her until she doesn’t remember her own name.

Now, though, to have Kit—it feels as if I have that someone, someone who gives you that little room to complain in, but doesn’t hold it against you later.

recalcitrant

Ben is part of what home means to me now—he’s not everything, but he might be the biggest thing, and he’s going to change every careful arrangement I had set up in my life, but for once I’m so excited about that prospect. I can’t wait to see what’ll happen.

and despite her new willingness to get out there and make a different path for herself, she relishes coming home. Sometimes, we spend whole weekends without leaving here, eating and talking and puttering around with various house projects, making love late into the night, early in the mornings before falling asleep again.

one that I’ve been holding onto, since that auction in Pennsylvania—a dark green emerald,

surrounded on all sides by tiny diamonds of varying cuts, marquise, round, tapered baguettes—a starburst around a verdant planet. I’d never seen anything like it, and had decided right then it was the ring

and then she looks up and sees me, and for a minute, everything stressed and flustered disappears from her face, and it’s only the two of us in this house, smiling at each other in relief for her being home and excitement for the day and happiness for being back together.