Secret Admirer (Love Notes, #1)

by D.J. Jamison

College hadn’t been the magical new life I’d imagined. Turned out, wherever you went, your personality was sure to follow.

The idea of Benji as more than a friend made a curious little flutter start up in my gut.

If he wouldn’t believe in me, maybe he’d believe in someone else. An anonymous someone else, like a … secret admirer.

Ace wasn’t for me. He never would be.

“Jeremy wouldn’t even share his Transformers with me. You really think he’s going to share his best friend?”

“Oh, I definitely want popcorn,” he said. “But you’re going to have to buy. I’m out of the trailer park, but my ass is still broke.”

Benji was freaked. Me, on the other hand? I wasn’t freaked over my first kiss with a guy at all. It felt like … coming home.

“When I want to ask a guy out…” “Yeah?” I leaned forward as she drew out the pause. “I find it helpful to ask.”

I wanted Benji. I wanted to hold him, kiss him. More than that, though, I wanted his heart. Because he already had mine. Consequences be damned.

It was a friendship bracelet. Just like the one I’d made him as a kid.

“He looked at you like you were a slice of chocolate cake and he was on a diet.”

“Wasn’t hard to figure out. Dude’s always hanging around, looking at you with heart eyes.”

My body practically vibrated with the urge to push him against the nearest wall and ravish him. Fucking ravish, like I was fucking Fabio in a romance book and he was my innocent maiden.

“Tracy knows more than I do.” “Well, Tracy’s here.” “Okay,” Tracy said, “I think Tracy should not be here.”

“What do you think?” I asked hesitantly. She glanced at Ace again. “Hmm. I suppose if you like that kind of thing.” “What?” She smirked. “Smart, handsome, great body.” She shrugged. “You know me. I prefer my men balding and handy with a calculator,” she said as my dad walked up.

I looked down at my hands, my precious, artist’s hands that drew beautiful things — and sometimes naughty things — and sighed mournfully. With a mental apology to them, I stepped up to the counter and prepared to molest a turkey.

“He?” There it was. The horrified tone that would set me free.

I would do a lot for love, but get up at the crack of dawn? Not one of them.