The Blush Factor by Deborah Bladon
Chapter Ten
Faith
Watchinga man eat shouldn’t make my breathing staggered or my panties wet, yet here I am.
Is this a curse only set upon virgins as they sit across a worn wooden table from the man who has invaded their dreams for a year?
What is it about his throat and his Adam’s apple and the way it bobs when he talks and bounces when he swallows?
I cast my gaze down to the empty plate in front of me. Needing to busy myself with something other than staring at Matthew, I run a fingertip over the crispy pizza crust crumbs.
“What’s your end goal?” he asks in a tone that is so gruff I feel those familiar goose bumps trail over my skin.
Thankfully, I’m still wearing the same big-heart sweatshirt I’ve been snuggled in all day. He has no idea what his voice is doing to me. He can’t see my body’s reaction.
“I want to work in emergency medicine.”
That lures his gaze from the slice of pizza on his plate. “Really?”
Nodding, I smile. “Really.”
“That’s a hard life,” he says curtly. “I have a friend who is always pulling extra shifts in the ER. It consumes him.”
I take a sip of the lemon water I ordered when we sat down. “But he loves it. He wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
He lets out a chuckle. “I’m pretty sure he used those exact words to describe his job at some point. I guess all you ER types feel the same way.”
“Now, I’m an ER type?” I question boldly. “Earlier, I was a do-gooder.”
He rests an elbow on the table. “You’re both, and before you ask, that’s not a bad thing.”
“It’s not?”
“How can wanting to do good in the world be a bad thing?” he asks. “I may not treat human beings, but I understand the need to help. My patients just happen to have four legs and enjoy giving me tongue kisses.”
What I wouldn’t give to have the chance to give him a kiss, tongue or no tongue.
Raising his water glass in the air, he drops his chin toward my glass. “Let’s toast to that.”
I pick up my glass of water and raise it too. “Toast to what?”
“To medicine.” He clinks the glass in his hand to the side of mine. “And tongue kisses from patients.”
Laughing, I take a sip of my water.
He studies me as he lowers his glass. “You’re blushing.”
Scooting a hand over the bridge of my nose to my left cheek, I shake my head. “I’m not.”
“You are,” he insists. “Tell me something.”
“What?” I whisper.
“Did I beat out Tim on the blush factor scale?”
The glass in my hand shakes as I repeat those words in my head over and over.
Oh my fucking god.
He read it. Matthew Hawthorne read my diary.
* * *
There is no doubt– zero absolute doubt- that I’m now blushing.
On that juvenile blush factor scale I used in my diary when I was sixteen and seventeen, this would be a full-fledged five out of five.
“Oh, shit,” Matthew says with a wince. “I should have warned you that I read a few pages of the diary before I brought it over this morning. I wanted to make sure it actually belonged to you before I bothered you.”
Still not making eye contact with him, I let out some mumbling grumbly sound from between my lips.
“I’m sorry, Faith,” he continues. “The first entry was about your date with Tim and how he made you blush. You rated that a three out of five.”
Because Timmy Conwertson was a dud.
He asked me out for tacos when I was sixteen, expected me to pay, and then told me and I quote, “I want my penis in your vagina.”
By the grace of all things embarrassing, I didn’t include that last part in my diary out of fear my mom or dad would stumble on it.
“You read the first entry,” I repeat, trying to wrap my mind around that.
Those first few hundred entries were tame. I was sixteen and as innocent as innocent could be.
I’d kissed a couple of boys by then, but that was the extent of my experience with the opposite sex.
I graduated to touching and oral sex by the time I was seventeen.
I’ve never launched past that, though, and my diary details all of that. The same diary he opened last night.
“Tim sounds like a catch.” He takes a bite of pizza as if this is a general, run-of-the-mill conversation.
“He wasn’t.”
Matthew chews before he swallows hard. “I was joking.”
I manage a half-assed crooked smile. “That was a long time ago.”
Swiping a paper napkin over his lips, he looks me in the eye. “I don’t know a guy who had it together in high school. I sure as hell didn’t.”
That’s hard to imagine. I picture him as the smooth as fuck senior who had girls lined up in droves to get a piece of him.
I don’t think much has changed in his life since then other than the number of sexual partners he’s had.
“So, did I beat him?” he questions. “Tim? I made you blush harder than him, didn’t I?”
Nodding, I stare at him, amazed by the fact that he’s not batting an eyelash over the fact that he read part of my diary, and I’m freaking the hell out on the inside.
Maybe I’m holding it together so well on the outside that he can’t tell.
“You beat Tim.”
“Rate me.”
Seriously?
“What?” I scrunch my nose. “You want me to rate you?”
“I promised you fun tonight, Faith.” He strokes a finger over his perfect jawline. “This is fun.”
Maybe for him. For me, it’s edging toward humiliation and a point where I crawl under this table and hide.
“You gave Tim a three out of five on the blush factor scale, so what am I?” He edges up both dark eyebrows. “A five? A solid four and a half?”
Drawing in a deep breath, I lean both elbows on the table and study his breathtakingly handsome face. “You’re a three and a half.”
He sets his head back in heavy laughter. “I barely edged out a sixteen-year-old kid? I need to up my game.”
