Caught Up In Him

Caught Up In Him

Lauren Blakely

Copyright 2013 by Lauren
Blakely

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. This book or
any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of
America

First Printing, 2013

www.LaurenBlakely.com

This book is a work of fiction. No
part of the contents relate to any real person or persons, living
or dead.

CAUGHT UP IN HIM is a free teaser
preview of the full-length novel CAUGHT UP IN US, coming in late
January 2013. CAUGHT UP IN HIM is not intended as a standalone
short or a novella. It is, however, a sneak peek at how the
characters first meet, and it is meant to whet your appetite for
the rest of the tale! Think of CAUGHT UP IN HIM like an extended
movie trailer…

Table of
Contents

Chapter
One

Chapter
Two

Chapter
Three

Five Years
Later

Chapter
One

FIVE YEARS AGO…

It was just like in the movies. When
you least expect it he walks into the scene and turns your world
upside down.

I first met Bryan in my driveway one
summer day when I was seventeen. I’d heard of him; my older brother
Nate had roomed with him through most of college and into business
school. But I’d never met Bryan myself. He grew up near Buffalo and
went home for school breaks. Then, the summer after I’d graduated
from high school, Bryan stayed with us for a few weeks to help run
Mystic Landing, the gift shop my parents ran in the center of
town.

My parents rarely vacationed and
hardly ever took time off. My mother had spent most of my high
school years recuperating from a devastating car accident that had
required multiple surgeries and countless physical therapy
sessions. She was finally herself again and to celebrate, my mom’s
sister had convinced my parents to spend a few weeks at her lake
house in Maine. Nate and I would watch the store while they relaxed
by cool blue waters and underneath crystal skies.

They packed up, hopped in the car
and drove north, and hours later, I met the man who’d become my
first love. From the moment he arrived, I was a done deal. I swung
open the front door, ran to the car, and gave Nate a huge hug. Then
Bryan got out of the passenger side, wearing a white tee-shirt and
worn jeans, which is near about the sexiest thing a man can wear.
When he slung his duffel bag on his shoulder his shirt rose up,
revealing a sliver of his firm and flat stomach. I tried to look
elsewhere because otherwise I’d only think about the way his blue
jeans hung just so on his hips, and where the cut lines of his
abdomen led to.

So I checked out his arms instead.
I’ve always thought one of the reasons some men work so hard on
their arms is because of what women think when they encounter
nicely sculpted ones. You picture the man above you. You imagine
running your hands up and down those arms as he moves in
you.

But he wasn’t just a beautiful body.
He was the whole package. He had a trace of stubble on his boyish
face, and the softest-looking dark brown hair I’d ever seen. His
eyes drew me in, those forest green eyes with flecks of gold. Eyes
you could gaze into, eyes that invited long simmering looks as they
saw inside you.

Nate introduced us, and Bryan put
his bag down and gave me a sturdy hug, rather than a handshake. I
was wearing one of my own necklace designs, a silver chain strung
with a lone heart pendant in midnight blue. His chest pressed into
the pendant, and I could easily have let my thoughts run away right
there.

Then he spoke to me. “I feel like I
know you already. Nate says you’re a huge movie fan. That when
you’re not making necklaces you’re at the local theater. I’ve
always said there’s nothing better than skipping class for a
matinee.” Then the grin came, the lopsided smile I’d fall hard
for.

“Matinee and popcorn. Doesn’t get
any better than that,” I said, and I was sure the words came out
all bumpy and clunky, out of sync with what I was saying silently —
How did my brother have such a ridiculously good-looking best
friend?

The three of us hung out that night,
ordered pizza, and lounged on old plastic chairs on the deck, under
the stars. I listened as they talked about school, and what was
next for them both on the work front. Nate planned to look for a
job in the technology industry at the end of the summer, and Bryan
had scored a gig in Manhattan that started in a month. They weren’t
college boys anymore since they both had MBAs, but they weren’t
working men yet either. They were in this sort of in-between
time.

I was in an in-between time too.
Only I was five years younger, so I figured I should get out of the
way of their guy talk.

“I better go to sleep. Since I’ve
got the Mystic Landing morning shift and all,” I said, and then
went to my room and pulled on a pair of loose shorts and a gray
tank top with a pink Hello Kitty across the chest. I brushed my
teeth, washed my face, and walked back down the hall to my bedroom
when I bumped into Bryan.

“Sorry,” he said, then glanced at my
tank top, and lingered with his eyes a little longer than he
should. I didn’t mind, but when he realized what he was doing, he
looked up. “You like Hello Kitty?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, thrown off by
his remark.

“That’s really cute.” His lips
quirked up.

“Really?” I couldn’t tell if he was
putting me on.

He nodded. “Yeah. Definitely. Hello
Kitty is totally adorable.”

“Wow. Nate never told me his best
friend was such a huge fan of cartoon cats.”

“I’m personally a bigger fan of
Bucky from the comic Get Fuzzy.”

“I love that crazy
Siamese.”

“I defy anyone who doesn’t find cats
amusing to read that comic.”

“That is an awesome challenge. Let’s
make posters and start a campaign.”

“I’m so on it.”

“I’ll even break out my Get Fuzzy
tee-shirt when we start planning a march to the
capital.”

“Generally speaking, I’m good with
all cartoon cats, especially when cute girls wear them.”

Then he walked off. That was all he
said, and I was left alone in the hall, my mind buzzing, my skin
tingling. I didn’t fall asleep right away. I replayed our
conversation. We’d hit it off, right? I wasn’t imagining it. There
was something in that kind of instant repartee, wasn’t there?
Especially when I thought of that last moment — cute girls, cute
girls, cute girls.

Chapter Two

The next morning I probably spent
more time in front of the mirror adjusting my hair and touching up
my lip gloss than I usually did. Then I walked into town and
stopped at the local cafe for my usual.

After I left, I was surprised to
find Bryan waiting outside Mystic Landing. He had a cup of coffee
in his hand, and the ends of his dark hair were still wet. I was
near enough to breathe in that clean, freshly showered scent. “I’m
a morning person too. Hope you don’t mind if I share the morning
shift with you. Nate’ll sleep past noon anyway.”

“Not at all,” I said as I hunted for
the keys in my purse.

He tipped his forehead to my drink.
“Must have just missed you at the cafe. Coffee, too?”

I shook my head. “Caramel macchiato.
Only frou-frou drinks for this girl.” Then, I leaned in closer to
him and dropped my voice to a faux whisper. “I even got an extra
shot of caramel.”

He pretended as if I’d just the most
scandalous thing in the world. “So decadent.”

“And you?” I asked, because I had a
theory that you could tell a lot about a guy by his coffee drink.
Any guy who ordered soy, chai, or more foam was going to be
high-maintenance. If a fellow asked for the water to be extra hot,
he was destined to be cold and emotionless because the water at any
coffee shop is already scalding; if you needed it hotter, you had
no feelings. When boys wanted herbal tea, I’d run the other way
because that meant they’d be far too interested in yoga, new-age
crystals and feng-shui’ing my life. I had no problem with those
things, but their collective by-product was often not enough
showering, and I was a big fan of the just-showered look and
smell.

Then there was the man who ordered
just coffee. Simple, straightforward, knows what he
wants.

Bryan tapped the top of the plastic
lid on his cup. “Coffee. Just coffee, nothing more. I like my
coffee the way —”

I held up a hand. “I don’t want to
hear one of those customary guy jokes. I like my coffee the way I
like my women — hot, strong, with cream.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I
wasn’t going to say that.”

“Oh. Sorry. How do you like your
coffee then?” I turned away and slid the key into the
lock.

He lowered his voice, and spoke in a
dark and smoky kind of whisper. “The way they drink it in Paris.
Black.”

It was a good thing my back was to
him. Because something about the way he said Paris sent shivers up
my spine. It was as if his voice was caressing my back. “Have you
been?” I asked, because it had been my dream to go to Paris. To
wander in and out of boutiques and shops and see all the necklaces
and bracelets and jewelry. To be inspired by the
designs.

To fall in love, by the river, under
the lamplight.

“Only once. But the company I’m
starting to work for has offices there, so I’m hoping go back,” he
said. As I opened the door, I thought: take me with you, take me
with you, take me with you.

We worked the morning shift together
that first day, and we clicked with the customers. He’d chat up a
pair of vacationing sisters about a coffee table picture book, then
hand off to me, and then I’d do the same with a couple considering
a serving plate. We had a sort of instant rhythm and sense of how
to make a store like this work.

“We’re like a tag team,” he said
after I rang up another sale, and I smiled in agreement.

Nate arrived in the early afternoon
to take over. As I grabbed my purse from behind the counter, Bryan
placed a hand on my arm. “Matinee and popcorn?”

My stomach flipped. I nodded a yes,
mumbled a goodbye to my brother, and left the store with his best
friend. We walked the few blocks to the six-screen cinema, picked a
Will Ferrell comedy, and opted to share a medium popcorn. We went
the next day to see a thriller, then the next for a sci-fi picture,
and after that we saw a silly film with talking animals in it,
laughing the whole time. When the movie ended, I told him it
reminded me of a film I’d seen a few years back with my mom, then
proceeded to rattle off how it compared to every other talking
animal flick, as if I were a too-serious film critic opining
needlessly. “But the pig in Babe did set the standard for
linguistically-capable animals on screen.”

“You’ve pretty much seen every
movie, haven’t you?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t say every
movie.”

“But most?”

I shrugged. “I see a lot of
movies.”

“Why? I mean, besides the obvious.
That movies are fun.”

“Isn’t that a good enough reason?
Just for entertainment?”

“Totally. So that’s the
reason?”

“Sure,” I said, but I was smiling
the kind of smile that said there was more to it.

“All right, Kat Harper. What’s the
story?” He motioned with his hand for me to spill the beans. “Tell
me where your love of movies comes from.”

“I think it’s because of what movies
have always meant to my family. All these big events in my life
were marked by movies. When Nate was in eighth grade and won the
election for class president, we all went to see the re-release of
Raiders of the Lost Ark, because it was this great action
adventure, and I gripped the armrest when Harrison Ford raced
against the boulder. The time I was picked to design the cover of
the junior high yearbook we went to see Ocean’s Eleven. That’s just
how we celebrated things. I even remember when my grandmother died.
We went to the memorial service. I was twelve and I read a poem at
the service, and then we decided that we should see Elf. Which
probably sounds like a weird thing to do after a
funeral.”