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✨EXCERPT: DR. DEMPSEY by @authorgracemaxwell releasing April 6th!
#PreOrderHere
I’m reaching for coffee beans, proud of how functional and normal I’m being, when a voice cuts through the music overhead. Low. Warm. Threaded with laughter that once curled through my chest and stayed there.
I freeze. No, no, no. That can’t be him.
I tell myself it’s someone else. There must be other men in Paradise with voices that sound like warm whiskey.
I turn my head, slow and unwilling. And there he is.
Alaric Dempsey.
He looks older than the last time I saw him three years ago, but better.
Every bit of healing I’ve done since then fractures.
Then panic grips me. I haven’t washed my hair in three days. I have a coffee drip on the front of my sweater. There’s a pimple on my chin, and my period has me bloated. I wanted to see him when I looked my best—so he’d know he didn’t break me.
I duck behind a display of cereal boxes and peek through a gap.
Brilliant move, Liz. Real dignified.
Somewhere inside, the rational part of me asks, What are you doing? The rest of me whispers, Survival strategy.
The brunette leans closer. Alaric says something that makes her laugh again.
My stomach twists. “I’m invisible,” I whisper. “Just another shopper.” I take a breath. I can do this.
I shift, trying to get feeling back in my legs, and bump the cereal tower, which wobbles. Oh shit!
Too late.
The display tips in a glorious slow-motion disaster. Boxes tumble and crash into the apple pyramid. Honeycrisps scatter like marbles, rolling across the tile. One bounces off my boot and spins under a cart. A man in a puffy jacket swerves to avoid it.
The brunette yelps. Someone gasps.
Alaric turns.
Our eyes meet through the chaos.
Recognition hits like a power line sparking in the snow. Surprise. Then that slow, dangerous smile that used to be my undoing.
I don’t need groceries that bad.
#medicalromance #gracemaxwell @theauthor.agency
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