Read Online At First Sight by Nicholas Sparks - Free Book Online

like?”
“I think this one over here would be good for the family,” she said, motioning to a four-door sedan halfway down the lot. “It was rated a ‘Best Buy’ in Consumer Reports for safety, it’s reliable, and we can get a warranty up to seventy thousand miles.”
Economical. Sensible. Responsible. She covered all the bases, he acknowledged, but his heart nonetheless sank when he saw the car of her choice. In his opinion, it might as well have had wood paneling on the side and whitewall tires for all the sexiness it exuded.
Seeing his expression, she moved toward him and slipped her arms around his neck. “I know it’s probably not what you dreamed about, but how about if we order it in fire-engine red?”
He raised an eyebrow. “With flames painted on the hood?”
She laughed again. “If that’s what you really want.”
“I don’t. I was just seeing how far I could go.”
She kissed him. “Thank you,” she said. “And just so you know, I think you’re going to look very sexy whenever you drive it.”
“I’m going to look like my father.”
“No,” she said, “you’ll look like the father of our baby, and no man on earth can touch that.”
He smiled, knowing she was trying to make him feel better. Still, his shoulders slumped just a bit with the thought of what might have been when he signed the papers an hour later.
Aside from the tinge of disappointment he felt whenever he slipped behind the wheel, life wasn’t all bad. Because he hadn’t been writing, he found himself with quite a bit of time on his hands, far more than he was used to. For years he’d chased stories around the world, investigating everything from the Abominable Snowman in the Himalayas to the Shroud of Turin in Italy, exposing frauds, legends, and hoaxes for what they were. In between, he’d hammered out articles exposing con men, psychics, and faith healers, while still finding time to put together his regular twelve columns a year. It was a life of steady pressure, sometimes all consuming, but more often simply unrelenting. In his earlier marriage to Maria, his constant traveling had become a source of tension, and she’d asked him to stop freelancing in exchange for a job that included a regular paycheck from one of the major New York papers. He’d never considered her suggestion seriously, but, reflecting on his life now, he wondered whether he should have. The constant pressure to find and deliver, he realized, had manifested itself in other areas of his life as well. For years he’d needed to do something-anything-every waking moment. He couldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes at a time; there was always something to read or study, always something to write. Little by little, he realized, he’d lost the ability to relax, and the result was a long period of his life in which months blurred together, with nothing to differentiate one year from the next
The last month in Boone Creek, boring as it had been, was actually . . . refreshing. There was simply nothing to do, and considering the hectic pace of his life over the last fifteen years, who could complain about that? It was like a vacation, one he hadn’t planned for, but one that left him feeling more rested than he had in years. For the first time in what seemed like forever, he was choosing the pace of his life rather than having his life choose the pace. Being bored, he decided, was an underrated art form.
He especially liked being bored when he was with Lexie. Not so much the porch sitting, but he liked the feel of her beneath his arm while they watched an NBA game. Being with Lexie was comfortable, and he relished their quiet dinner conversations and the warmth of her body as they sat together atop Riker’s Hill. He looked forward to those simple moments with an enthusiasm that surprised him, but what he enjoyed most of all were those mornings when they could sleep in, then wake up slowly together. It was a guilty pleasure-she allowed it only when