Contemporary romance reader: Sophia

Contemporary romance reader, warm, expressive, and swept-up

Prompt: A warm, expressive female voice for contemporary romance. Her bright mid-register glows with feeling, quickening at the spark, softening at the ache, sincere and swept-up. There's a heart-on-the-sleeve tenderness in her tone. The sound of a narrator who makes a first glance across a crowded room feel like the whole point of the book.

Script: She wasn't looking for anything that morning: just coffee, just quiet, just the ordinary Tuesday she'd planned. And then he held the door, said her name like a question, and something she'd bolted shut for two years quietly, terrifyingly began to open. She hated how much she noticed his hands.