Kiss Me

by C. C. Wood

  Kiss Me

  by

  C.C. Wood

  Copyright Crystal W. Wilson 2013

  Acknowledgements

  There are so many wonderful people who have helped me the last few months. First and foremost, I have to thank Kerry and Ricki. You two have done so much for me and never asked for anything in return. For that, I love you. Even when you won’t let me use commas, Kerry.

  Also, I have to thank Scandalicious Book Reviews and Ana’s Attic. You two ladies gave me a shot even though you had no clue who I was. I will be forever grateful. Also, you make me laugh like no one else! There are several other blogs who have read my novellas and been gracious enough to review them. A big thank you to; Lori’s Book Blog, Jenny at Totally Booked Blog, Lisa’s Book Review, Live Read and Breathe Reviews, and A Love Affair with Books. If I have forgotten anyone, please forgive me. I live in my own little world and tend to forget anything that I don’t create in my head.

  Last but not least, I have to thank my friend Nikki, for all the support, editing, and beta reading services she has provided. You gave me the confidence to give this crazy dream a try. I love you, girly!

  Chapter One

  Damn, she couldn’t believe he was here. Well, she could, but it bugged the crap out of her. Kaylie Masters knocked back half of the wine in her glass and watched Jake Coulter as he talked with her brother and her best friend, Blair. They were all smiling widely, obviously enjoying each other’s company.

  With a disgusted sigh, Kaylie turned her back on the trio and grabbed the bottle of wine on the table. She topped up her glass. Inside, she felt her gut twist. After six years it shouldn’t hurt so much to see him smiling and happy. As she sipped her wine, Kaylie decided that she was allowed to be pissed that he seemed perfectly fine. After the way he ditched her all those years ago, he should at least have the decency to seem slightly uncomfortable in her presence, especially since it was Valentine’s Day. It should have been a law of nature that exes would never run into each other on a day dedicated to romance.

  She looked around the large living area of her parents’ home. The house was full of family and friends. They were all here to celebrate Kevin’s engagement to her best friend, Blair Bolton. Kaylie couldn’t be happier for her brother or her bestie. They were perfect for each other. She was just glad they stopped dancing around and wasting time. She knew the first time that they met, Blair and Kevin had something special between them. Kaylie just hoped that Blair picked out a flattering maid of honor dress since she was the wonderful person who introduced them in the first place.

  Kaylie felt someone approach her left and glanced up, straight into the dark brown eyes of Jake Coulter. Her hand tightened reflexively on her glass. Hoping she looked casual, Kaylie sipped her wine.

  “Kaylie,” he said.

  Goosebumps broke out on her skin, but Kaylie ignored them.

  “Jake,” she returned coolly.

  He grinned at her as though he could see straight through her façade. Kaylie felt her tummy drop toward her knees. His dimple did that to her every time. She didn’t know why. They had broken up six years ago when she was twenty-two and fresh out of college. She had moved on and she figured he had too since she’d seen him with a different girl at least once every few months.

  The memory of all the women after her made Kaylie’s reaction to Jake fizzle out. She angled slightly away from him.

  “Glad you could make it, Jake. Enjoy your evening.” She started to step away, eager to put some space between them, even if she had to talk to Blair’s creepy cousin, Neil.

  His hand came up and snagged the wrist of her free hand. “Kaylie,” he sighed.

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”

  Jake glanced around and set his glass down on the table behind them. “C’mon.”

  Kaylie squeaked as he used his grip on her wrist to tug her across the room and out the French doors that led to the side yard. She tried to dig in her heels, but the four inch peep-toe pumps provided no traction whatsoever. Once they were outside in the dark, Kaylie managed to jerk her arm out of his grip.

  “What the hell, Jake? You can’t just manhandle me.”

  Jake put his hands up in surrender. “I just wanted to talk to you, Kaylie, and I didn’t want to cause a scene.”

  Still holding her wineglass, Kaylie put her free hand on her cocked hip. “Who says I can’t cause a scene out here?”

  He grinned at her. For some perverse reason, he always seemed to enjoy her attitude and her tendency to call him out. Jake stepped closer and her eyes narrowed. Still, she held her ground.

  “Maybe I just wanted to get you alone.” His dimple popped out as his grin widened.

  Kaylie rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’m going back inside.” She turned to the door.

  “Wait, Kaylie, please.”

  She heaved a huge sigh and faced him again. “What, Jake? What could we possibly have to say to each other?”

  His grin was long gone and Jake’s dark eyes glittered in the dim light filtering out from the party inside.

  “Why do you do this when you see me, Kaylie?” he asked.

  “Do what?” Her voice was sharp.

  “You toss out attitude, scurry away, and spend the rest of the time I’m around finding ways to avoid me.”

  “I do not…” Kaylie trailed off when she saw the expression on Jake’s face. It was the same one he wore when they used to argue and he knew she was just continuing the disagreement out of sheer pig-headedness. “Okay, so I don’t want to spend time with you. A lot of women feel that way about their exes, Jake. I’ll be civil but I don’t want to be your buddy.”

  She saw the muscles in his jaw tighten and start twitching at her words. Well, tough shit if she struck a nerve. What right did he have to drag her out of her brother and her best friend’s engagement party for a conversation that was six years too late?

  “Can’t we just talk, Kaylie? As I remember, we used to talk for hours. It’s been six years, surely you aren’t still upset because we broke up?”

  Kaylie felt as though her scalp was rippling with the heat of her anger. She had a formidable temper and she was a scant inch from losing it. Kaylie realized that she had just growled at Jake in the back of her throat. Fuck almost, her control over her temper was gone. She couldn’t believe he had the balls to throw their break up in her face.

  “We didn’t break up, Jake. You dumped me.” It made her chest hurt to say it, but it was the truth and she would be damned if he was going to make it sound like the devastated mess he’d left her in was due to an amicable decision. “I fucking loved you and you threw me away, so, yeah, you could still say I’m upset. Wait,” she slashed a hand through the air when he opened his mouth to interrupt, “now I’m fucking pissed because you make it sound like six years should be plenty of time to forget that I was so unimportant to you that you could ditch me and walk away without a second thought. I gave you everything I had to give. I honestly thought we would spend the rest of our lives together. I held nothing back and you literally threw it in my face, Jake. So, again, I am still upset as you so simply put it.”

  With that, Kaylie tore open the door and stumbled through. She heard Jake say something behind her, but she didn’t give a damn. She couldn’t believe that she had spilled her guts like that, to Jake of all people. Blair, definitely, she felt she could tell her anything. Hell, even her brother, Kevin, but Jake, the enemy, hell no. He had no right to know those things about her. He’d thrown away that right six years ago when he dumped her.

  Kaylie saw Kevin and Blair watching her from across the room. Carefully, she schooled her face into a small smile and waved cheekily. They both frowned at her and she knew she wasn’t fooling anybody. As quickly as possible, Kaylie moved through t
he crowded room to the stair case in the foyer. She bounded up the steps. The upper floor was deserted, but she could still hear the laughter from the party down below. Kaylie went down the hall to her old room and darted inside.

  She turned on the lamp by her bed and looked around at the room she grew up in. All her trophies, ribbons, and posters had been taken down years ago when she had permanently moved into her own little house, but the furniture and the bedding were the same. The walls had been repainted a soft pale green, but it was still the same room. It had been her sanctuary during her teens. Even after years out of the house, it still made her feel safe when she entered her room.

  Kaylie realized she was still carrying her wine glass. She placed it on the nightstand by the bed and sat down on the mattress. A dull throb echoed behind her eyes. God, her tantrum had given her a nasty little headache.

  Her head snapped up when her door opened and Jake stepped through. Kaylie heard herself growl.

  “Get out, Jake.”

  He shut the door behind him, turned the lock, and leaned against the jamb with his arms crossed.

  “No,” he said.

  The dull ache in Kaylie’s head spiked into a fierce stab of pain, probably from the fact that her blood pressure had suddenly shot up to one million over two million. She stood up and stomped over to him, reared her leg back, and kicked him squarely in the shin. Kaylie stepped back quickly, hopping on one foot. Damn, that had hurt.

  Jake had his leg up to his chest, rubbing his shin.

  “Dammit, Kaylie, I thought you might have grown out of the whole kicking-in-the-shin thing. That stings.”

  She glared at him as she hobbled back to the bed. Because she’d be damned before she admitted that her foot hurt, Kaylie only whined within the safety of her own head. Peep toes had been a bad idea.

  “Jake, seriously, just go away,” she sighed as she sank down on the bed, absently rubbing her temple.

  Jake just stared at her for a moment and headed to the attached bathroom. Kaylie stood up and took one step toward the door before Jake’s voice stopped her.

  “If you leave this room, I will chase you down and carry you back up here over my shoulder if I have to.”

  With her escape foiled, Kaylie went back to sit on the bed. Having argued with Jake on more than one occasion, she knew he wasn’t bluffing. He never said things he didn’t mean. A few moments later she looked up as he came back from the bathroom with a paper cup full of water and a bottle of ibuprofen. Without speaking, he handed her the cup then shook out two pills into her hand.

  Kaylie didn’t argue even though she really wanted to, she just swallowed the pills down with the water in the cup.

  Grudgingly, she looked up at Jake. “Thanks.”

  He nodded and loomed over her, his arms crossed across his chest. Kaylie gulped down the rest of the water and set the empty cup on the nightstand by her wineglass. She was a small woman, less than five-five in her bare feet, so his attempt to intimidate her was wasted. Most people towered over her and Kaylie was used to it. She leaned back on her hands.

  “Are you going to stand there or are you going to talk?” she asked, crossing her legs and swinging her foot as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  Jake scowled at her. “You are a very irritating woman.”

  Kaylie smirked back at him because she had heard those exact words on more than once and usually from his mouth.

  He sighed and moved to sit beside her on the mattress. “Kaylie, I honestly don’t know what to say. I do know that we can’t keep acting like this. With Kevin moving back to Austin, I’ll be around a lot more often.”

  Kaylie cocked her head and eyed him for a moment. “Okay, what do you propose we do?”

  Jake shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not the one going around kicking people in the shin.”

  She had to smile. When they were together, it had become almost like a contest. If Jake made her mad, she would kick him in the shin. After a while, he expected it, so she had to become creative in how she distracted him before she attacked. Fortunately, he seemed to enjoy her feisty behavior, well, at least until he dumped her.

  Kaylie’s smile disappeared when she remembered that. Still, he had a point. Jake and Kevin had become friends in the four years that Jake and Kaylie dated. They were still close. As much as Kaylie would have liked to throw a huge hissy fit after she and Jake broke up, she knew her brother really liked Jake, so she pretended the break-up wasn’t a big deal and that it didn’t bother her if her brother remained friends with her ex.

  “Fine, Jake. I’ll put on a polite face. We’ll make conversation and I’ll try to curb my shin-kicking tendencies.”

  He studied her intently. “Are you happy, Kaylie?” he asked.

  Kaylie blinked at him. “What?”

  His face was serious when he asked again, “Are you happy?”

  Confused, Kaylie replied, “Yes.”

  Jake tilted his head. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

  Beginning to get annoyed, Kaylie rolled her eyes. “Yes, I do. I like my life. I like living in Austin and I like my job. I love my friends. Why are you worried about it, Jake?”

  He leaned forward over his knees, presenting his back to her. “I just never thought you would really settle down. The years we were together, you talked about travelling the world and never getting stuck in a rut. I never thought you’d be living back in Austin near your parents, much less tied down with a business.”

  Kaylie’s brows drew together. “I’ve travelled the world, Jake, and I don’t feel like I’m stuck in a rut. Just because I didn’t want to have a boring life doesn’t mean that I don’t like having a home and a family.”

  He grunted and stared at the floor between his feet.

  “Seriously, Jake, what’s going on? Why are you asking me about all this?”

  Jake looked over his shoulder at her and Kaylie froze. There was something in his eyes that made her tummy flip over. He looked sad and fierce at the same time.

  “I just realized something about you that I didn’t before.”

  Kaylie still couldn’t move as Jake twisted to face her and his hand came up to touch her face. His fingers rested against her cheek and her eyes fluttered and shut. He hadn’t touched her like this in years and Kaylie was surprised by how much it hurt her heart.

  Her eyes flew open. No way was he going to twist her up in knots again and walk away whistling. Jake’s face was much closer to hers than it had been before. His brown eyes were intense. Kaylie tried to pull away but his hand wrapped around her neck to hold her still.

  “Jake, let me go,” she whispered.

  His hand tightened. “No. Not again.”

  Kaylie frowned at him, wondering what in the hell he meant when he kissed her. Just a light brush of his lips against her. She sucked in a breath and his lips settled more firmly on her mouth. Immediately, Kaylie was thrown back in time into the past. Even when she was so pissed at Jake she could barely speak, all the man had to do was kiss her and she forgot all about it. It seemed that time didn’t change everything because she completely lost her train of thought.

  Her hands slid up his shoulder and neck, into his hair and Kaylie shifted closer. Jake’s hands grasped her waist, pulling her into his lap. Kaylie plastered herself to his torso and tangled her tongue with his. She loved kissing Jake. His hands skimmed over her back, down her hips, to the hem of her dress. She shivered as one of Jake’s hands slid under the fabric to rest on her inner thigh. His touch was light and teasing. She couldn’t stop the soft moan that came out of her throat.

  Suddenly a door slammed in the hallway outside her room and Kaylie jolted. Holy shit, she was kissing Jake Coulter, the man who had broken her heart into little pieces. What the hell was wrong with her? Swiftly, Kaylie pushed herself off of his lap and practically leaped away from him. Her hands shook as she smoothed down her dress. Jake watched her and she had the disturbing feeling that he knew exactly how off balance she was. />
  “I think that was a little friendlier than I’m prepared to be on a regular basis, Jake,” she quipped, desperate to hide the fact that her legs were barely holding her upright.

  Completely undisturbed by her behavior, a slow smile spread across Jake’s face. Even more freaked out, Kaylie straightened her spine.

  “Good night, Jake.”

  With that, Kaylie unlocked the bedroom door and threw it open. She barely remembered what she said to Kevin, Blair, and her parents before she left the party, using the excuse of a headache. The entire ride home, her hands trembled. Mentally berating herself, Kaylie entered her little house and headed straight to the liquor cabinet. She poured herself a healthy shot of tequila and tossed it back.

  Kaylie coughed as the liquor burned its way down her throat. By her feet, she heard an annoyed meow.

  “Oh, can it, Beans. I’ll feed you in a second. Let me have my nervous breakdown, okay?”

  The cat stuck his nose up in the air and stalked away, tail straight in his irritation. Kaylie shook her head and went to feed her cat. She also grabbed a soda to wash down the taste of the tequila. While Beans ate, she changed into her pajamas and turned on the TV in her bedroom. As she got ready for bed, Kaylie tried to calm her thoughts, but it was hard. Kissing Jake tonight had been a huge mistake.

  The bastard had practically ruined her for all other men. Even when they first started dating, when he was twenty-two and she eighteen, he was a better kisser than anyone she’d ever dated. After they broke up, Kaylie hadn’t dated for over a year, but when she did, none were quite on the same level as Jake. A few were close, but Kaylie knew it was because she didn’t love them, not like she had loved Jake.

  Over the last six years, she had dated quite a bit. She was a bit more selective about those she had sex with and a few of them had been wonderful men and very good in bed, but the spark eventually faded and they each went their own way. Obviously, the spark between her and Jake remained burning bright, even if he had never loved her.