“So, when did you start wearing contacts?” Adam had no idea why he’d asked that question. He knew she didn’t. The last thing he wanted to do was embarrass her. So what in the hell was wrong with him?
“What?” She looked up at him like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
“Nothing.” He shook his head, wishing he could kick his own ass for having started his apology lunch off on such an awkward foot.
As they waited at the only four-way stop in hope falls that had traffic lights in Hope Falls, Adam searched his mind for something, anything, to say to turn this around.
“I don’t wear contacts,” Jane blurted out.
Adam’s head turned towards her, his brow furrowed. He knew what he’d just heard her say, but it made absolutely zero sense to him.
Staring down at the ground, she spoke rapidly as she explained, “On Monday, I came in to work early so that I could get some work done before…well, I fell asleep at my desk. Nikki woke me up, and when I stood, my legs were asleep and I fell down. That’s why I was on the floor.”
“Oh.” Adam wasn’t quite sure what to say.
Jane looked up at him, her jaw set, radiating determination. The sun highlighted the golden flecks in her eyes, causing them to shine brightly. “When you walked in, your ears must’ve been burning because we were talking about you and the fact that you were starting that day. Then you asked what we were doing and that’s why I said that I wore contacts. Because I was embarrassed.”
With a sigh, Jane squared her shoulders and firmly held his gaze with challenge in her eyes. He wasn’t sure what she expected him to say, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t what he did say.
“Has anyone ever told you that you are adorable?”
The small wrinkle appeared, once again, above her nose as she shook her head, “Uhh…what? No.”
“Well, you are,” Adam said matter-of-factly.
Scrunching her face in the cutest way, reminding him of a bunny, she moved her head from side to side as she continued to silently disagree with him. She tucked a stray hair behind her ear and the movement gave him an up-close-and-personal view of the slope of her neck. He had the strongest urge to press his lips to the enticing spot just below her ear. Maybe even bite it lightly. He’d never had vampire urges before, but apparently, Jane brought out the Twilight in him.
“So, how long have you worked for Mike?” he asked even though he already knew the answer. In his assessment of the company, he’d seen Jane’s employee records.
She’d started out as an intern on Mike’s first run for the senate. She’d been hired as a full-time employee and quickly worked her way up. When he’d made the move to Hope Falls, she’d followed.
Knowing it because he’d read it and hearing Jane tell her story were two very different things. She talked animatedly as they made the short walk to Sue Ann’s Café. In what was now becoming a pattern whenever he was around Jane, Adam was mesmerized.
Chapter 7
‡
This is not a date. This is not a date. This is not a date.
Jane repeated the mantra in hopes that it would finally sink into her consciousness, sub and otherwise. It wasn’t working though. Not only did this feel like a date, but it felt like the best one she’d ever been on.
When they arrived at the crowded café, and Jane took a break from rambling on about her employment, she found herself relaxing as they waited for a table to open up. Normally, in social situations, she clammed up or overcompensated by saying too much. Although she’d definitely been flirting with the oversharing line while rambling on about her job, she hadn’t quite sealed the deal.
Even the fact that their arrival had drawn quite a few interested glances from the townies eating at the popular establishment hadn’t put a damper on how much fun Jane was having. Spending this time with Adam had made her emotions do a 360. Instead of feeling uncomfortable and on edge around him, he now made her feel totally at ease.
He listened as much as he spoke. He was quick-witted and easy on the eyes. But the best part of this “work lunch,” the part she’d be playing over and over again in her mind, was the way Adam placed his hand on the small of her back when the waitress showed them to their table and then—wait for it—pulled her chair out. Yep, like right out of a movie. Well, a movie from the ’50s, that is.
He’d opened doors for her, and she appreciated it. But she hadn’t expected him to pull her chair out. Who still did that? Apparently, Adam Dorsey. That’s who.
All through lunch, they made small talk, but not the kind that felt forced or awkward. It was the get-to-know-you-better kind that felt easy and stimulating.
Sue Ann beamed down as she dropped the check off. “Hope y’all enjoyed your meal.”
“We sure did,” Jane enthused.
“Yes, ma’am.” Adam nodded as he took care of the bill. “It was delicious.”
Not a date. Not a date. Not a date.
Jane was in full swoon from Adam’s use of the word ma’am when her phone buzzed. Looking down, she saw the time and couldn’t believe her eyes.
“We’ve been here for two hours!” Her eyes shot up to Adam’s to see if he was as shocked as she was.
Instead, his brow furrowed and his jaw tensed. “Is that okay? Were you supposed to go to that meeting with the city council?”
“Oh, no. I just… I never take this long. The time just got away from me.” Jane stumbled over her words as her phone vibrated in her hand again.
Nana’s picture popped up on her screen. Her throat constricted and her stomach lurched as alarm filled her. Their weekly call wasn’t for two more days, and her papa’s health was not as good as she’d like it to be.
“I’m sorry. I have to take this,” Jane apologized before she answered. “Hi. Is everything okay?”
“Hey there, bunny,” her nana enthused.
“Hi,” Jane repeated. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. Your papa and I just wanted to call and let you know we won’t be able to have our call on Monday.”
“Oh.” Jane’s shoulders slumped in relief. “Okay.”
“Did I interrupt you? Is this a bad time?” she asked.
“Oh, no. I’m just…at lunch.” The heat from Adam’s ocean blue gaze warmed Jane’s cheeks.
“You didn’t bring your lunch?” Nana sounded shocked. That was understandable. Jane was a creature of habit, and her grandparents knew that.
“No. I went out to lunch.”
“Alone?” her papa’s voice came over the line.
Great. She was on speaker.
“You went to lunch alone. Are you sure that’s safe?” Concern was rising in her grandpa’s voice.
The last thing she wanted was for her impromptu lunch excursion to cause his blood pressure to rise. “No, I’m not alone. I’m with…”
Her heart started beating faster. She didn’t want to say who she was with. Then her grandparents would think…
“Adam,” Adam slowly mouthed with a whisper, as if she’d forgotten his name.
Yeah, that would never happen.
A nervous giggle—yes, a giggle—rose up in Jane’s throat as she repeated, “Adam.”
Guilt washed over her as soon as the word had left her mouth. She knew she was perpetuating the lie she’d told earlier in the week. And that was not okay.
“It’s a work lunch,” she added lamely.
“Ooooooooh Adam!” her nana squealed.
Jane crossed her fingers, toes, and eyes that her high-pitched voice hadn’t carried and Adam hadn’t heard.
“We’ll let you go then, bunny. And remember, no call this week. Love you.”
“Okay. Love you,” Jane said, but it was to no one. Her grandparents had disconnected the call.
Setting the phone down, she reminded herself that this was why she didn’t lie. This sick-to-her-stomach feeling. This horrible sinking sensation in her gut.
“Everything okay?” Adam’s brow rose.
>
Realizing she probably looked like she was about to be ill—because she was—she relaxed her face and smiled. “Yep.”
The intense, blue-eyed stare that searched hers made her wonder if there was any truth to the rumors that he was some kind of spy. His stare felt part lie detector, part mental interrogator. Jane tried to clear her mind of the fact that she told her grandparents that she was seeing Adam. She felt like, somehow, in some way, if she was thinking about it, he would know.
Was telepathy a real thing? Just as Jane was trying to search her mental database for any research or technological developments in the mind-reading field, Adam asked her a question that came from so far out of left field that it was more like from the parking lot.
“Was that your boyfriend?” He grinned slightly, all concern gone.
“Was who my boyfriend?” she asked a little breathlessly.
Did he know? Had she given herself away? Had her nana’s reaction put him on the trail that led up Liar’s Mountain and straight to Fake-Boyfriend Lookout?
Adam’s eyes dropped to the phone she was holding in her hand. Following his gaze, she realized that the paranoia she’d developed over the past couple of weeks was back in full effect.
Jane opened her mouth to explain, but before she could help it, she was making a play for Guinness Book of World Records for Oversharing. “Oh, no. That was my grandparents. They live in Florida. They thought I was eating alone. That’s why I said your name. I mean, that I was eating with you. So they’d know that I wasn’t alone. So my grandpa wouldn’t worry. He has high blood pressure, and worrying makes it worse.
“They worry about me. A lot. Especially my grandpa. But I think that’s just because they’re more like my parents than my grandparents. They raised me, and we’re all the family we’ve got, so they worry all the time.
“We have a call every week. Our check-in call. It’s on Mondays. But they can’t make it this week. That’s what they were calling to tell me. That we won’t have our weekly call. Which is weird. They’ve never missed a call before. I didn’t ask why they can’t. They just said they couldn’t.”
Stop talking.
Thankfully, Jane’s body cooperated with her inner voice’s suggestion and she shut her mouth. This non-date had been going so well up until that point. Then it had gone from pleasant to code-red awkward in the span of thirty seconds.
Her eyes darted around the room to see if she had an audience to her colossal crash and burn. It didn’t seem like any of the other patrons were interested in what was happening at their table though. Thank God for small blessings. In this town, if someone had overheard her rant, there was a very good chance it would end up either on the front page of the newspaper or, at the very least, as an anecdote at the next chamber of commerce meeting.
Feeling fairly certain she had managed to narrowly avoid both of those unfortunate fates, Jane took a deep breath and forced herself to look back at Adam. She braced herself for an expression of disbelief, irritation, this-chick-is-crazy, or, at the very least, confusion. What she saw couldn’t have shocked her more if someone had come through the door and told her that she’d just won the Miss Universe pageant. He looked…charmed.
“So, no boyfriend, then?” he asked smoothly, his lips turned up at the corners.
“Oh no, no boyfriend.” Jane returned his smile, her nerves still rioting through her.
“And you said your grandparents raised you?”
And just like that, she calmed down. Somehow, with one simple follow-up question, Adam had centered her off-balance state. “Yes, since I was six,” she answered calmly.
Well, calm if she ignored the butterflies that were flitting around in her mid-section, that is.
*
As they walked down the street, back towards the office, Adam couldn’t get over how ridiculously cute Jane was. She’d been silent since they left the café, and currently wore a pensive look on her face. He could practically hear the wheels turning. It was all he could do not to lean down and kiss the top of her head.
He was surprised at what a difficult time he was having adjusting to his huge response to her off-beat charm. He was more than just attracted to it; he was captivated. It made him feel things that he’d never felt before.
With every minute he spent with her, he wanted to spend more. With every word she spoke, he wanted to hear more. With every movement, smile, and look she gave him, he wanted to see more.
She was…disarming. His defenses were crumbling with each passing moment, and he was forgetting why they were there in the first place.
Adam intentionally slowed his steps to a strolling, leisurely pace. They needed to get back to work, but he was in no hurry.
“So you mentioned that your grandparents raised you. What happened to your parents? If you don’t mind me asking?”
Before Jane had a chance to answer, his phone buzzed. Only a few people had this number, so as much as he wanted to ignore it, he knew he couldn’t. After pulling the device from his pocket, he saw that it was Declan.
“I’m sorry. I need to take this.” He stopped just as they reached the corner where Brewed Awakenings was.
“Of course. I’ll see you back at the office.” Jane smiled brightly as she continued on.
His eyes drifted down her back, locking on the sway of her hips. Today, Jane was wearing dark-grey slacks that hung loosely on her thin frame, but now that Adam had seen Jane in her gardening gear, he knew what the legs beneath that material looked like. And that knowledge gave him x-ray vision. His fingers itched to run along the slender slope of the back of her knee, up her thigh, and all the way to…
His phone buzzed again, snapping him out of his momentary fantasy.
“Hey, D.” He’d been waiting for this call all week. “What’s up?”
“Hey, man. I have bad news and more bad news. What do you want first?”
Adam had figured as much since the news Declan had involved Alexis. In the eight years they’d been together, he’d learned a lot, but mainly that nothing could ever be easy with her.
“Okay, what’s the bad news?”
“Bad news: she’s not only refusing to vacate the property, she’s now moved furniture in. With her connections, it will take more than the local authorities to get her out. I am working on getting the lease transferred to her name, but again, with her connections, it’s not going smoothly.” Declan took a breath before continuing. “And in more bad news: I just got a counter offer from her lawyer, and she wants more money.”
“How much?” Adam thought he’d have a stronger feeling about these proceedings, but instead, he felt…nothing. Totally numb.
“She wants double,” Declan said as if that news would shock Adam.
It didn’t.
“I know you want this over with as quickly as possible, so I say we meet her halfwa—”
“No.” Adam didn’t care about the money. “Just give her what she wants.”
“Adam,” Declan warned, “that’s two million dollars.”
“I know.”
Declan urgently explained, “We can negotiate this down. She’s the party at fault. Most likely, we can even avoid going to court, and I know that a mediator would see it—”
“I don’t want mediation. I don’t want to go to court. I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to speak to her. I just want this done. Get the papers signed. Do what you have to do.”
There was a moment of silence—it was probably killing his friend to hold his tongue. Money had always been important to Declan. It was to most kids who grew up like they had. To Adam, money was something he could live without and knew how to earn. Alexis was trying to use it as a weapon, and that wasn’t going to happen. No one and nothing would ever hold any kind of power over him again.
“Okay.” Declan sighed. “If that’s really what you want.”
“It is,” he assured his friend.
“All right. I’ll let you know when it’s done.”
Adam disco
nnected the call and waited to feel…something. Anything. Anger. Sadness. Loss. If not for the person, then for the dent in his bank account.
But the only thing he felt was desire. Desire to see Jane. She had the strangest effect on him. She calmed him down and excited him at the same time. Over the week they’d spent working side by side in silence, just being in her presence had grown to be addicting.
Which was bad. The last thing he needed was to get into some kind of rebound relationship, especially with a girl as amazing as Jane, but he still rounded the corner to the office a little faster than he would normally.
As soon as he cleared it, he saw Jane standing in front of the office building, her back facing him. She wasn’t alone. Eli, a firefighter who frequented his cousin’s bar, was with her. Adam had gotten to know the guy over the past few weeks he’d been in Hope Falls, and he liked him well enough. What he didn’t like was seeing him talk to Jane.
He didn’t like that at all.
An emotion Adam couldn’t quite put his finger on welled up inside of him like a giant wave about to crash onto the shore. As he approached, he noticed that she was stuttering over her words. Adam couldn’t make out what she was saying, but her voice was about an octave higher than it usually was.
She was flustered.
When he got closer, he heard Eli speak, and the words that came out of his mouth did not sit well with Adam.
Eli grinned down at Jane. “Well, at least promise you’ll save me a dance.”
“Oh…oh…okay… Yeah, sure.”
“See you tomorrow.” Eli winked at Jane before heading across the street to the fire station, nodding to Adam when he noticed him standing there.
That feeling that had welled up in him just moments ago when he’d first seen Eli and Jane talking flooded through him now, and he was able to identify it.
It was jealousy.
Which was absolutely ridiculous. He had no rights to her. She could flirt or be flirted with by anyone.
Since she had her back to him still, he couldn’t see her face. One of the things about Jane that was quickly growing on him was that everything she felt was written all over her face. He might not always know why she was feeling the things she was feeling, but he knew what she was feeling.
Secret Kiss Page 6
