by Linda Kage
Damn, she always smelled so good. I think roses were my new aphrodisiac.
But I didn’t get long to enjoy this up-close-and-personal experience of her. She gasped again, and jerked against me, reminding me I’d just freaking put my mouth on her.
Oh, shit. I’d just kissed Isobel. On the cheek, but still…
Eyes wide, I pulled back and gaped into her face, realizing she looked as stunned as I felt. “I…I’m sorry,” I gushed. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” Oh, God. What the hell had I just done? “Are you going to tell your dad?”
She stared at me and pressed her hand to the scar as if I’d just slapped her instead of kissed her. And then I had to wonder if I had. What if some of the shit I’d just blurted came out all wrong and upset her instead of made her feel better?
Shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. I’d fucked up epically, hadn’t I?
She pushed to her feet to stand above me, still holding her hand to her cheek and staring at me as if I’d just plunged a knife into her back. Then she murmured, “Of course I won’t tell him,” and she rushed from the room.
chapter
SEVENTEEN
Isobel didn’t return to the library for the rest of the day. At first, I was okay with her absence. I mean, hell, I needed a moment to regroup, too.
I’d kissed her. Things had changed. We’d probably never get back to the place we used to be. And this new direction could either lead somewhere very good, or very bad. So, yeah, it was scary. I got that. I understood her need for a moment to herself.
Maybe even an hour or two to her herself.
But when four o’clock rolled around, it was time for me to leave, and she’d never reappeared. I had tried to place as many of her books on the shelves as possible, hoping I didn’t put something somewhere she didn’t want it to go, but it just felt all wrong doing it by myself. We’d started working on this together; we should’ve finished together.
The worst of it came the next morning at seven, when she didn’t show up at the lake to run. I stood on the running trail, our running trail, hands on my hips as I turned a slow circle and glowered at the amazing sunrise.
Dammit, she’d even ruined dawn for me. I couldn’t appreciate the pinks, and purples, and oranges in the sky without her.
Not about to let her retreat from me again, not the way she had the first two weeks I’d been here, I stormed toward the house.
I didn’t need to go inside to find her, though. As I approached the back, I saw a light on in the rose garden. So I veered that way. Even as I approached the entrance, I could see her inside, crouched among bushes as she gave her flowers a hundred and ten percent of the attention they needed.
Opening the door, I stalked inside.
“Morning,” I said, trying to conceal my anger so she wouldn’t know how truly furious I was. I hoped I sounded pleasant enough.
Her head jerked up, blue eyes blinking. Then she went back to work. “Morning.”
I watched her pluck a weed and then patiently fill the hole its absence had created with some fresh soil. Folding my arms over my chest, I chewed on the inside of my lip, silently willing her to look at me again. She didn’t.
After drawing in a deep, calming breath, I said, “Missed you on the trail this morning.”
She shrugged. The damn woman merely shrugged. “I didn’t feel like running.”
Okay. Fair enough. There were plenty of mornings I could’ve slept in and would’ve stayed in bed another hour. But I hadn’t, because I knew she’d be there waiting on me, counting on me to run with her, just as I’d counted on her to be there this morning.
And just like that, my anger snapped, fresh and new.
“Can we just talk about it?” I demanded, my tone no longer polite.
At last, Isobel glanced up. “Talk about what?”
I sent her a dry stare, not impressed by the act of ignorance.
“The kiss,” I bit out, watching her flinch at the word.
But she went back to work, using the back of a small spade to press the new earth into the old. “What about it?”
Well, at least she was allowing me to say what I wanted to say, which was exactly what I planned to do, anyway. “Everything feels awkward and stiff now. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think it is. You’ve avoided me ever since it happened. And now, you won’t even look me in the eye.”
She jerked her head up, looking me straight in the eye, even though her eyebrows pulled together with annoyance.
I knelt beside her, softening. “Just tell me if you’re okay or not.”
“I’m fine.” She trilled out a fake laugh and then wrinkled her brow as if she couldn’t believe I was even worried.
I lifted my eyebrows. “Are you sure?”
Another fake laugh. “Yes, I’m fine, Shaw. Whatever you’re imagining, it must really all be in your head, because nothing is wrong.”
My shoulders fell, disappointed she wasn’t going to talk about it. I refused to give up, though. So I said, “Bullshit.”
Her eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I said bullshit. If nothing is wrong, then why do I feel so shitty? Why do I feel as if I’ve made some horrible, awful, terrible mistake? You would tell me if I had, right?”
“Of course, but you didn’t—”
“Yes, I did. Something is wrong, and it’s my fault. I don’t know how I know it, but I know it, and I can’t figure out what it is. So you just need to buck up and tell me, so I’ll—”
“Oh my God, you stopped, okay? You stopped.”
At first, I thought she was telling me to stop, as in to shut up because my rant was driving her bonkers. But then I realized she was speaking in the past tense.
I blinked, thrown all off track.
“What?”
She flushed a deep purplish red with embarrassment. “Nothing,” she was quick to say, turning away.
But I caught her shoulder and urged her back around. “No. You said I stopped. I stopped what?”
Closing her eyes, she bowed her head. “Nothing,” she insisted. “It’s stupid and silly, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Isobel,” I murmured in quiet reprimand, leaning toward her until our brows were nearly touching. “I don’t care if it’s the wackiest thing in the world, I want to know. I need to know.”
Finally, she looked up, lifting her face to show me the fear and uncertainty in her blue eyes. “You stopped kissing me,” she said in a low voice that shook with nerves. “You stopped and pulled away and then apologized like…like you regretted it.”
My lips parted as shock punched all the air from my lungs. “No,” I gasped. “Oh, God, no. Isobel…Jesus, no, that’s not why I apologized. I didn’t regret kissing you. I don’t regret it even now.”
Her eyes looked so blue, and large, and confused. “Then why did you say sorry?”
“Be-because I was worried I had offended you.”
She shook her head, frowning. “Huh?”
I laughed. But when her brow puckered as if she thought I was laughing at her, I sobered. Tenderness and even relief filled me.
“Oh, you crazy girl,” I murmured, cupping her face in my hands, one palm settling against smooth warm skin, the other cradling ragged, torn scar tissue. “If only you could look into my head right now and see how much I think about you, see what I think about you, you would never doubt my willingness to kiss you ever again. You absolutely own everything about me. I would not regret kissing you at any time, anywhere, in any sense. I would kiss you in the morning or at night, or in the dark or full daylight.”
With a laugh, she buried her face in the front of my shirt. “You’re starting to sound like Dr. Seuss.”
Since it’d made her smile, I ran with it, murmuring in her ear. “I would kiss you in a box with a fox or on a house with a mouse. I would kiss you in a—”
She cut me off by lifting her face and smashing her mouth to mine. Then she grabbed two fistfuls of my hair, anchoring
me to her. My surprised grunt was muffled against her lips, vibrating between us. Then her tongue touched mine, and I was gone. Done. Lost in passion.
She smelled so good, felt so soft, tasted like fruit—something citrusy—and made the most fetching whimper to ever touch my ears. I swear it reached right down into my pants and bitch slapped my dick awake. I was suddenly hard and throbbing, focused on nothing but her. She gasped my name and this primal urge to feast on her filled my senses.
I broke my mouth from hers, working my way down her neck. I couldn’t even tell you if I was on the scarred side of her throat or not, I just knew she felt amazing against me, still clutching my hair and tipping her head back to allow me better access. I wanted all of her right then. My attention went lower, and she made a hiccupping sound of surprise when my lips touched the swell of her breasts through her shirt.
Blinking myself somewhat back to reality, I looked up into her face. “This okay?” I asked.
She nodded, breathing heavily. “Yes. Of course, I just…we’re so out in the open. I feel exposed.”
I looked around, realizing where we were. Immediately, I whipped my hands off her. “Oh, shit. We’re in the…I’m at work. I’m making out with someone on the job.” Not just someone, my boss’s daughter.
Henry was going to kill me and then fire me for this if he ever found out about it. Probably in that order.
Isobel merely grinned. God, why did she have to look so beautiful when she smiled like that?
“You don’t technically start work until eight, and it’s barely seven thirty now.”
I stared at her, listening to her words, but for some reason, they didn’t make me feel better.
“I need to tell you something,” I blurted, not even planning to say that, but my mouth…the stupid fucking thing had a mind of its own. “And I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
God…damn. Why couldn’t I just keep my trap shut?
Isobel sank away from me, her eyes going wary and untrusting. I reached for her without thinking but she evaded my touch.
It gutted me. I hadn’t even confessed yet, and she was already withdrawing.
Pretty sure I was about to fuck myself over majorly, but unable to lie to her in any way, not even a lie of omission, because my guilt would drive me insane, I pulled my knees up toward my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I probably looked like a lost little child about to confess my deepest fear, but I sort of felt like one too.
“What?” she demanded. “Just say it.”
Closing my eyes, I admitted, “I was brought here because of you.”
chapter
EIGHTEEN
The silence that followed my confession was resounding. It echoed around in my head until sweat misted on my brow.
I opened my eyes to find Isobel watching me, her expression bleak.
She shook her head. “What do you mean?”
Glancing down at my hands, I began to pick at a piece of skin coming loose around a callus on my palm.
“I told you before, I originally went to your dad because of my mom, right?”
She nodded. “What? Is that not true?”
“No, it’s true,” I said. Then I drew in a deep breath and began my story.
“I went to him because she owed him money. He’d given her a loan for her bakery. I swear, she owed everyone money. I have no idea how a single person could rack up that much debt, but she kept it from me for as long as she could. By the time I learned about it, it was out of my control. I sold my truck, sold her house, sold most of our furniture. And it still wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. After I moved her in with me, she tripped on the stairwell outside my apartment. I live on the second floor, and they’ve always been steep steps. I wish I could’ve moved us somewhere safer, but I’d been working at Pestle.”
Isobel nodded in understanding. “But they went out of business,” she said for me.
“But they went out of business,” I repeated, nodding too. “Then Mom lost the bakery, and suddenly we were making no money, so I couldn’t afford to move us. And after she broke her hip, I had to be there for her almost every hour of the day. It took her a few months before she was able to get around on her own, enough for me to safely leave the apartment and look for work. But by then, pretty much everyone who’d been let go at the shoe factory had filled all the available jobs around. Bills kept coming in, the one from Nash Corporation included. Mom had talked about how she’d gotten to speak to Henry Nash personally when she was given the loan for her bakery—and he was the richest man I knew that I thought I might get to speak to in person—so I thought maybe he’d let me in to see him too.”
I paused to glance at Isobel, gauging her interest, her mood. For the most part, she seemed patient and not too upset.
But I knew that wouldn’t last. Fearing her ultimate reaction, I drew in a deep breath and dived back into my story.
“I was so desperate. You have no idea how desperate I was. When I was able to get a meeting with your dad, I thought…” I shook my head. “I’m not even sure what I thought. I’d worked so hard all my life only to fall into debt and poverty. It was humiliating and humbling. It stripped most of the pride right out of me.”
Wincing, I admitted, “I was ready to do anything to get out of this slump. And…well, I was sure someone as rich and powerful as Henry Nash had to be crooked at the core, that he had to have about a dozen undercover, black market, blackmailing deals going on with people. So I went to him to offer myself up as…as one of his thugs, I guess.”
Isobel blinked before a smile cracked her face. “Wait. You seriously thought my dad was crooked? Really?” She snorted before beginning to laugh outright. “Oh my God, that’s so funny. My mobster dad.” She laughed again.
I scowled. “It’s not funny. I mean, I didn’t know!”
“What the heck did you think he was going to say—‘Sure, I just met you but come be my evil minion henchman.’ Oh, Lord.”
She threw her head back, giggling so hard tears streamed down her cheeks. I sat there, brooding, and waited it out.
“I so wish I could’ve seen how that conversation went. How did you even ask such a question?”
I shrugged, feeling ridiculous for ever thinking Henry could be some kind of mob lord. “I just told him I’d do anything,” I muttered moodily.
No way was I going to tell her what I’d first feared he wanted from me when he’d hired me. She’d probably bust her gut right open from the power of her laughter.
Her brows wrinkled as she shook her head. “So…he just gave you a job?”
I sniffed. “In my defense, I was pretty damn convincing.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” Pressing the back of her hand to her brow, she tried to mimic how dramatic she must’ve thought I had sounded. “Please, sir,” she wailed. “I’ll do anything.”
My face grew uncomfortably hot. “I got the job, didn’t I?”
She straightened, sobering. “You did,” she murmured thoughtfully. Then her face began to drain of color, and on a whisper, she said, “Yeah. You did. Why did you get the job?”
Realizing she’d caught on as to the why already, I sighed. “He didn’t tell me what he wanted me to do. He just gave me the address to Porter Hall and said to be here by nine the next morning. I had no idea what I was supposed to do; I showed up ready for anything. Absolutely anything. So when he told me he just wanted me to be the new handyman, I was relieved. You have no idea, Isobel. It felt as if I’d been pardoned from a death sentence and allowed to live after all. I still had no clue about anything other than being a handyman when the first place he sent me was the rose garden.”
I looked around me, breathing in the scent of her roses, and feeling sad for the first time since I’d come in here.
“Oh, God,” Isobel murmured, knowing exactly where this was headed. Pressing her hands to her face, she looked up toward the ceiling and gave a harsh laugh. “Of course he sent you to my roses. Where else would he send you?”
She was beginning to fall apart, so I talked faster. “He didn’t tell me anything about you, he just mentioned it was his daughter’s garden and he wanted me to keep your flowers in tip-top shape. But then you…you showed up, and you seemed so adamant that he should know you wouldn’t want anyone in there. I confronted him after you left his office.”
“And let me guess,” she said, her eyes filling with tears as she spilled out another bitter laugh. “He finally clued you in to your true duties here. Oh my God.” Pressing her hands to her face again, she choked out, “All this time. I thought we were actually becoming friends.”
“We were! We are.” I reached for her hands, but she pulled them away.
“Friends?” she said in a small, distraught voice. “But you were forced to spend time with me against your will.”
“No, not against my will. You’re making this out to be more lurid than it really was. Nothing was forced or unwanted. I was desperate, Isobel; I would have done any number of unpleasant, maybe even illegal things to pay back my mother’s debt. So when he said he just wanted me to spend time with you, I thought I’d hit the jackpot.”
But she shook her head. “You just don’t get it. He’s tried to buy me friends before, and it—”
I grabbed her hand before she could keep it away from me and I pressed it against the center of my chest. “I know. But that’s not what he did this time. He told me from the beginning I didn’t have to try to befriend you. It wasn’t like those other times before.”
She looked at me, her eyebrows pinched as if doubting but maybe, finally ready to listen to what I had to say. “Then what exactly was it like?”
I smiled. “I believe his exact words were for me to break up the monotony of your day. I could make you mad or make you laugh, as long as I made some kind of contact to force you into a little human interaction.”
