Magic Kiss (Hope Falls Book 11) (13 page)

Until now.

After this morning, she knew exactly what had been missing.

She scrolled down her manuscript until she found chapter fifteen and started typing…

I watched the small clock in the corner of the computer screen. It read four fifty-nine. Kade said he needed to see me and would be by at five. The man was a lot of things—but late wasn’t one of them.

My heart raced and my palms tingled from knowing that, at any second, he would be walking through that door. He hadn’t said what he’d needed to see me about, just that it “couldn’t wait.” The gravelly sound in his voice had been a more powerful aphrodisiac than oysters, chocolate, and wine combined.

“K.I.P,” I whispered under my breath—the mantra I’d been reciting since Kade’s first day at the firm, which had coincided with my first day as a partner. Keep. It. Professional. I was his boss. Nothing could happen between us.

That fact might not have been a pleasant one, but if I wanted to keep my job, not to mention not opening myself up to a lawsuit, it was something I needed to remember. The firm had a no-fraternization policy that was nonnegotiable due to an ugly lawsuit that’d been brought against them from a paralegal. It had ended with one partner leaving—which coincidentally opened the position for me—and the firm settling a sexual harassment lawsuit for just under a cool mil.

No matter how sexy Kade’s voice was, I tried not to let my imagination get the better of me, which it had a tendency to do when it came to Kade Morris. He probably just needed to stop by and bounce around some ideas regarding the case he was working on. As one of the firm’s most respected litigators, Kade always had the most difficult cases, so his stopping by wasn’t out of the ordinary.

Still, my heart leapt in my chest when the doorknob turned. My eyes shot down to give the impression that my full attention was on the discovery laid out on my desk. It was a lame attempt to get myself together before I had to lock eyes with the one man in this world who could reduce me to a puddle with one gaze.

But when the door lock clicked into place, I couldn’t help but look up. In the hundreds of times Kade had stopped by my office, he’d
never
locked the door before today.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, my brow furrowing.

Kade didn’t say a word. Just took two purposeful strides on his powerful legs towards my desk. He was acting so strange. His jaw was set, and his baby-blue eyes were filled with resolve. I was so entranced by the determined look on his face that I almost didn’t notice the paper he’d set on my desk.

“What’s this?” I asked as I picked the paper up.

He finally spoke. “My resignation.”

The words felt like a knife in my heart. A large lump formed in my throat, and tears pricked at my eyes.

He was leaving?

“You’re resigning?” I asked in disbelief, even as I read the words that confirmed my worst fear.

“Yes. Effective immediately.”

The knife in my heart twisted. The walls felt like they were closing in on me. I couldn’t breathe. And worst of all, I couldn’t disguise any of it.

“Why?” I managed to ask.

The explanation might’ve been in the document I was holding, but with the moisture in my eyes and my mind reeling from his bombshell, there was no way I could’ve read and made sense of anything.

“Because this is the only way,” he answered as if he weren’t talking code. As if I would understand what that meant.

I didn’t. And if he was really going, if our days weren’t going to be spent down the hall from each other’s offices, I wanted to know why.

“The only way?” I finally looked up, and when I did, the look in his eyes caused my tears to dry right up and a different area of my body to grow damp.

“The
only way y
ou won’t be my boss.”

The knife turned again. “You don’t think I’m a good bo—”

Kade’s full lips turned up into a grin of the very-bad-boy variety as he cut me off, ignoring my rebuttal. “The
only way
I can finally do all the things I’ve been wanting to do to you. With you. The
only way
either of us will be able to gain an ounce of sanity and stop going crazy because we can’t touch each other.”

My entire body went up in flames at his words. Was this really happening? Was my wildest fantasy really coming to life? I was half tempted to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming, but I was too scared I would wake myself up if I did that.

Kade began slowly moving around the desk to where I was seated. His body was predatory and graceful, like a lion stalking his prey. Instinctively, I swiveled in my chair, following his movement.

When he stopped in front of me, the air between us crackled with anticipation. I still couldn’t breathe, but this time, it was because I was eagerly waiting to see what he would say, what he would do next.

He cupped my chin and tilted it up so that I had no choice but to look into his eyes. He brushed the roughened pad of his thumb over my lips, and I gasped in surprise. Not so much at the fact that he’d done it, just how good it had felt when he had.

He swiped his thumb back across the path it had traveled, and it journeyed straight between my legs.

“The
only way
I don’t have to do anything that comes out of this pretty little mouth unless I want to. The
only way
I could tell this pretty little mouth to do all the things I’ve wanted it to.”

My heart was beating so fast, so hard, that I was sure he could hear it or see it pounding beneath my shirt. Every single fiber in my being was screaming for him to hold me, to kiss me, to take me.

When he didn’t do any of those things, my impatience grew and I wanted to know what he would tell my mouth to do.

“What do you want my mouth to do?”

A growl so feral it sent a shock through my entire body, roared from his chest.

“Open it,” he rasped as he released my chin from his grasp.

My lips automatically parted, and my jaw lowered. I watched as he slowly began unzipping his slacks. Moisture flooded both my mouth and my panties as he released his steel-hard column of flesh from its confines.

I’d had so many fantasies of what his member would look like, and none of them came close to the real thing.

One large hand ran up and down his shaft as the other tightened around my neck, causing my sex to pulse with need.

As he slowly pulled my head towards his engorged tip, tremors of lust radiated through me at the realization that, before I would ever kiss the man who had starred in all of my fantasies on the lips, I would take his cock in my mouth…

The words were flowing like water from a dam that had burst when a loud knock sounded. Emma jumped so high out of her seat that she almost fell out of it. To right herself, she held on to the corner of the desk and tried to return to the present to figure out what she’d heard. The mystery was solved when the doorbell rang three times in rapid succession.

Uh oh.

She wasn’t sure if she should answer the door. She was a guest in Logan’s house. Was it appropriate to do that?

Another knock sounded, this one louder than the first. Appropriate or not, if she wanted to get any work done, she better deal with whoever was there.

As she walked to the front door, she couldn’t help but smile and say a silent thank you to her host. His bossiness had singlehandedly been her muse and inspiration. The fact that she’d just knocked out half a scene like it had been nothing was…magic.

She couldn’t stop smiling as she opened the door. When she saw two young women in scraps of cloth perhaps considered bathing suits and jean shorts so short that the pockets were showing, she greeted them with a cheesy grin.

“Hi.”

Both women’s faces were puckered like they’d just finished sucking on lemons.

“Who are you?” the more endowed redhead asked.

“I’m Emma.” She wasn’t sure what she’d done to upset these two ladies, but they were definitely not happy to see her.

The brunette lifted up on her tiptoes in an attempt to see over Emma’s shoulder as she asked, “Where’s Logan?”

“He’s not here right now. But I can let him know you stopped by.”

The redhead crossed her arms, which put her lady lumps on serious display. Emma had made it a practice never to compare herself or her life to others. It was something she’d started when she’d gotten pregnant at sixteen and then continued after she’d lost Andrew. But she had to admit that red’s tatas gave her a twinge of envy.

The two visitors looked at each other and then back at Emma. There was definitely some silent communication going on. Unfortunately, Emma wasn’t sure she spoke the language.

“We didn’t know he had a girlfriend.” The brunette’s tone was accusatory as she put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows.

“Ooooh.” Now, the attitudes made perfect sense. “I’m not his girlfriend. We’re just… Well…” Emma wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. Were they friends? She guessed, but it was complicated. So she went with simple. “He’s my son’s godfather.”

“Your son!?” Both women reeled back as they shrieked—yes, shrieked—in horror.

Now, the smile officially had faded from Emma’s face. She was so sick and tired of people being shocked in a judgmental way that she was a mom.

“Yes. My son. I’ll let Logan know you stopped by.”

Then she slammed the door as one of them pointed out that she didn’t even know their names. Which was true. She didn’t. Feeling bad, she thought about opening the door and getting their names so she could pass the info along to Logan. But as her fingers wrapped around the doorknob, the brunette said, “What a bitch!”

To which the redhead responded, “Yeah, and a bitch with a kid.”

Any feelings of guilt she was harboring quickly evaporated, and she headed back to work. She’d tell Logan that two women stopped by. She’d even describe them to him. If he couldn’t figure out which admirers they were, well, that wasn’t her problem.

‡

“S
o, have you guys set a date?” Levi asked Adam as the three men each grabbed a water on a well-deserved break since they’d finished laying and screening the concrete pathway.

Adam had recently gotten engaged to Jane, a woman he’d met in Hope Falls. It had happened fast. Really fast.

Logan had flown out for Levi’s wedding, where he’d seen Jane and Adam introduced to each other. And then, a month later, when he’d flown out for the grand opening of Levi’s B&B, Adam proposed.

“Not yet. If it was up to me, we would’ve already made it legal. But Jane wants to have the big wedding, so that takes time.”

Levi wiped his forehead with the handkerchief he always kept in his back pocket. “What about you? I heard that you are shacking up with some blonde bombshell and her kid?”

Logan had been waiting all day to get the third degree from his brother, and he was actually surprised it had taken this long for him to say anything about his houseguests. Since moving to Hope Falls, Logan had noticed that his brother gossiped more than a woman in a hair salon.

“Wow.” Logan made a show of looking down at his watch. “You waited four hours before you brought that up. Impressive.”

Levi shrugged unapologetically. “I wanted to wait until after we got the path done. Just in case you got your panties in a bunch and bounced.”

Adam laughed as he finished his water, and Logan shook his head. His brother definitely had a way with words.

“I figured it’s Emma and Drew. Which begs the question: why the hell haven’t you brought them by to see me?”

Levi had met Andrew, Emma, and Drew on several occasions, and they’d all spent a Christmas together once when Drew was two years old. He’d gotten along with all of them and had even flown out for Andrew’s funeral. Lucky would’ve gone, but he had been overseas at a match.

Now that his brother mentioned it, Logan realized that he should probably bring them by. Hell, Emma had said last night at dinner that she’d love to see Levi, the bar, and the B&B. But his brother didn’t need to know all that.

“They just got here.”

“How long are they staying?” Levi wiped behind his neck. “There’s an extra room at the B&B.”

“They’re staying with me.” Logan hadn’t meant for his statement to come out as harsh as it had. But the thought of them staying anywhere else while they were in Hope Falls made him want to put his fist through a wall.

Lifting his hands in the air, Levi’s raised his eyebrows and sported an amused grin. “My bad. They’re staying with you. Got it.”

Levi and Adam both exchanged knowing looks that were only fueling Logan’s desire to hit something. Before he had a chance to follow up on that particular urge, Levi’s wife, Shelby, burst through the back door of the bar she now co-owned with Levi.

“You!” she yelled, pointing straight at Logan. “How could you not tell me!?”

Logan knew he hadn’t done anything wrong, but it was still unnerving to have someone who was normally sane—and also pretty damn cool—shouting and calling him out both verbally and with hand gestures, while they made an aggressive beeline towards him.

Since he had no idea what she was talking about, he fell back into his default greeting for his brand-new sister-in-law. “Hey, Shelbs.”