When It Hooks You (It #1) (28 page)

He stayed silent, not even asking where they were going, and quickened his pace to match hers. They arrived at an archway opening to a small courtyard. Though Trish had passed by often, she hadn’t stepped under that particular stone curve since she’d stormed away from Kurt a year and a half earlier. She pulled Adam into the lush church garden. In the bright light of early summer, it wasn’t nearly as desolate as it had been that cold winter night.

Trish stopped a few feet away from the lively fountain at the center of the yard and turned to face Adam. Easing her grip on his arm, she lifted that hand to shield her unprotected eyes from the glare of the sun. “One text, a letter, and a candy bar—that’s all I get after you dropped that huge bomb on me? How would you have even known I got the letter? It’s been months and months of nothing from you! You didn’t even give me a chance to tell you to stay the hell away from me.”

“Isn’t that exactly what you told me just now back at your shop?” His tone was calm and even, not challenging in any way.

“That doesn’t answer my question. How could you abandon me in the rubble for so long?”

His eyes swished toward the fountain, then snapped back onto her. An ember ignited deep in his flashing irises and the muscles at the back of his jaw flexed. “Every second of every day I’ve hoped you’d call. I took your silence as a cue that a break in contact was what you wanted.”

She chuffed. “Then why are you here now?”

“I wasn’t willing to trust my own intuition, anymore. I came by today to hear it directly from you.”

“Why did you wait so long?” She crossed her arms over her chest like armor.

“Because I needed to get my proverbial shit together before I saw you again. I’ve been wrecked, and you were both the balm I desperately needed and yet the last person I had a right to impose myself on.”

Her heart thudded against her rib cage. Perhaps it would’ve been wiser to stay hidden in her office. Her gaze flickered back and forth over his graceful features. His expression was pained and rigid, but after a moment under her examination, something playful tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“How can you possibly be about to smile right now?” she demanded.

The tugging flickered into a cautious grin. “Because you’re here.”

Her eyebrows pinched together, but she didn’t speak. She was too confused to know what to say.

“You’re not trapped into talking to me at your place of business, like you were a few minutes ago,” he explained. “You’re here because you want to be.”

“I’m here to yell at you,” she clarified.

“Even your anger is welcome. It tells me your feelings for me haven’t been completely extinguished.”

She locked her jaw in place, at once provoked by his nerve and stunned by his insight. Up until that second, she’d told herself her reason for going after him was to unload her backlog of grievances. Now she recognized the larger reason, the real reason: she couldn’t stand the thought of letting him walk away.

Tightening her crossed arms against her rapidly pounding chest, she said, “We could’ve been friends.”

“I told myself that’s all we would be.” His voice was low and his smile faltered.

“I wish you would’ve told
me
that.” Their eyes blazed on each other for a long, silent moment. They were locked in a stalemate. Trish couldn’t let him go, but she didn’t see how she could keep him, either. Her trust in him had been broken.

She glanced toward the water splashing into the fountain base. A year and a half earlier Kurt had worked her into such frenzy, she’d senselessly smashed dried leaves into his jacket. She briefly wondered if shoving Adam’s head into the shallow pool would provide her with the same kind of satisfaction.

“Salted caramel,” Adam said.

She shifted narrowed eyes back onto him. “What?”

“My favorite flavor of ice cream. It used to be mint chocolate chip, but I overindulged one New Year’s Eve when my parents were too busy with guests to pay attention. I haven’t touched the stuff since.”

Her forehead crumpled with her concern that he might be having some sort of mental episode.

“My first crush was on a girl named Kelsey,” he continued. “I was in the fourth grade; she was in the sixth. Kelsey preferred my older brother. I walked past the park one day and saw the two of them kissing under the rope bridge. I was devastated.”

Trish felt the creases in her brow smooth as she began to understand what he was doing.

“I have trouble opening up to others and letting them truly see what’s inside me,” he said. “I’ve led a selfish, solitary existence. I thought it suited me. Then I met a woman who deserves so much more than what I am. I want to regain your trust, Trish. I want to be what you deserve. If the only way I can do that is by making myself vulnerable to you, then I will. No more secrets. No topics off limits.”

Her hands fisted against her folded arms as she tried to hold onto her reasons to resist him. “It could never work. I’d always worry you’d disappear on me again.”

“I won’t.” He took a step closer, his intense gaze on her. “That’s not a mistake I’ll make twice.”

“My new job is a top priority for me. I can’t run off with you on a whim.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’ll gladly work around anything and everything in your life if it means I can keep you in mine.” His pale eyes glittered in the sunlight as he watched her. He was intent and serious as ever, but Trish now realized something had been different about him since he’d shown up at the coffeehouse. He held his shoulders more squared, and there was a subtle lightness about him, giving the impression of a heavy weight having been lifted. He no longer seemed to be drowning. “May I ask you a question?”

“Triple chocolate fudge,” she blurted.

He let out a small laugh. “Good to know, but not what I was going to ask. The only thing I need to know right now is—will you have dinner with me tonight?”

“Dinner?” She said it like she’d never heard the word before.

“Yes, dinner. That’s all. Let’s rewind and take this back to a first date—one where I’m open and honest. There’s no pressure to take things any further. One date. That’s all I’m asking for. Where we go from there will be entirely up to you.”

Trish’s heart pounded so forcefully, she felt it in her throat, as if it was creeping upward, trying to leap out her. If she was going to lose her heart, there was only one place she wanted it to land. Taking a determined step forward, she uncrossed her arms and reached with both hands to comb her fingers through the hair at the back of Adam’s head. He didn’t move a centimeter as she lifted on tiptoes and brought her face closer to his.

Lip contact was soft and slow—and mostly by her effort. On her third touchdown, he joined in, pressing into her and tilting his head to reposition his mouth more fully against hers. He tasted exactly the same as she remembered. But she felt none of the desperation and conflict that used to accompany his kisses. His barriers were gone. She couldn’t jump right back to where they’d been—and yet she knew it was foolish to think they could refresh all the way back to point zero.

Pulling her mouth from his, she smiled at his dreamy expression. She curled into him, wrapping her arms around his lean waist and resting the side of her face against his chest. His hands moved to the center of her back, holding her close.

“Can I take that as a yes?” The rumble of his deep voice vibrated against her cheek.

Keeping her face pressed to him, she nodded, inhaling his soothing, mellow scent. He was here right now. That was all that mattered. She wouldn’t set any rules or try to regulate the relationship this time. She’d simply get to know every little thing about him and see what happened next.

THE END

Sneak Preview from
When It Holds You

coming October 2016
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Chapter 1

“T
HAT
S
EXY
-T
ALKING
, D
ESIGNER
-S
UIT
-W
EARING
M
OTHERFUCKER
,” Cliff muttered. The moment he’d heard the smooth rumble of Adam Helms’ voice, he’d known who it was.

Why had Cliff chosen that precise moment to cross the reception area? If he’d waited just a few minutes longer, he wouldn’t have heard Helms asking the new receptionist about Trish. Then he’d never had stepped over and been persuaded to give him her new work address. Charlie would’ve quite honestly claimed no knowledge of Trish’s whereabouts, and that would’ve been that. Except Helms already had Trish’s phone number and home address.

Okay, so maybe it didn’t matter how Helms got in touch with her, but Cliff wished it hadn’t been him who’d pointed the jerk in her direction. The guy had deceived her. Sure, extenuating circumstances had been involved and Helms had been truly remorseful, but still. Cliff didn’t want to be even tangentially responsible for causing Trish more pain by making her face the lying bastard.

If he was honest with himself, he was also flustered by the mere idea of Adam being in the same room with her again, which was likely happening at that very second. Helms had some kind of strange power over her. The power to command all her waking thoughts. The power to make her glow.

“Fuck me,” Cliff groaned, slamming the folder he held onto his desk and slumping in his chair.

“Hey now,” said Karen Keefer, poking her head through the open doorway to his office. Karen was on the verge of being named partner at River South, where Cliff had come to work fresh out of law school. He’d been there for just over a year. Karen had been there for almost a decade. “You might want to spend some time refining your seduction technique. I’m not saying a blunt line like that never worked on me, but…”

“Sorry.” One side of Cliff’s mouth went up in a sheepish grin.

“Account giving you trouble? Anything I can help with?” Karen strolled into his office and leaned her rump against the edge of his desk. She’d become his unofficial mentor at the firm.

“No, but thanks. My woes are personal in nature.”

“I’d be happy to give that a go, too. My experience isn’t only in mergers and acquisitions, ya know.” She’d been satisfactorily married for eight years.

He didn’t think anything she’d say could ease his anxiety, but he asked a question, anyway, for the sake of diverting the focus from him. “How did you and Steve meet?”

“At a bar.” She shrugged. “I know, most boring origins story ever. But he had a girlfriend at the time, so that spices things up a little, no?”

“He cheated on her with you?”

“No. He thought he was in love and stayed faithful. We were just friends for a while.”

“Really?” Cliff sat up straighter. “How did that change?”

“With lots of patience on my part. I started feeling something more for him early on, but I was too afraid to act on it, even after he and his girlfriend broke up. I wasn’t sure he felt the same way about me, and I didn’t want to risk the friendship.”

Cliff thought back to several months earlier when he and Trish had tried a friends-with-benefits relationship. He’d foolishly hoped the physical connection would bust them out of the friend zone and into a full-on romance. Instead, Adam Helms had interfered from a zillion miles away. Trish hadn’t yet gotten over her breakup with the globe-trotting businessman. She’d broken down while she and Cliff were half naked. At that point, Cliff would’ve been a complete jackass to have tried to coax her into doing anything but cry it out. He hoped he wasn’t a jerkoff for having…well, jerked off later that night while imaging the things he and Trish would’ve done together had Adam never existed.

Effing Helms.

“But then one night,” Karen continued, “Steve walked up and planted one on me. Honest to God—my knees went weak. He’d just needed some time to figure out that our friendship meant more to him, too.”

“Sweet,” Cliff said, smiling.

“Yeah.” Karen stood. “You tell anyone outside this office there’s so much as a hint of sweetness in my history, I’ll break your kneecaps. Can’t risk my ballbuster reputation.”

Cliff laughed. “Right.” If there was anything threatening about Karen Keefer’s reputation, it was that she’d kill with kindness—and impeccably sound contract language. He knew from stories he’d heard from other freshmen attorneys that he was very lucky to have landed Karen as a mentor.

“So, you good?” she asked, eyeing him with a skeptical eyebrow half raised. “No more clumsy attempts to fornicate with…” She looked around the room. “Whatever you were asking to do you earlier?”

“I’m good,” he said, nodding. Her story actually had helped. Perhaps he wasn’t a total moron for thinking his friendship with Trish could one day turn into something more.

“Okay, then, see you in the conference room in a few hours.” Karen left his office.

He sighed, once again alone with his tousled emotions. He’d thought he’d managed to get his longing for Trish under control, had convinced himself he was perfectly fine with friendship-only. The thundering of his pulse ever since Adam’s drop-in proved differently, however.

But perhaps Helms’ reappearance was the best thing that could happen. Cliff had meant it when he’d told Trish several weeks earlier that she might need to see Adam again in order to fully get over him. Now she could tell the guy to his face to piss off, and that would give her the closure she needed…thus bringing her one step closer to moving on and seeing how much better Cliff was for her.

His eyes flicked toward his phone lying dormant just a few inches away. Waiting to hear from her was going to be torture.