Because I wanted to show up for Kate.
I wanted her to know I’d listened.
And I wanted her to know I recognized when I’d messed up, and I could admit it and try to fix it.
The second she stepped into view, I drank her in—sexy as sin in tight jeans, heels, and a dark-gray top, her chestnut hair loose and curling over her shoulders in waves.
My God, she was beautiful.
And smart.
And fiery.
And kind too.
She was exactly the woman I wanted to spend my nights with.
And she deserved more than a you’re welcome.
I closed the distance between us and stopped in front of her. Her friends kept walking, waving goodbye like they had a secret.
“What are you doing here?” Kate asked, confusion knitting her brow. “I just sent my text about three minutes ago.”
“I haven’t checked my phone. I’m here because I wanted to tell you something.” I was ready to lay my heart on the line.
“I want to tell you something too.”
Torn between taking the lead and being a gentleman, I chose both. “Ladies first, but you should know I’m here about a new role I want to play.”
She cocked her head, looking intrigued. “Oh. What is it?”
I lifted a hand, cupped her cheek, and stroked my fingers across her soft skin. She sighed into my touch, and it was all the confirmation I needed in the world. “I want to play the role of your man. I want to take you out. I want to spend more nights with you. I want us to be together and see where this goes, because I think we’re only going to go to fantastic places.” I gave her my best hopeful grin. “Because you and I—we go together so damn well.”
She couldn’t contain her smile either. She leaned into me, roping her hands around my neck and playing with the ends of my hair. “I’d say you’ve got the part.”
I dropped my lips to hers and kissed her.
I’d felt possessive from the first night I touched her. But this time I could fully show her that, show her how much I wanted her for my own. This time, it wasn’t only physical. It was so much more.
It was a promise of what I wanted us to become.
I kissed her hard, letting her know she was mine. When I broke the kiss, I ran a thumb over her bottom lip. “You’re mine, Kate Williams.”
“You bet I am,” she said.
I laughed. “You and your bets.”
“Speaking of bets, check your phone, Mr. Hamilton.”
I dipped my hand into my back pocket for my phone and slid my thumb across the screen, reading her apology and, underlying that, her hope.
“I’ll raise you,” I said, in answer to her note. “In fact, I bet you’ll be naked in my bed for the next several nights.”
“I’ll take that bet.”
I tipped my head toward where Nina and Lily had gone to join the rest of their book club. “Want to go to your meeting?”
She shook her head, a naughty look in her pretty hazel eyes. “Not as much as I want to skip it and get naked with you.”
“Best answer ever.”
25
Kate
The message arrived on Friday afternoon.
Jake: Meet me at Edge. Here’s the scenario. We’re lovers, and we haven’t seen each other in a month.
Kate: Does that mean we’ll be climbing each other in seconds?
Jake: No, because we have to stay there until the check comes. How long can you last—that is the question.
He waited at the bar, drinking a scotch and looking insanely sexy with his dark hair, his five-o’clock shadow, and a button-down shirt that I wanted to rip off.
Or maybe he looked insanely sexy because of how he stared at me.
With hunger and with need. With dirty intent.
But with a little something else too.
Something tender.
Something that, if it was anything like what was happening to me, felt a little bit like falling.
That was what I was feeling for Jake Hamilton.
I walked over, licking my lips, savoring the sight of my man. As soon as I reached him, I went for it, pressing a kiss to his lips.
“It’s been too long,” I whispered.
“I couldn’t agree more,” he said, sliding a hand around my waist, grazing lower, squeezing my ass.
“Let’s get out of here,” I murmured, my skin heating in mere seconds from his touch.
His other hand traveled up my arm, along the back of my neck and into my hair. Tugging on my strands, he said, “But I have to take care of the check.”
I arched into him. “Then you can take care of me.”
“You bet I will,” he growled, jerking me closer, sliding my body between his spread legs so I was pressed against the heavy weight of his erection through his slacks. I moaned as I felt his length, wanting him inside me.
He pulled me closer, knowing it was driving me wild to be this near to him. Lowering his head, he whispered in my ear, “I bet others are watching us.”
“What do you think they’re saying?” I asked, breathless, loving this new direction.
“They’re saying, ‘He’s going to take her upstairs and strip her to nothing in ten seconds flat.’”
I wriggled against him, aching. “They’re saying, ‘Doesn’t it look like she’s desperate for him?’”
“They’re imagining I’m going to take you against the wall. They’re betting as soon as the door closes, I’ll hike up your skirt, tug down your panties, and slide my rock-hard cock inside you.”
Lust slid down my spine as a shudder wracked me. “And I’ll ask for deeper, harder, more.”
“And I’ll give it to you that way. Because I love nothing more than giving you all the pleasure in the world.”
I ran my hands through his hair. “And I love it when you do.”
Ten minutes later, the door to the room banged shut as Jake unzipped his pants, yanked up my skirt, and pushed inside me.
I cried out in absolute bliss.
This was the true decadent gift—this wicked, sinful indulgence as he took me to the ends of pleasure, sending me to ecstasy.
But what made it even better was what came next.
After, as we stumbled to the bed, wrapped up in each other, I ran my hands over his chest and said the hardest and easiest thing of all. “I’m falling in love with you, Jake Hamilton.”
He pressed a kiss to my lips. “I’m falling in love with you too.”
I was choosing to trust. Choosing to love. Choosing to take a chance.
That was the gift I gave myself.
26
Trish
“That worked out quite well, I think,” I told Christine, the pulsing music in the club covering our self-congratulations. Tonight, my dear friend and I celebrated a project that only affected a beloved few, but this city’s boys’ club mentality assumed the only plotting we ladies were up to was shoe-or-accessory related.
As if.
Christine raised her glass of champagne in a toast. “To brilliant ideas.”