LITMIR.BIZ

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      She shook her head and lifted the cloche off the plate in front of her. “I have to get to my meeting, so let’s eat.”

      “Don’t like talking about kissing me?” he asked.

      He took his lid off as well and saw that Mrs. Tillman had prepared fish tacos. His favorite. Gabi took a bite and chewed carefully.

      Hell, he needed to kiss her and take her to his bed. Get over this odd infatuation he had with her. What else could he call watching her chew and thinking it was cute?

      He took a bite of his taco, glad as hell that Hunter had gone to Malibu for a few weeks. He didn’t want his friend to see him mooning over Gabi.

      Was that what he was doing?

      “So, while you are gone, is it okay to ask your housekeeper to watch Conner if I need to have a conference call?” she asked. “I will do my writing and paperwork either while Conner is having his nap or at night while he’s sleeping. But I’m in the middle of placing two nannies with some rather high-profile clients and I don’t want to lose their business.”

      “Yes, that will be fine. She’s not interested in being a full-time nanny but will help out as needed.”

      “Great. Now, when will you be back?”

      “In a week. Do you feel like you can handle Conner?”

      “Certainly. He seems pretty well adjusted. You’ve done a good job with raising him,” she said.

      “I had some excellent advice,” he said. “I bought your book.”

      She shook her head. “Lots of people have bought my book and still have kids that are out of control. You seem to actually listen to him, which is key.”

      “Well, I like my son,” Kingsley said.

      “That’s a good thing.”

      “I like you, too,” he said.

      “Don’t. We have a business relationship.”

      “I know that. But what’s to preclude us from having more?”

      “Common sense,” she said.

      * * *

      Maybe it was being back in Cali or just being around Gabi, but he felt young again. Free in a way he hadn’t been since their one night together. She made him want to be the man who had dreams. Not the man who was focused on vengeance.

      But the dreamer was gone. And he was a taker now.

      He wanted Gabi.

      She kept him at arm’s length, which was one thing he wasn’t going to allow. She was part of the reason he was here. Not just revenge.

      Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. But now that she was under his roof, his focus was changing. He still craved revenge on whoever had set Hunter and him up, but he also desperately wanted Gabi.

      It was her fault.

      She sat across from him in the midday California sun, watching him as though she wanted more, too.

      Maybe she’d been waiting, too. Waiting for him to come back into her life.

      Yeah, right.

      Hell.

      What if she was involved with someone? Why wouldn’t she be?

      “Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked. “Is that why you are busy espousing common sense?”

      She shook her head. “So the only reason a woman wouldn’t want to throw away her professionalism with you is because she’s involved with someone else?”

      “This feels like a trap,” he said. “I just wanted to know if there was a man in your life.”

      “There are a lot of them,” she said.

      That didn’t fit with the woman he thought he knew. But then he had to admit that reading her column and her book didn’t give him any special insight into her personal life.

      “Fair enough.”

      She laughed in a very kind way. It was something he hadn’t heard in a long time. Women didn’t usually laugh around him.

      “What?”

      “You are so transparent.”

      “Am I?”

      “Yes.”

      “What do you see?” he asked her. He had the feeling she was toying with him and that feeling of being free took him again. It had been a long time since anyone had teased him.

      “I see a man who wants to kiss me.”

      “I told you that,” he said.

      “But you aren’t the kind of man who’d poach so you want to know if I’m taken.”

      “What’s wrong with that?”

      “Nothing. It makes me like you a little bit more.”

      That sounded like a good thing, but with Gabi he wasn’t sure. “Thanks.”

      “Don’t sound scared. It is a good thing. You came into my office trying to get your own way instead of asking the way most people would. So why are you being so polite about this?” she asked.

      Damn.

      Of course she’d see what few others did. He rubbed the back of his neck and the feeling of freedom slipped away. The chains of the past were once again wrapped around his neck and ankles. Tying him to that one night, that one event. He didn’t want to tell her that it was the fact that Stacia had been raped that night that had also stayed with him. The DNA evidence had been inconclusive and he had no memory of sleeping with anyone other than Gabi, but he wanted to give no woman the chance to say he’d taken her against her will.

      “Let’s just say consent is a biggie in my book,” he said.

      “It is in mine, too. But one kiss, Kingsley—I wouldn’t begrudge that.”

      “If I took it you might later,” he said.

      She put her hand on his. “Do you know why I’m afraid to let go of common sense?”

      He had a few thoughts on the matter—she might not want to kiss him, which, given the sexual attraction he felt around her, he hoped wasn’t the case. She might have a boyfriend, but he was beginning to think that wasn’t the case, either. But the real reason? Only Gabi knew that. She protected her secrets behind her pretty brown eyes like an armed security guard.

      “Not really.”

      “You make me forget all of the caution I carefully built into myself over the last ten years. You make me want to be the freshman girl who took a senior football player back to her dorm room. And that’s not smart. And this is the tricky part—I usually think of myself as a smart woman, so kissing you...well, that would be dumb.”

      He realized she was talking and rationalizing to keep herself safe. Hell, he didn’t blame her, but every male instinct he had was saying she was his. He’d claimed her that night all those years ago and he wanted her back again.

      But he had a son.

      He had a mission in California.

      He owed Hunter and himself a chance to clear their names.

      Something he knew he couldn’t do if he took Gabi to his bed again. She cluttered his mind. She made him want things he had lived a long time without.

      But one kiss?

      Surely, one kiss wouldn’t do that much damage.

      One kiss.

      “One kiss,” he said.

      “What?”

      “One kiss. That’s all I’m asking for. What could it hurt? We

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