Total pages in book: 183
Estimated words: 174715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 874(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 874(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
He leans on the railing, just in front of an open door I assume to be his bedroom. Watching me, tracking my every step, and I swear, I know how he wins over a courtroom and a jury. When this man watches you, when he focuses on you, there is just him; nothing else exists. I stop in front of him, and when he motions toward the bedroom, I catch his hand. “Cole.”
The minute I say his name, he turns back to me. I greet him by pushing to my toes and kissing him, before I confess, “I got something wrong downstairs.”
His hands come down on my waist, and he walks me closer. “You got everything exactly right downstairs, sweetheart.”
“No,” I say. “I didn’t. I presented my reasons for pushing you away, as if your success was a bad thing when that is not the case. Please do not think that any of my feelings about my life reflect anything but admiration for your success. Professional and personally.”
“I was born into money, sweetheart. In the end, I made my own, but I never had to question how I would pay for school. I never had to worry about taking care of a sick parent.”
He hits about ten nerves with that statement. “You’re setting me apart from you,” I say, “And that’s what I did downstairs. That’s not what I want.”
“I can assure you, Lori Havens,” he says, lowering his voice, “the last thing I want is to set you apart from me.”
“Then don’t.”
“I won’t,” he says.
That’s as far as I get. His cell phone rings in his pocket and he kisses me. “How much do you want to bet that’s the driver wondering where we are?” He glances at the number and nods. “That would be a yes.” He motions for me to follow him into the bedroom, which ironically is a signal that we have to focus on work.
“Five minutes,” he says into the phone, disappearing into the bedroom.
I quickly follow, entering a room that, much like downstairs, is all clean lines and masculinity, with a low king bed with a gray leather headboard and a seating area off to the left. Cole enters another doorway to my right, and almost immediately returns with a suitcase in his hands. “For you,” he announces, setting it by the bed. “Those bags you brought with you won’t transport easily.”
In other words, he knows I don’t have a suitcase. “Thank you,” I say.
He arches a brow. “No other comment?”
“Just that you miss nothing,” I reply.
“If that were true,” he says. “I wouldn’t have been cocky enough to believe that I’d won you over in that hotel room. And I damn sure wouldn’t have gotten in the shower without taking you with me.”
“You had me at hello, Cole. You know that.”
“And yet I didn’t.”
“You do now.”
“No,” he says. “But I intend to change that.”
His cell phone rings yet again and I’m left feeling that I might still be a challenge to Cole, and wishing we had time to really talk. Cole’s call is quick, but he’s only just disconnected when it buzzes again. “I’m never going to get packed at this rate,” he grumbles, answering the line with, “Cole Brooks,” which tells me he doesn’t know the number on his ID.
He listens a moment and then says, “Now what?” ignoring his suitcase as he focuses wholly on the call, which I soon decipher as the private airline flying us tonight, dealing with some sort of challenge. I walk to the items sitting on the bed by his suitcase and get to work.
He steps to my side, takes my hand, and kisses it, a smile in his gorgeous eyes that reads like a welcome into his personal space. Just that easily, my fears that I am still a challenge, and nothing more to Cole, fade. He turns away from me and goes back and forth on his call before he disconnects the line and scrubs his jaw. “There was a problem with the pilot who was taking us up,” he says, zipping up his bag before I can.
I frown, not a happy flyer, even without that statement. “What problem?”
“They have sleep regulations he would have hit mid-flight, but the on-call pilot called in while they had me on the phone. We’re good and if we leave now, we can be in the air in an hour.”
Three minutes later, we’re rolling his bags through the lobby. Once we’re at the trunk of the hired car, Cole helps me pack my bags into the suitcase, and then this time when we join the driver both of us settling into the backseat, our energy is different. We’re still sitting a professional distance apart, but there isn’t a world between us. Just the conversation we haven’t finished having, that we can’t have until we are alone, that he may or may not know, is important.