by Maisey Yates
Browning didn’t need to imagine it. Annette West had yet to suffer a fool in the whole of her life, as far as Browning was aware. And if there was a greater fool than a man who underestimated her intelligence, to her face, Browning would have said he doubted such a creature could live long enough to prove it.
Yet he wasn’t particularly surprised to discover that the man standing in the middle of Kit’s store, clearly causing her agitation, was precisely that kind of fool.
He wasn’t wearing a shroud, but he looked like one all the same. While Browning had found Kit’s circus tent wardrobe entertaining, he found her father’s put-upon demeanor nothing short of insulting.
Kit was waving her hands and talking excitedly about potential customers and plans, but eventually trailed off.
Browning felt every muscle in his body tense when all Lawrence did was let out a long, weary sigh.
“You should be proud of me, Dad,” Kit said—bravely, Browning thought, which made him feel...edgy. “You always said this valley could use more bookstores.”
“You’ll have to walk me through this, Katherine,” her father said with another sigh. “Because I’m having trouble connecting the dots.”
Browning stayed where he was at the office door, the name Katherine echoing around his head. Like hell, he thought.
His Kit was sleek in the water, kissed like a dream, and rubbed that body of hers all over his until he thought he might die from longing. His Kit got intense about her favorite books, waved her hands in the air when she got excited, and laughed so hard he sometimes thought she’d fall over. Someday he bet she would, and he couldn’t wait to catch her.
He didn’t know who Katherine was.
But he could guess.
“There are no dots to connect,” Kit replied coolly.
“My Princeton-educated, literary-novel-editing, Manhattan-based daughter has not only returned to rural Oregon, she has a store filled with pointless trash called Happy Ever After Books, if I read that tacky pink sign correctly.” Her father blinked as if he had never been confronted with such a ghastly horror in all his days. “Am I missing any of the baffling choices you’ve made in the past few months?”
“Dad.”
“What can you possibly be thinking?”
“I’m thirty years old,” she said, with an earnestness Browning didn’t think her father deserved. “And I spent all these years doing what you wanted me to do. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to do them too. I really did. But I thought it might be fun to do what I wanted for a change.”
Fun was doing something gross like spitting watermelon seeds for no good reason, because it was gross and for no good reason. It was not the word to describe the passion he’d seen in her when it came to her books, and it didn’t sit right with him that she felt she had to downplay how she really felt for her father.
“And this is what you want to do?” Lawrence scoffed at her. He rubbed a hand over his face. A soft hand, Browning noted. No work on that hand that he could see, unlike his own. “I need you to tell me where I went wrong, Katherine. How could you throw away all you’ve achieved like this? And to what end?”
“I like romance novels, Dad.” She blew out a breath. “And I’m sorry to tell you this, but Mom likes them too.”
Browning tensed, because Kit did. She held herself like she’d just thrown a bomb at her father and was waiting to see what exploded.
But all her father did was sigh. Again.
“I love your mother,” Lawrence replied. “But she’s not a serious thinker, Katherine. She’s not an intellectual and I wouldn’t want her to be. I expected better from you.”
“I don’t have to choose between having an intellect and enjoying a book,” Kit shot back.
Her father drew himself up as if he was in pain. “I suppose you don’t. I suppose you can dedicate your life to frivolity and yet secretly, somewhere deep inside, maintain a fierce intellectual rigor. But how likely do you suppose that is, Kit?”
Browning saw Kit jerk at that. He didn’t need Kit to walk him through her relationship with her father to understand that switching Katherine to Kit was a deliberate jab.
“I wish you could just be happy for me,” Kit whispered.
Her father shook his head. “I’m not going to do that. Because I love you enough to want the best for you, as I always have. You had a big life and, for no reason that I can discern, you chose to shrink it down into this. Small and squalid, and, frankly, embarrassing.”
“You don’t have to shop here, then,” Kit shot at him, but Browning could hear the emotion in her voice. He wanted to take Lawrence Hall apart with his hands.
He settled for coming out of the office and standing behind the counter, grinning with lethal amiability in Lawrence’s direction.
“Evening,” he drawled. “It’s beginning to sound a little ignorant up in here, if you don’t mind my saying.”
Lawrence looked at Browning, then looked back at Kit. Then did something with his face that made him look as if he’d just stepped in something deeply unpleasant.
“I see,” he said, in a chilling sort of tone. “I imagine this is my fault. I pushed you too hard as a child and you never rebelled then. You’ve chosen to rebel now, when all you’re going to do is ruin your own life. Romance novels, I ask you. And Browning West, renowned throughout the valley for his faithless alley-catting about. You’ve accomplished your mission, Kit. Congratulations. I’m heartily ashamed.”
Lawrence didn’t look at Browning again; his judgment was clear. He merely turned and walked out of the store. The bells jingled, sounding out his departure, but he didn’t slam the door. It was quiet. Awful.
And Kit was still standing there, those proud shoulders of hers slumped forward, her head bent.
Browning didn’t think. He moved out from behind the counter and went to her, turning her around so he could look at her face.
So he could assess the damage. Then fix it, whatever it took.
He expected tears—and they were there, making her eyes glassy and brilliant. But her mouth was mutinous.
“Kit,” he said, with an urgency he didn’t entirely understand. “You have to know that everything he said—”
“You know what, Browning?” She sounded both like herself and nothing like herself at once. She sounded wild and a little bit dangerous. He felt his hair try to stand on end, and he was hard. Instantly and always, for her. “I’m tired of talking. It’s time for—”
“Fun?” he supplied.
“Fun is not enough,” she said, something dangerous moving over her face. “I intend to get good and frivolous. Surpassingly frivolous, until it hurts.”
Then she threw herself at him, the way she always did.
He caught her, the way he always would.
And when she kissed him this time, it was fierce and it was wild. Perfect.
Browning had to think for exactly three seconds about the fact Kit clearly thought he was as frivolous as her daddy did, but then he kissed her back like the starving, obsessed, straight-up whipped man he was, and let her blow them both apart.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THERE WAS NO THINKING, only sensation, and it was glorious.
Browning held her easily and that made everything that much hotter.
His mouth was on hers and that was all that mattered. Not her father. Not that hollow place in her chest that Kit thought she’d long ago outgrown.
The more Browning kissed her, taking her mouth boldly and sweetly at once, the more that hollow place seemed to fill with the hot fire that crackled and burned between them.
And for the first time in her life, Kit abandoned herself completely. No overthinking. No thinking at all.
Just this beautiful man, the wildfire sensation between them, and the way her heart pounded—as if to tell her that there was nothing else on earth that
mattered but this. Him.
Them.
He would wash away everything and anything that wasn’t this magic between them.
And he did.
She didn’t realize they were moving until he was setting her down, breaking the kiss so she could take a look around and realize that they were back in her office.
“I guess it makes sense not to give the entire town a show,” she acknowledged, because that sounded like an adult, reasonable thing to say.
But the truth was that she didn’t care.
“I’ve given the town more than enough shows in my time,” Browning said, with a certain intensity that made her breath go shallow. “Tonight, Kit, it’s just you and me.”
“Perfect.”
And when she drew his head back down, she was...different. Less desperate, in a certain sense. And in other ways, so desperate she was surprised she didn’t shatter into a million pieces.
They set about stripping each other of their clothes. The ridiculous gloves and pearls she’d had to wear today because of behavior deemed too cranky this morning. Browning removed the necklace and each glove carefully, then set them all aside the same way, making something in her tremble.
Kit tugged at his T-shirt because she had a deep thirst for him now. That marvelous chest, dusted with hair and ridged in ways that made her belly flip. She couldn’t seem to stop kissing him, laughing a little bit because it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
He was laughing too as they both sat up, wrestling to get closer on that couch, stripping away layer after layer until finally they were naked.
And this time, neither one of them was soaking wet.
Finally, Browning took his hands and his mouth to the whole of her body. He was somehow reverent and dirty at once, making her arch up against him. He took his time, finding his way over her curves until he could get his mouth in all that heat and need between her legs.
When Kit broke apart, crying out his name, he let her shake.
Before she came down all the way, he crawled back up the length of her, then filled her with a deep, perfect thrust that made her break apart all over again.
Then everything got even better, because Browning began to move.
She’d wanted fast and wild, but that wasn’t what he gave her.
That dark gaze of his pinned her as surely as his body did. And as he set his rhythm, everything seemed to...change.
It was flesh and heat, but it was so much more than that. As if they were held together, wrapped up so tightly in each other that it was impossible to tell which one of them was which.
Kit felt scraped raw in the most magical way, and she couldn’t contain it. It raced through her like a new kind of sensation. Bigger than need or want. Brighter than joy.
Love, something in her whispered.
And she wasn’t thinking, or analyzing, or any of those things she’d always considered the very heart of who she was, so there was nothing to do but pour herself back into him.
Love. Light. No matter who was who.
He was inside her, but she felt as if she was in him too.
This time, when she shattered, Browning came with her.
And Kit didn’t feel awkward or uncomfortable as she slowly began to feel like herself again. Instead, she felt more like herself than before. Nothing to prove, nothing to hide, just the two of them tangled up in each other.
Browning lifted his head and grinned at her.
That crooked grin that was all hers. “Not bad. Let’s do it again, just to make sure.”
She laughed. “If you believe in yourself, I guess I do too.”
But she could feel that he was already ready. She sighed as he pulled out, then swapped out their protection, watching her watch him do it like this was a part of it.
She had to repress a shudder. “And you came prepared.”
“I’ve been prepared since the day I met you, Kit,” he said, and there was that thread again in his voice. The one that made her tremble all over, and got worse when she tried to stop herself.
But there was no stopping anything tonight. There was only tumbling into it, head over heels, and this time, it was fast and wild and a little bit edgy.
Kit buried her face in his neck to keep herself from screaming so loud that someone might come in off the street to investigate.
Afterward, she was so wrung out that he had to dress her. He did it with that grin on his face and too much heat in his eyes.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” Kit said as he rolled her gloves back up her arms. “But if anything, the bathroom stall underestimated you.”
“I aim to please.”
Browning tugged her second glove into place, but then he kept her hand in his. He played idly with her fingers.
“You know that everything your father said to you tonight was bullshit, right?”
Kit blew out a breath, lifting her free hand to her chest because she expected that ache to come back at her.
But it didn’t.
“There’s no point talking about my father,” she said after a stunned moment. “That’s just the way he is.”
“Seems to me that if you disappoint him, you should take that as a compliment.”
Kit kept her gaze on their fingers. On the difference between her white-gloved hand in Browning’s big, calloused male fingers. She acknowledged that the way even his fingers moved filled her with pure delight.
Even now.
“I’m not going to pretend he didn’t hurt my feelings,” she said softly, trying to hold on to the delight. “He always does. Normally it would send me into a dark spiral. I would analyze my entire life, trying to see how I could make it better. How I could please him. But I knew when I came back here that this would offend him on every level. He’s known I was in town this whole time, and I think he waited until the store was this close to opening before he came in to do his rain cloud impression all over it.”
“He’s an idiot.”
“I used to think he was the smartest man in the whole world. And I liked that he thought I was like him, not Mom.” She frowned at Browning then, not wanting him to get the wrong impression. “They really do love each other. She thinks he’s funny and he finds her endlessly charming and I suspect there’s a physical component I don’t want to think about. He saves his disappointment for me.”
“Baby, the way he talks to you isn’t okay.”
“No,” Kit agreed, and she wished Browning knew how revolutionary it was for her to say even one word against her father. To mean it. Could that have happened before she’d met him? Before he’d looked at her, grinned, and liked what he saw—everything he saw, no matter how nutty? “I’ve spent a lot of time making sure that he had no reason to be anything but proud of me. I figured the first interaction would be the hardest. And it has been.” She smiled at him, though she felt a little more fragile than was strictly comfortable. “I’m glad you were here.”
“Because I’m frivolous?” he asked, and he wasn’t grinning back.
Kit felt her own smile falter. “In all the best ways.”
She went to tug her hand away, but Browning didn’t let go. Instead, he turned toward her, once again pinning her with that dark, ruthlessly intimate gaze of his.
“I like fun, Kit. You know this. And your dad’s not wrong; I have a reputation. And maybe, just maybe, frivolous is a good enough word to describe my social life. Not one I would choose, mind you.”
“It’s my father’s favorite put-down. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Browning reached over and ran his hand over her jaw. Kit couldn’t tell if he was caressing her or holding her so she couldn’t look away from him.
Either way, she trembled.
“It does mean something,” Browning said. “To you.”
Kit fought to keep the tr
emble from her voice. “I thought this was supposed to be fun.”
“Aren’t you having fun?” But his voice was rough. His gaze was dark.
“I just...”
She didn’t know why she felt like crying, suddenly. There was a pounding thing inside of her that wasn’t as simple as a heartbeat.
Or she did know, but her brain was working again. So she shoved it away, though this time, it was harder to do. She shoved and shoved.
“Kit,” he said, not shifting that gaze from hers. “I think you know this isn’t just fun.”
“Browning...” She wanted to get up and run. Sitting still—staying where she was, stuck firmly in place, and so seen—felt violent. She couldn’t bear it. “Don’t.”
“Too late, baby.” His mouth curved. “I’m in love with you.”
The words fell through her, connecting to that brutal storm inside. Making her want to howl.
Kit couldn’t take it a moment longer. She pushed herself away from him. She threw herself off the couch and stumbled across the room until she made it to the office door.
And she couldn’t help but look back.
Browning stayed on the couch. He lounged there, every inch of him the perfect cowboy fantasy.
All he did was watch her, but it felt like a rebuke.
“You can’t.” She bit off the words, hardly recognizing her own voice. “You can’t love me.”
“And yet here I am.” He shrugged. “Still in love.”
“You can’t love someone you barely know. I think your brain is a little bit addled because we had sex.”
“Really?” He laughed at that. Though even when he laughed, there was that particular intensity in his gaze that didn’t change. “I don’t think I’m addled, baby. I think you’re scared.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous. Frivolous.” He got up then, with that male grace of his that made her feel...fluttery. “My brother called me a man-whore the other day. Your father said the same, but with fancier words. But none of that matters, Kit. What do you think?”