It would because she had nothing else to do. The work kept her mind off Pax and her brain in motion. If she slowed down for even a second, his face popped into her mind and a hollow sensation rumbled in her stomach. Thinking about him led to missing him, and that brought on a stabbing pain around her heart.
Four days without him. Four days of looking up when the bell above the door dinged. And nothing.
His last words had been in anger. They still rang in her ears. He’d lectured her on safety, kissed her on the forehead as if she was a little kid and sent her on her way. It was insulting and hurtful. She wanted to kick him and punch him and make him apologize so they could get their relationship back on track.
With a crick in her neck and a sore lower back, she looked up from the lemon polish and gleaming glass countertop and scanned the shop. Seven tables filled and the laptop crowd lined up in front of Mike to grab black coffees and then claim the couches. It was a little after ten and everything appeared to be under control.
Everything except the shaking in her hands and heaviness weighing down her insides.
She tucked the rag into the waistband of her jeans and glanced at Mike. “I’m going to the back for a second.”
The back. She hated that part of the shop now. The attackers that idiot Glenn from Kingston sent had seen to that.
When he’d signed up her brother for the moneymaking scheme, Glenn had set off a chain of events that had driven danger right to her. He’d stolen a piece of her security.
Thanks to his behavior, she was triple-checking locks and dealing with a high-end alarm system Connor had recommended and then sent a team to install. Not to be confused with the team he sent to rehab her apartment and the stairs.
At least someone at Corcoran cared about her. Shame it was the wrong guy.
She shoved open the swinging door to the office and came to a stop on the other side. She heard the whomp of the door behind her as it closed, but all she cared about was the guy in front of her.
She blinked and then blinked again, but he didn’t disappear. “Pax?”
He stood halfway down the hall with his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and a polo shirt stretching across his broad chest. “You used the same code for the back door as you had on your old system. You need to change it.”
Fury reached up and slapped her. She’d been missing him, trying not to love him, and here he was acting like the big-time security dude rather than like the guy who owed her a huge explanation. “You’re supposed to come in the front door.”
“I was avoiding the crowd.”
For some reason the flat tone and way he rocked back on his heels ticked her off even more. “You can’t be back here. Go out front.”
She reached for her office door and missed the knob. The shaking in her hand and blurring of her vision made her big exit impossible.
“Kelsey.”
She crowded the door and fumbled to get it open and sneak inside. “Go away.”
“Stop.” He slipped in behind her with his body pressing against hers.
Heat seeped into her frozen limbs from his chest, and the seductive pull of his scent wound around her. Much more of the closeness and touching and her head would explode. But she refused to turn around or lean back and accept his comfort.
She needed him to leave. After everything they’d been through and how he left it, there was no way she was going to break down in front of him.
His hands braced on the wall on each side of her head. A tremble raced down her spine when his lips brushed against her hair. “You should go.”
“Not until we talk.”
She ignored the dull rumble of the crowd on the other side of the door and pulled in energy from every limb and turned around. The shove against his muscled chest came next, but he didn’t budge. “Now you want to chat? You ran out—”
“I didn’t.”
“—and didn’t bother to call, and now you want attention? Well, no thank you. I’ve had enough of that kind of behavior from my father. I don’t need it from you, too.”
“Please don’t compare me to him. Watching him pull a gun on you... Just don’t.”
If Pax hadn’t used the plea or didn’t seem so flat and sad, she may have kept the shield up. But seeing the lines around his mouth and stress tugging on his face chipped away at her control.
She’d spent nights alone and awake. A glance in the mirror just that morning told her she resembled the step before death. The pain in his eyes struck her as painfully familiar.
“Where have you been?” The words came out before she could stop them. She meant to push him away and tell him she didn’t care...but she did.
He leaned in until his face hovered a foot away from hers. “I went to Hawaii. Took a red-eye back.”
Her head pushed back into the door. Of all the responses she anticipated, that one was not on the list. “What?”
“I had to see Davis about the letters, get him to explain them.” Pax spread his hand at the base of her neck and rubbed his thumb over her collarbone.
The soft touch had her traitorous nerve endings tingling. “But he’s on his honeymoon.”
“Believe it or not, he took it well. Better than he accepted the news about the operation and Kingston. It was pretty clear he thought I should be recuperating.”
She’d never met Davis and already liked him. He seemed to have gotten the common sense in the Weeks family. “He’s not alone in that feeling.”
Pax’s mouth didn’t lift. The flat line drew all of his features down. “I wanted to confront the past then let it go. Deal with it and walk away.”
She’d said something similar to him days ago and he’d shrugged it off. “Did you get what you needed?”
“In part.” His fingertips drew lazy circles over her skin. “See, I’ve spent so many years hating my mother. At least that’s what was on the surface. Underneath I think I wanted, just once, to hear from her. To know she cared or that she regretted leaving us behind.”
Kelsey’s heart shredded for the scared boy he was and the conflicted man he’d grown up to be. “That makes you human, Pax.”
“I guess.”
“And the letters gave you the answers?” She asked the question but refused to let hope take hold. Even if he found what he needed that didn’t mean he was ready to move forward or truly could.
“I don’t know, since I haven’t read them. Davis hasn’t either and Lara gets so furious with her desire to kick my now-dead mother’s butt that she can’t look, either. Davis insists it’s how he wants it. Ignoring them but keeping them around works for him. His way of getting over the past was to decide the contents of the letters didn’t matter.”
Having lived with a father’s disdain, Kelsey struggled every day. Part of her believed not knowing him might have been better. Maybe now that Pax had worked so hard to overcome his rough childhood and desperate circumstances, his mother shouldn’t get to cash in and be a part of his healthy present. She didn’t deserve it.
“Do you agree with Davis’s theory?”
“I’m still working that out, but I’ve accomplished most of what I wanted to do in talking it through with Davis. I get where he was coming from.” Pax’s hand moved up to her cheek. “I’ve stopped being angry about everything that came before.”
“I’m happy for you.” Her fingers dug into his forearms as a rush of light poured through her. The crowd noise blended into the background and the normal creaking sounds from the old row house fell away.
“It’s all because of you. What’s good and right and what’s working. You and the team own that.”
Her breath hiccupped and her leg muscles threatened to give way. “I didn’t—”
“When a man meets the woman he wants to walk into the future next to, he figures out how to le
t go of the past.” His gaze searched her face, landing on her lips and then traveling back to her eyes as the seconds ticked by. “Say something.”
Joy bubbled right under the surface. She tried to stomp it back down. Not let it take hold. That way invited pain, and after days of it she wasn’t sure she could handle much more. “I’m afraid to.”
“Then I’ll keep going.” Both hands framed her face and his eyes glittered. “I care for you Kelsey Moore. Someday real soon I’m going to use the word love, because that’s what it is. Weird, I know, since it’s been such a short time. But this relationship has been in fast-forward from the start, and I don’t want to put on the brakes.”
Her body went still. She couldn’t hear anything but his deep, soothing voice and the frantic beat of her own heart. “Love.”
“I don’t want to scare you.”
She closed her eyes and let a mix of relief and excitement wash over her. Hope turned to happiness, and her head sang at his words.
She pressed closer to him as her hands toured up his muscled arms to his chest. “Losing you scares me. Loving you is easy.”
“You’re saying love?”
It was a challenge and she accepted it with relish. “Yes...well, soon.”
His forehead tapped against hers, and his hands slipped into her hair. “Please forgive me for walking out. I couldn’t hear your voice while I was gone because I knew I’d come rushing back to be with you. All that anger and confusion over my mother and over Davis’s choices hit me out of nowhere, and I have to work it out.”
The explanation was simple and sweet, and every ounce of hurt dripped away. With her hands under his chin, she lifted his head and stared into those eyes that made her heart skip. “You can’t do it alone.”
“I don’t want to.” His lips touched against hers, quick and sure.
She wanted so much more. “I’m serious, Pax. Next time, whether it’s personal or work, you need to let me in. Don’t push me away. And you sure better not hop on a plane and leave.”
He held her hand against his chest and his gaze remained serious. “Being without you for four days nearly broke me.”
She couldn’t hold the smile back one more second. “That’s better.”
“You want me to beg? Because I will.”
She threw her arms around his neck and stretched up on tiptoes. “I want you to come upstairs and tell me all about this loving and caring, and then I can tell you how I feel the same way.”
She kissed him then. Not sweet and not short. Long and loving, letting him know the heartache she experienced being alone and her desperate plea that it never happen again.
When they came up for air, that sexy grin was in place on his mouth. “Why, Ms. Moore, are you seducing me in the middle of the morning?”
“Would you rather have a doughnut?” Right now she’d give him anything.
Sometime, after the punch of excitement died down and a few weeks had passed, she’d offer him a place to stay. With her.
“You had me the minute you walked in here with that beaten-down expression and offered to beg.” Before that, actually, but he’d get the idea.
And she knew he did when he picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his lean hips and leaned back against the door.
“That did it for you, huh?”
Everything about him worked for her. “Always.”
He let her legs drop and treated her to a wink. “Then let’s get out there and serve some coffee.”
“I offered to seduce you.”
“Oh, we’ll get to that but you have a business to run. I can respect that, and I can help.”
“You’re going to work here today?” She thought of him in an apron with a gun and burst out laughing.
“I’m going to watch you and plan some bedroom activities for the end of the workday. Think of it as multitasking.”
She kissed him one last time and then slipped past him. After two steps, she smiled at him over her shoulder. “Are you ready?”
“For you? Definitely.”
* * * * *
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Chapter One
Once upon a time, in a tiny bayou village, there lived a beautiful widow and her three lovely daughters. The woman loved her children and her home, but as time passed, she grew lonely. A handsome and treacherous stranger swept her off her feet and she became a bride for the second time.
But no happily ever after was forthcoming.
Alaina LeBeau stared across the desk at the senior partner of the law firm and struggled to contain her emotions. Finally, anger eclipsed common sense.
“You told me if I got my success rate up, the junior partnership was mine,” she said. It was all she could do not to scream at the news that Kurt “Kip” McGraw, an attorney of woefully less skill and somewhat dubious personal reputation, had gotten the partnership she’d been all but assured.
Everett Winstrom III gave her a placating smile. “Now, now. I didn’t say it was yours for certain. I merely said if you proved yourself a winner in the courtroom that I felt a partnership would be forthcoming, and I still think one is.”
“When would that be exactly? The company is structured to only add a new partner when an existing one retires. All the original partners have been replaced with younger attorneys. It may be twenty years before one of you retires.”
“In twenty years, you’ll still be a young woman.”
“In twenty years, Kurt will be even younger than I, and likely, still as incompetent.”
The senior partner gave her another thin, placating smile. “Now, Alaina, you know that the courtroom isn’t the only place an attorney makes a good impression on the partners. Kurt has political connections that the firm can take advantage of.”
“Based on the news reports and the number of drunk-and-disorderly dismissals we’ve gained for his political connections, I would guess anyone could take advantage of them.”
Everett’s jaw tightened and the jovial-uncle act was over. “The fact is, we can’t afford to have you as a partner of this firm. Not after the Warren fiasco.”
Alaina felt as if she’d been slapped. As if she didn’t feel guilty enough over that case, and now the man who’d been her senior adviser was putting all the blame on her?
“I see,” she said. “The firm needs a scapegoat and it’s not going to be you.”
“Did you really think it would be? Someone has to answer for that screwup.”
“A child died, Everett. That was far more than a screwup. You can put the blame on me all you want, but we both know we could have prevented what happened.”
Anger flashed in the partner’s cold, dark eyes. “Nonsense. A psychopath killed that child. That’s unfortunate, but it’s hardly my fault. You were lead. If there was something missed, that’s on you.”
Suddenly, Alaina couldn’t take another minute of it. The years of busting her butt through law school while working full-time had been small challenge compared to the years of sucking up to these
pompous, entitled men who’d never worked for anything other than a more luxurious life.
“Consider this my notice,” she said before she could change her mind.
Everett’s eyes widened. “Now, let’s not be hasty.”
“It’s something I should have done years ago. I’d hardly call that hasty. In fact, I’d call it a little late in coming. So late that I might have ruined any chance I had at a big career.”
“But you’re in the middle of three corruption cases—”
“No. You’re in the middle of three corruption cases. I’m just assisting.” As usual, she had been assigned to the anal-retentive detail work of sorting through all the financial information—work that everyone avoided if at all possible and work that she caught far too often. With Everett’s analyst on maternity leave, and her giving notice, he’d have no choice but to actually do grunt work for a change.
That thought gave her the sliver of joy that was necessary to smile and stand her ground. “I wish I could say it’s been great, Everett, but the reality is, this job has shown me what I don’t want to do with the rest of my life. I’ll spend the next two weeks completing the paperwork on the cases I’ve just closed.”
His face flushed red and he clenched his hands. “Don’t bother. Get your things and get out of this office. I’ll mail your final paycheck. You’re making a big mistake.”
“It’s not the first.”
She spun around and marched down the hall to her office before he could formulate a reply. A couple of seconds later, she heard the door to his office slam shut. The firm intern, a studious, humorless girl with an encyclopedic recall of law, stepped into her office, her eyes wide.
“Is everything okay, Ms. LeBeau?”
“Everything is perfect, Ms. Jensen. In fact, better than perfect. I’ve just given my notice.”
“Oh, my... I... Well, if that’s what you want to do, then I’m happy for you, of course.” Emily Jensen stared down at the floor. “I guess you didn’t get the partnership.”
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