His Forbidden Kiss

by Jessica Lemmon

  An amazingly fun fling that was doomed from the start.

  Flowers in hand, he swallowed down the bile pushing against the base of his throat. He’d never done anything this hard. Not ever. But he knew what he was capable of—and what he wasn’t. The perks of being a practical numbers guy, he supposed. It was high time someone was honest about where he and Taylor stood.

  The least he could do was be brave enough to say the words neither of them wanted to hear.

  * * *

  Taylor opened her front door and her breath caught. She admired the man on her stoop, easy to do when Royce looked so damn good. It was nice to see him here on a Saturday morning instead of at the office.

  Weekends were for croissants and coffee and lounging in her leggings. Royce was a tad more formal in dark jeans. His button-down shirt was cuffed at the sleeves, revealing his tanned forearms. The bow tie was a nice touch. And sexy. Which she told him with a smile.

  He didn’t smile. He looked downright miserable, actually. She opened her mouth to ask him why, but he spoke before she could.

  “You’re allergic to lilies.” He handed over the flower bouquet, a beautiful mix of daisies and roses interspersed with wildflowers she didn’t recognize.

  “I’m not allergic. But I don’t particularly care for them.” She took a deep inhalation of the bouquet and stepped aside. “I love these. Thank you.”

  His frown only deepened. “Oh.”

  Clearly something was bothering him. Whatever had put that lost and lonely look in his eyes, they could handle it together. She loved him, and with loving someone came navigating the occasional bad day.

  “Come in. I made sun tea.”

  “No, thank you.” He didn’t meet her eyes, regarding his shoes instead. A premonition skittered across her chest on eight hairy legs. “I’m not staying long.”

  “Okay.” She stepped outside to join him, because even the scant distance between them at the threshold of her apartment was too much. He hadn’t greeted her with a kiss, another change she’d noticed. That skittering hairy-legged creature climbed her spine.

  “You want a family,” Royce said in that same flat tone. Her mind scrambled. She wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but the circles under his eyes told her it wasn’t good. “Kids. House. A dog?”

  “Yes. Um. Eventually.” She crossed her arms over her chest. If he was about to break her heart, her folded arms were her only defense.

  “That kiss in the closet at the gala changed my life,” he said, his tone gentle. “The attraction between us was something neither of us could deny.”

  Relief came but was short-lived when he added, “I never intended for us to make it this far, or to embark on a relationship. Especially one where you’re making plans with me... Plans I can’t make with you.”

  “Royce, what are you talking about?” The flowers in her hands grew heavy, as if each soft petal was sculpted from concrete. She tossed the bouquet on the small chair on her stoop and wondered if she should’ve sat in the chair instead. Her knees weren’t very stable at the moment.

  “The tablet launch is happening soon.” His words were robotic. Carefully measured. “My first big release as CEO. The hours I’ve been working are only going to increase.”

  “So will mine,” she said with a half laugh. “It’s only temporary.”

  “Like us.”

  Temporary.

  She’d done the unthinkable: she’d fallen in love. Despite her telling herself not to do it, despite her justifications that she had plenty of time to win his heart.

  “You’re breaking up with me.” Her words were as disconnected as if someone else had said them. She waited for him to refute that statement. Instead, he confirmed her worst fear.

  “Yes. While we can still piece ourselves together. Before we end up like Gia and Jayson.”

  “What the hell does this have to do with Gia and Jayson?” She would love to know. She needed answers and didn’t have any. Royce showing up at her apartment, delivering flowers and announcing that he didn’t want her anymore had come out of nowhere. “What brought this on?”

  “I had some sense knocked into me.”

  She’d noticed the dark bruise around his left eye. “Oh? Who do I have to thank for that?”

  Royce said nothing.

  “This isn’t about Gia and Jayson,” she said. “You didn’t bring me flowers—” she shot a disgusted look at the gorgeous bouquet on the chair “—so that you could talk about your sister’s failed marriage. Yes, I want a family. I told you that. Eventually. Not now.”

  “You never told me you fell in love with me.” His tone was accusatory, and she instantly felt young and foolish, like she didn’t know her own mind or her heart. Shame blanketed her like a heavy coat, and even in today’s cooler temperature, she was suddenly too warm. Suffocating under the weight of this conversation. “I suspect you didn’t tell me how you felt because you feared my reaction.”

  “I don’t fear you at all.” She was more afraid of herself. Or more accurately her emotions—the ones that had run ahead of her shouting, Come on in! The water’s fine!

  “You have a lot on your plate,” she said, denial setting in. “You’ve been busy. I’ve been busy. I didn’t want to distract you.” But they were lame excuses. There’d been plenty of instances where she could’ve shared her feelings. She just...hadn’t.

  He was right. She didn’t want to scare him away. She worried that putting pressure on him would cause him to shut down, like he was doing now.

  “Nothing has to change,” she said, desperate to make everything okay. “I’m trying to learn how to balance work and home life, too. We can figure it out together and—”

  “How long?”

  She blinked. “How long what?”

  “How long are you willing to wait to start this family, Taylor? You’re closing in on thirty. How long?”

  “I don’t know. A few years.” She’d never had a conversation this intimate with anyone. Not with any guy she’d dated. And definitely not in front of her apartment where her neighbors could overhear.

  “What about five years?” he asked. “How about seven? Ten?”

  It took her a second to understand he wasn’t negotiating. He was trying to prove a point.

  “I won’t ask you to design your life around me.” Some of the hardness left his eyes. He was still in there, the man she fell in love with. The man who’d intrigued her for half her life. The man who’d caught her in his arms when she was too young to understand what her fluttering stomach meant was the same man who had thoroughly won her heart—only to demolish it now.

  “Isn’t that up to me?” she asked quietly.

  “It’s up to you and whomever you build a family with. My position as CEO reigns supreme over everything else. I won’t be distracted from my legacy. I’m sorry, Taylor.”

  His apology was somehow more final than the whole of his breakup speech. His mind was made up. He was rejecting her.

  It was like a bomb had gone off nearby and deafened her, leaving behind only a high-pitched ringing interspersed with her broken heartbeats.

  Royce, task complete, walked to his car. She watched him drive away, and only when he was out of sight did she sag against the door.

  There was nothing to say after he’d said it all. He didn’t have to say he didn’t love her—he knew she loved him and had offered nothing in return. Except the assurance that ThomKnox mattered more than anything.

  More than her.

  Nineteen

  Taylor’s first instinct when Gia invited her to spend Sunday lounging at the pool was to answer with a definitive no.

  She’d spent yesterday miserable and slept terribly on top of it. It was hard to achieve REM in between crying jags. She woke today grouchy and tired, and sad. So incredibly sad. The sadness reminded her of when her fa
ther passed away. It wasn’t the same kind of grief, but it had the same depth. It choked the joy from her soul.

  She’d thought of a million different ways she could’ve reacted other than standing on her front stoop gaping as Royce’s car drove away from her. She should’ve screamed at him, told him that he was too practical for his own good. She should have grabbed him by that bow tie and kissed him, reminding him what he was giving up. But of course, she hadn’t done any of that. What she had done was carry the stupid lily-free bouquet into the house and feed the flowers one by one into her garbage disposal while crying. Like a bouquet was supposed to make up for him shattering her heart?

  Did he have any idea how much he’d meant to her? But she knew the answer.

  No. He didn’t. She’d never told him. She couldn’t decide if that made her smart or infinitely stupid. After she’d rid herself of the flowers she curled up with a blanket on the couch and watched TV, desperate for distraction. She cried then, too.

  Gia’s house looked enormous from the street, but seemed even bigger from the side of the pool where Taylor lounged in a sun chair. It was warm for April—nearly eighty—and the pool was heated. Taylor didn’t plan on getting wet, though. It took all her effort to sit here and not seem miserable.

  “Spiked lemonade. Perfect for today,” Gia announced, swishing outside in a long white cover-up, her bikini revealing each of her enviable curves. “Veggies and hummus?”

  “Sure.” Taylor forced a smile.

  “Okay. Let me traverse through my enormous kitchen and see what I can find.” Gia had jokingly referred to this house as her “mansion” when she and Jayson bought it. After they divorced, Gia stayed in the house. She’d kept everything, or, more accurately, Cooper hadn’t taken anything when he left. Taylor thought of her own situation and frowned. If she’d been married to Royce and then he’d left her, she’d have sold their shared house in a blink. How could Gia be happy in the house she’d bought with her ex-husband?

  Despite the sunny day, clouds hovered over Taylor’s mood. Her mind on—who else? Royce.

  The jackass.

  Tears threatened but she swallowed them down.

  They’d been blessed with a bright sunshiny day, sparkling blue water, and she now had a pink cocktail with fruit floating in it. She would force a good mood today if she had to. She sipped her spiked pink lemonade, glad for the token amount of alcohol to numb her feelings. Not that a few ounces of vodka in the slim glass would come close to achieving “numb,” but every little bit helped.

  Gia returned from the house, a plate of vegetables and hummus in one hand. “You know, I wanted to do this last week, but I was so crampy and bloated and pissy, I decided the only company I should keep was my own.” She capped that statement with a smile, and Taylor was surprised to hear herself chuckle in response.

  “Don’t worry, we only have to deal with Mother Nature’s ultimate prank for another twenty or twenty-five years,” Taylor said.

  In her own lounger, Gia leaned her head back. “Don’t remind me. It’s not like I’m anywhere near wanting kids now anyway. Why must I have to endure that joyous monthly reminder that I haven’t had any yet?”

  And isn’t that exactly what Taylor had told Royce? She wasn’t ready yet. But according to him he wasn’t ready ever. Maybe she should have talked to him about what he wanted in the future—before he’d come to tell her they didn’t have one. Maybe she should’ve told him she loved him as soon as she knew it herself.

  Though, if she’d done that, the breakup would’ve happened sooner. And while we were naked. Hopefully one day she’d look back and understand why they didn’t work out, and that him breaking up with her was for the best. But today was not that day.

  “Oh! Remind me before you leave to show you the print advertising concepts for the T13. They are amazing!” Gia described the ads with a flourish and Taylor tried to listen, but another thought had crawled around to the front of her consciousness.

  The thought was a question.

  When was her last period?

  And because she couldn’t recall right away how long ago it’d been, or the last time she’d bought a box of tampons, a frisson of panic laced itself around her ribs.

  Royce and Taylor had been careful. Very careful. He’d been the one to remember the protection. She’d usually been hovering around cloud nine after an orgasm, though, which meant something could have been overlooked. Condoms weren’t 100 percent effective, either—now, were they?

  God.

  How long had it been? She’d been so busy. So distracted...

  Gia sat up from her lounger and removed her sunglasses, tucking them into the messy bun on top of her head. “Are you ready to talk?”

  “Am I—About what?”

  “You’re so sad I can feel it like I can feel this sunshine, sweetheart. I was stalling to see if you wanted to bring it up.”

  “That’s not like you.” But now that Gia offered to talk about it, Taylor wasn’t going to lie about what had happened.

  “You’re dating my brother and I love you both, so I’m trying to let you two work it out without my involvement.”

  “I love him, too.” Admitting it out loud made Taylor’s heart fracture. Damn Royce and his stupid breakup flowers.

  Gia’s smile lifted her cheeks. “Really?”

  “Yes. But he doesn’t love me. He broke up with me yesterday.”

  “What? Why? Like he can do better?” Ire washed away her friend’s smile. What was left was Mama Bear Gia. But then her tone softened and she leaned forward a smidge. “Honey, are you okay?”

  Taylor shook her head, tears causing her vision to swim. She wiped her eyes beneath her sunglasses. Gia noticed and was next to her in an instant.

  “I am going to kill him. I swear.” She stroked Taylor’s arm. “I already threatened his person if he hurt you. So he should expect it.”

  “Maybe we were never a good match from the start,” Taylor said around a sob. “We were good together, but I want a future that he says he can’t imagine. He can’t see past CEO. I deserve better than that.”

  “Damn right you do.”

  “I’m incapable of being as pragmatic as Royce. I can’t outline our relationship in a flow chart. I can’t form an opinion based on past occurrences. I fell in love with him. That had nothing to do with pragmatism.”

  Gia sighed. “Don’t I know it, hon.”

  “Anyway.” Taylor sniffled. “He didn’t fall in love with me. That’s hard to accept. But even worse was that he wasn’t willing to try.”

  Despite Gia’s assurances that Taylor deserved better than someone who had to “try” to love her, Taylor felt like her heart was in pieces at their feet. Or at the bottom of Gia’s swimming pool. Today, despite her best efforts, she wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the sunshine or her pink drink or her friend’s plucky sense of humor. Today she was going to have to sit with her heavy emotions and deal with them the same way she would be dealing with them in the future.

  Alone.

  Twenty

  Taylor waited until the following week to confirm that she was, in fact, pregnant.

  Waiting had not ushered in her period. She didn’t tell Gia—she didn’t tell anyone. She’d gone to the pharmacy, purchased three pregnancy tests and took every one of them. The boxes said to wait two minutes for results, but the pair of “you’re pregnant” lines appeared instantly for her.

  Rocked as she was, she’d called in sick Monday and had gone to her doctor to confirm. She even had a due date. November 27.

  She supposed calling in sick was the truth. She’d been sick at the idea of seeing Royce again. It was almost unbelievable that a month had passed. Since then, he’d been cordial, stiff lipped and mostly absent. He must’ve taken every off-site meeting or opportunity to leave the building because his office door had been locked, the room dark mo
st of the time. So many huge changes lay like fallen soldiers between them. Jack had retired. Royce had become CEO. Taylor had found out she was expecting a baby.

  She didn’t have the luxury of avoidance the way Royce did. In a month or so, her body would reveal the telltale pregnancy bump and everyone would know. Unless she quit her job, there’d be no way to hide it—a moot point since she was keeping the baby.

  There were a couple of musts in her life. One, thriving at ThomKnox. Two, keeping her friendships with Brannon and Gia, who were more like family than friends. Taylor wasn’t sure where Royce fit in yet, but she’d made a decision about being a mother and it was only fair to give Royce an opportunity to decide how involved he wanted to be in his child’s life. Which meant she needed to tell him there was a decision to be made.

  Sigh. Life was hard.

  She’d never been at once so filled with joy and devastation. She missed Royce, but the idea that her family would be starting, granted a lot sooner than she expected, filled her with unmitigated happiness. At the same time, she was sad that her father would never meet his grandchild. And then there was the overall feeling of solitude, since she hadn’t told anyone about the pregnancy.

  Telling Royce was the number one item on her agenda today.

  She approached his office, surprised to encounter a woman sitting outside of it. She was fifty-something at best guess, her hair and clothing stylish. A smattering of freckles dotted her cheeks, giving her an air of youth, unlike the glasses perched on her nose.

  “May I help you?” the woman asked with a stiff smile.

  “Hi. I’m Taylor Thompson. You must be Royce’s new assistant?”

  “Executive assistant,” she corrected.