by Kelsie Fann
But she knew their dinner was over. The spell of Alba was broken. “Yes,” she said. He stood and pulled her chair out for her.
They walked out of the restaurant, and Darcy looked down as they stepped out into the Savannah night. The city was buzzing around them. “So, I think we should address it.”
“What?” she asked, looking up at him.
He cleared his throat. “What I came here to talk to you about.”
Liz cocked her head to the side. They’d covered every subject, except of course how she felt about him. Did he know? There was no way. “Is there something else?” she squeaked.
He nodded his head slowly and reached up to brush a curl out of her face. “There is.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“The board met, and on my recommendation, we want you to be vice president, Liz. We want to expand our southern division.”
He cleared his throat. “You’ll report to James. He wants to oversee our southern expansions, and I’m going to focus on the northern half of the country.”
Liz’s head started spinning; she leaned against the brick exterior of the restaurant. She thought it would take years to become VP, and she’d done in it in less than a year. This was everything she wanted.
She was so shocked that she was speechless.
He raised his eyebrows, waiting for a response. “Please say yes. I need you.”
Hearing him say he needed her sent a shiver down her arms. She knew there was nowhere else she wanted to be than right beside him. “I’ll say yes, if . . . ” she trailed off. She liked making him wait.
“If . . . ?”
“I can hire ten people for Savannah.”
“Ten people?” His voice sounded exasperated.
This time, her eyebrows raised as she waited for a response.
He leaned in closely. His cheek brushed hers, and she could smell his cologne that made her knees almost buckle. He whispered into her ear, “Like I said, you can hire a hundred people.”
The closeness of his lips to hers made her heart race, and time seemed to slow down around her as her body filled with heat.
She looked at his dark eyes and realized she would do anything for this man. He was the most generous, most difficult man she’d ever met, and there was nowhere she wanted to be but by his side.
“I’d love to be your VP,” she told him.
Darcy wrapped his arms around her suddenly. Her body went stiff in surprise, then she relaxed into his strong arms.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, as he still held her. He pulled back a few inches, and his eyes crossed her lips. She wondered what his lips would feel like against hers.
Darcy let her go slowly. Liz could feel the breeze blowing in her hair, and even though they were maintaining intense eye contact, she didn’t look away. She never wanted to look at anything else.
“It’s okay. It seemed like a purely professional hug,” she said.
He laughed. “Yes, it was.”
After a few seconds of looking into his brown eyes, it was like an alien took over her body. Maybe she wanted to erase the memory of her last kiss with Hamilton, but whatever possessed her, she stood up on her tippy toes and brushed her lips against his.
She almost pulled away instantly, wondering what she had done. But then he responded and kissed her back, so passionately her mind completely cleared. For a second, they weren’t fighting; they weren’t in a silent standoff; they were releasing all the tension over the past months onto each other’s lips. She couldn’t get enough.
A car honked as it drove past, and the spell broke again, and her eyes flew open. She pulled away from Darcy, and he steadied her with one arm.
Darcy was the first to speak as he ran his thumb down her cheek, “Well.” The word hung around them. “I guess that was a professional kiss, too.”
As the alien left her body and she realized she just kissed her boss, Liz’s cheeks started to burn with embarrassment. She looked down at the sidewalk. She had to get out of there.
She spun around, taking a quick series of steps away from Darcy. “See you later.”
“Can I drive you home?” he called behind her.
She shook her head. She could feel her curls bouncing across her back. “No, I’ll walk.” She didn’t turn to look back. She needed to breathe fresh air, and lots of it.
27.
That kiss, Darcy thought. It was like a bolt of lightning had shot through his body and completely consumed him.
“Pull up to Liz Bailey’s apartment,” Darcy told his driver after dinner.
Darcy needed to see her just one more time and get one more look at her in that black dress before Monday when she would email him as his employee again, not as the only woman in the world he could ever picture having in his life.
He watched her walk up slowly, her eyes cast down at the sidewalk like she was deep in thought. He got out of his car and shut the door loudly so she would look up.
Her eyes met his, and he couldn’t help smile at the way the street light flickered off the fabric of her dress.
She swept her curls over her shoulder, her cheeks a shade redder than usual. “Hey,” she said, glancing down at the sidewalk.
He took three steps toward her and resisted the urge to take her hand. “Hey, I forgot to tell you one thing, and it’s big.”
Her eyes narrowed at him. “How big?” she asked.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and took a deep breath. He couldn’t wait to expose Hamilton as a fraud once more. “You know how you let Hamilton call you Lizzy because you were both fat kids?”
Liz nodded.
Darcy took a few steps closer until he could smell her citrus perfume. He took a deep breath in. “Hamilton was never a fat kid.”
Liz’s face tilted; the street light cascaded over her right cheek. “What do you mean?”
Darcy pulled out his phone. “He was the most athletic kid in school. No one called him ‘Hammy.’” Darcy pointed to picture of young Hamilton, lean and posing with a lacrosse stick, to prove his point.
The rage that burned in Liz’s eyes made him like her even more. “Who lies about that?”
“A terrible human.”
Liz laughed, and he soaked in the sound of her voice. He looked at her once more, trying to memorize her face just like this.
Then, before he did something stupid, he turned and got in his car; each movement away from her made his body ache a little more. He wanted to turn around and kiss her again, but he kept moving. She meant too much to Pemberley. She was the future of his parents’ company.
He rolled down his car window. “Good night, Liz.”
She looked at him for a few seconds, and he wanted to think she was trying to memorize his face too. “Good night, Darcy. See you Monday.”
Monday, when he would be her boss. He nodded and rolled up his window.
“Take me to the airport,” he told the driver, but he didn’t want to go anywhere.
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1.
A text message popped up on Liz’s phone. “Can I get my squad to the hospital? #stopitsbabyhamtime!”
Liz reread the message from her young friend and ex-employee. Only Stella would spend the extra seconds to think up a hashtag while in labor.
It was simultaneously the moment Liz was waiting for and the moment she was dreading. Waiting for because she couldn’t wait to meet Stella’s baby. Dreading because she didn’t want to run into the baby’s father—Hamilton, a suave con artist.
Liz couldn’t help but remember Georgia’s face as she told her how Hamilton extorted millions of dollars from her boss, Darcy. Now she was going to have to look into the crook’s eyes, and for the sake of baby Hamilton, she would have to keep her mouth shut.
Her skin crawled thinking about how Hamilton almost conned her with his tan, surfer good loo
ks and his bright blue eyes. Even she had only been one inch away from falling for him.
Liz shivered, knowing she had dodged a bullet. A big one, maybe even a bomb. Liz couldn’t help but wish that Hamilton would, sooner rather than later, disappear out of Stella’s life and off the face of the earth.
“#coming!” Rose, Liz’s friend and longest employee, responded to the group message first. “#pickingupelise.”
Liz took a deep breath. The baby wouldn’t stay in Stella’s uterus forever. She slung her purse over her shoulder and tried to forget about the baby’s father long enough to smile about the hashtag/labor situation and send “#onmyway” to the group.
The morning roads had a tiny layer of frost on them, making Liz wish she could crawl back in bed. Liz knew that wasn’t an option; she needed to be there for Stella and Baby H. Liz wondered what Stella would name the new baby.
Stella refused to tell anyone, keeping it a secret in case someone stole her precious baby name. Liz had informed Stella that she wasn’t pregnant and couldn’t take her baby name.
“What if you find someone in the next few days?”
Liz had paused for a beat, looking at the crazy pregnant lady in front of her, and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not even in a relationship.” She didn’t have time to eat lunch, let alone date with the workload at Pemberley Media, Savannah.
“…But what if you fall madly in love just like me and Hamilton?”
Liz had almost choked on her water. Stella was clearly delusional about her relationship with Hamilton. A week before, Hamilton had asked Stella for a paternity test. Liz had gasped enough air to eke out a response. “Okay, Stella. Fine.”
Liz pulled up to the hospital, walked in, and found her way to labor and delivery through the hospital’s twists and turns. When she made it to the waiting room, she plopped down next to Rose and Elise, who were already there, waiting with various magazines stacked in their laps.
“Were we supposed to bring a gift?” Liz pointed to a white gift bag with glittery tissue paper, sitting on the ground next to Rose.
Rose shook her head. “I don’t think you have to. I just ran into this.”
Liz shot a skeptical look at her baby-fevered friend. “You just ran into a baby gift?”
Rose scooted the bag closer to her feet. “Yes, I happened to run into it at Kimmy’s Baby Boutique.”
“Fancy running into baby stuff at a baby boutique,” Liz teased.
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From the Author:
A huge thanks to Jane Austen, whose loveable and immortal characters were the inspiration for this story. Love you Jane!
Thanks to my editor Sarah Fox whose keen eye and expertise kept me from going down several Wickham-shaped rabbit holes.
Also, thank you to my husband, who inspires me every day with his patience and generosity.
Finally, thank you for reading my book. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. If you want to know when my books are coming to electronic shelves near you, check out my website and join my mailing list. Hope to see you there!