Page 39 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

“Mallory said the service path saved the board reception.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “The bottleneck was obvious.”

“Not to everyone.”

She looks at me sideways. A small, pleased look that she doesn’t quite manage to hide. I let her have it.

We stand there for a moment, looking out at the rows. The vineyard at night is a different thing from the vineyard in daylight. Quieter. More patient. Like it knows something you don’t and isn’t in any hurry to tell you.

“Thank you,” she says. “For tonight. For the job. For—” she pauses, considering. “All of it. I didn’t think I needed this summer. I thought I was just buying time before I figured out what came next. But I think I actually needed this.”

She says it simply, the way she says things that matter to her, without dressing them up. I’ve noticed that about her. The important things come out quiet.

“Thorne Estates needed you,” I say. “It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

She laughs softly. “Very professional.”

“I’m a professional.”

“You are,” she agrees, and there’s something in the way she says it, light, almost teasing, that makes it sound like a challenge.

I look at her.

She’s already looking at me.

The terrace is empty. The last server disappeared inside ten minutes ago. It’s just the two of us and the dark vineyard and the moon and the thing that has been building between us since she climbed out of a pool two weeks ago and I lost my composure for the first time in longer than I can remember.

I reach out and tuck her hair behind her ear.

It’s a small thing. A simple gesture. My fingers brushing the curve of her ear, the warmth of her skin, and I leave my hand there at her jaw because she hasn’t moved away, and I’m done pretending I want to.

She goes still. Her eyes stay on mine and then drop, just briefly, to my mouth, and then come back up, and she bites her lower lip. Slow. Unconscious. And I watch it happen and every locked door in the back of my mind swings open at once.

I lean in.

She tips her chin up.

I kiss her.

Not carefully. Not the tentative opening of a man who isn’t sure. Deep and unhurried, the way I’ve been wanting to since the night she stood dripping on my terrace and looked up at me with those brown eyes and my entire operational mind went offline. My arm finds her waist and I pull her toward me and she comes, her front against mine, her hands finding my lapels first and then sliding up around my neck and she kisses me back like she means it.

I feel it everywhere. The warmth of her through the fabric of her dress, the soft sound she makes against my mouth, the way her fingers press into the back of my neck like she’s making sure I stay. She fits against me like something that was always supposed to be here. I pull her closer, because closer is not close enough, and I’ve been a patient man my entire life and I have run out of patience entirely.

I pull back.

She looks dazed. Eyes still closed for half a second. When they open they’re dark and soft and then her mouth curves, slow and warm, a smile breaking across her lips that is the single most dangerous thing I’ve encountered in fifty-one years on this earth.

She wants this.

She wants it as much as I do and she’s not pretending otherwise and I am done with this terrace.

I bend and sweep her up, one arm under her knees, one at her back, and she makes a sound that is half yelp and half laugh and grabs my shoulder.

“Killian—”

“Hold on.”

I carry her across the terrace toward the far wall where the stone panel sits flush with the rest of it unless you know where to press. I know where to press. It swings inward and I take her through it and it closes behind us and we’re in the narrow private corridor that runs along the inner wall of the main house, lit by low sconces, leading to the service elevator that only has one destination from this end.