Page 74 of Painted Truths

Launching my luggage at him, he catches it with an oof that makes me snigger softly. I step forward to open the passenger door.

“No way. Not happening.”

Before my hand has even reached the handle, Henry has dumped my case on the pavement and has strode forward to spin me to face him so that I’m backed up against the door of the car.

He grins down at me, utterly boyish in his obvious delight, and I revel in this side of him that’s so unknown to me.

“I need a proper hello, especially when my Peaches is looking positively succulent.”

“My most sincere apologies.” I slide my arms around his waist, tugging him impossibly closer. “Allow me to make it up to you.”

Tilting my head back, his lips come down to brush gently across mine, his eyes still on mine, the green deepening with each pass his lips make over mine.

My eyes flutter shut when he runs the tip of his tongue across my slightly parted lips, seeking an entry I give only too willingly. Chills race up along my spine as he takes my mouth with his, as he deepens the kiss into something that makes time itself cease to exist.

It’s as though in this moment, it’s just he and I and this heart-pounding, soul-tasting, time-stopping kiss, and I want to live in it for always.

The blare of the horn from a passing car tugs the two of us unwillingly from our cocoon.

Henry’s smile is impossibly wider as he looks down at me with twinkling, laughing eyes.

“Hello, Peaches.”

I snort. “I hope you don’t say hello like that to just anyone.”

A fleeting darkness crosses Henry’s handsome face so quickly that I’m sure I imagined it as he steps back to pick up my bag from where he’d ditched it before.

“I can assure you, baby. All of my kisses are yours alone.”

My heart is soaring when I slide into the swankiest car I’ve ever seen in real life, smiling happily at his words while he deposits my bag in the boot.

And it flies impossibly higher when he reaches across to grab my hand with his, proceeding to hold it tightly within his much larger one the entire time, a wholly intimate move that lights my senses on fire.

It’s on the hour-long drive to the airstrip his private jet will be flying out of when he tells me what we’ll be doing this weekend, thus blowing my mind.

“The wedding of your best friend, Caden? As in Caden North, lead singer of Misdirection, Caden?” He nods, a huge smile breaking across his face and lighting up his beautiful eyes as he laps up my rambling drivel.

“Oh. My. God. Oh my GOD!”

A bark of deep, rumbling laughter erupts from his chest, and I find myself momentarily distracted from yet another earth-shattering revelation that this man has the most intoxicating laugh. It touches me almost physically in places no one has ever touched me, lighting me up from the inside out and somehow balancing my skewed mind so that I can let him continue as the hits keep coming.

He informs me that Layla is several months pregnant, a fact that Caden and the record label have kept firmly under wraps up until now. I remember hearing several stories about stalkers and crazed fans taking things too far with exes of the band members. A pregnant girlfriend, or soon-to-be wife, would definitely bring out the crazies.

“And my other best friend, Nate, will be flying with us. I hope that’s okay with you?”

I nod once, my eyes bulging out of my head. This is happening so fast, yet it feels like I’ve been waiting forever to get here. I’m only just beginning to face the fact that I like him a lot more than is wise despite myself.

To say I’m a little freaked out at how my weekend is shaping up would be the understatement of the year.

“So, only you and Nate and a handful of others are aware there’s even a wedding, let alone where it’s happening. Am I right in saying that?”

He nods, stealing a glance in my direction, his eyes softening when they meet mine before turning back to the road. “And I know, it’s highly ironic considering I’m the CEO of one of the largest entertainment companies in the world when all Cade wants is to keep the media and all related to them out but, honestly? He knows the company means fuck all to me when it comes to the people I love, and there are precious few of those.” Once I’ve calmed down, it takes only another few minutes before we arrive at the airfield. Henry introduces me to his pilot, Anders, and air hostess, Kyra.

Anders is a beast of a man, reminding me instantly of a WWE wrestler to look at, endearing himself to me immediately when I find him to be polite and friendly.

Kyra is, to put it mildly, a raging bitch. My sister always had a way with creative insults, and I think she would have said Kyra looked like a bulldog chewing on a wasp. Her expression is all twisted and sour upon discovering another woman will be on the flight.

And to make things worse, judging from how she made no secret of her longing glances at Henry with serious come-fuck-me eyes, I instinctively know they’ve slept together.