AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He isn’t rude to me like he was in the past few days, but something must have happened, because there’s an undeniable tension in his broad shoulders and his jaw is locked tight as he stares ahead at the road.
His hands are gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles are white, a far cry from when he had his hand on my thigh a couple of hours ago. It must be something I said. Maybe Mom isn’t totally wrong when she says that I’m too opinionated.
I’m so busy worrying about Matt’s mood that I don’t even notice we’re back at the resort until he parks the car in the garage, way back from the main building.
I don’t give him time to come open my door, walking around to the trunk, but he doesn’t follow me and heads toward the exit instead.
“Matt?” I call out. “Where are you going? Can I have some help with the bags?”
I mean, come on! I don’t expect him to carry everything, but there’s no way I can do it alone.
His answer surprises me. “If you need help, I was going to call someone else to help you out.”
Oh hell no! If I said something wrong, I want the opportunity to make it right, but I’m not going to have that conversation in the garage where anyone could come in at any time, since guests can park their personal vehicles here too. So I insist he helps me out, and I don’t care if I sound as bratty as I suspect I do at the moment.
“I thought helping me with the bags wasyour job?Or did I mishear my mom this morning?” Jeez, I sound hideous even to my own ears, but I couldn’t care less because Matt comes back to the car and starts hauling out the ridiculous amount of shopping bags. I pretend not to notice the murderous look in his green eyes.
We don’t meet anyone on our way to my room, and I keep walking in front of him, thinking about how to ask him what the heck crawled up his ass.
Okay, maybe I need a better way of wording my question, but Matt’s mood swings are giving me whiplash.
“Here we are. Can I do anything else for you, Miss Manning?” He places the bags on the floor of the sitting area of my suite, arching an eyebrow as if he was waiting for some other outlandish demand, like that he unpacks and puts everything away.
I ignore his tone and close the door behind me, turning to look at him. Damn, my room is big, but Matt has a way of filling up any space with his presence.
“Who’s Miss Manning? And don’t say me, because I never asked anyone to call me that,” I say with my firmest tone.
He isn’t looking at me, his eyes are fixed on the hardwood floor as if it were a fascinating work of art. I take a couple of steps and stop in front of him. We aren’t touching, but he has no way out of this, unless he explains what changed from a couple of hours ago. “Yeah, come to think of it, there is something you can do for me. You can tell me if I did anything to offend you since we had lunch.”
Daddy always says that I take after him when it comes to my stubbornness, but I’ll tell you what, I have nothing on Matt. His stony expression doesn’t budge when his dark green eyes meet mine.
“I don’t know what you mean, Miss Manning.”
Bullshit!
“Stop calling me that, for fuck’s sake! I thought we were friends. You said you were sorry for being a grumpy asshole the other day, and yet here we are, so tell me what’s wrong.”
The corner of his upper lip quirks up in a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Friends? That would be hard, considering your father signs my paychecks. Like your mother said earlier—”
“Fuck what my mother said!” I snap. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I couldn’t be more different than my sister or my mom. Half the time, I don’t even know what they are talking about. You can hate my guts if you want, but don’t you ever dare compare me to them.”
Matt shakes his head, the sunlight filtering in from the windows igniting red highlights on the russet brown of his hair. “Greer,” he groans. “I don’t hate you. And you didn’t do anything wrong. But I forgot myself earlier. I forgot who we are, and when you told me about school and everything, it reminded me that we couldn’t be more different.”
It doesn’t make sense, and I ask him, “How are we different?”
He snorts, looking at me as if I were being particularly slow. “Come on, Greer. The only way our worlds could ever collide is this…” He gestures between us. “Me working for you, for your dad,” he says forcefully when I open my mouth to object.
“I didn’t go to fancy schools. I worked throughout college to pay for my degree, and it’s okay, it’s the way the world works. But don’t tell me that if we’d met on campus or in any other situation than this, you’d have even looked at me twice. Tristan might be an asshole, but he’s the kind of guy a girl like you notices. Beingfriendscan only end up in trouble. So it doesn’t matter that I haven’t liked anyone the way I like you in a long-ass time. I need this job, Greer.”
The only thing I actually hear is that he likes me. Okay, no. I hear the rest too, but fuck the rest. I close the distance between us, and I do something I’ve never done before. I push onto the tip of my toes and crush my lips against his.
For a second, all I can feel is the warmth of his soft lips, and all I can hear is the roar of blood rushing up to my ears as my heart beats wildly against my rib cage.
And then, when Matt kisses me back, all I can do isfeel.His tongue demands entrance to my mouth with a confident yet gentle brushing along the seam of my lips. This is completely different than kissing Brady but just as good. Where Brady was reverent and soft, Matt is wild, unbridled, and while he explores my mouth using his lips, tongue, and teeth, his hands explore my body.
He’s everywhere as his hands skim gently across my naked shoulders, then down over the globe of one of my breasts, making me moan into his mouth.
I push my body closer to his, arching into the kiss and leaning into his touch, offering… I don’t even know what I’m offering, but it’s more. It’s definitely more. It’s anything he wants.
