AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She took it, turned it over in her hand. Something was different.
Something had changed in him since she’d left the patio.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes, why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because you were all, let’s have an affair, and now you’re handing me your business card and dashing out the door,” she said. “What’s up?”
“I’m respecting your wishes. You said you couldn’t do this while nannying my son.”
She narrowed her eyes, watching him carefully and trying to gauge if he was lying to her. She had asked for the space. Just because she’d sort of counted on him not giving it to her was no reason to get upset now. Except, dammit, he’d kissed her. Gotten her turned on and made her believe that he was going to be pursuing her. Now he was turning it off.
Something had changed.
What?
Hunter. Hunter had called him earlier. Maybe there was bad news from his friend.
“Is everything okay with Hunter?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
She put his card down and walked around the desk so she could lean against the front of it. She noticed whenever she moved that he watched her hips and her legs. He’d always been a leg man. Though she was dressed conservatively, Kingsley’s eyes on her made her feel as if she was wearing a micro-miniskirt and rocking it.
“You’ve changed,” she said, crossing her legs at the ankles. The slim-fitting skirt pulled tight around her thighs. She noticed his gaze skim down to it before he looked away from her.
“What do you want?” he asked. “Did you say no so I’d push you? You know I’m not that kind of man.”
She nodded. “I do know that. I wasn’t saying no so much as...trying to see if you were serious or just toying with me. This feels like you don’t know, either.”
Talking about it made it all clearer. She did want him to keep coming after her. She’d gone to see him and bared her soul as a young girl and he’d rejected her. She hadn’t thought that she was still carrying that scar around, but it turned out it hadn’t faded as much as she’d hoped.
Instead she was afraid to be pushed aside again. She hoped that was it. Hoped it wasn’t that some part of her wanted to reject him.
“We have a lot of history, Gabi, not all of it good. I am here in Cali for work but also to put the ghosts of the past to rest. I guess while we were having lunch I felt like the man I might have been. Thank you for that.”
Her heart melted a little. While it was easy to focus on her feelings, it was harder to see things from Kingsley’s point of view. He’d lost a lot the night he’d been arrested.
“You’re welcome. I want us to at least be friends again,” she said.
“Friends?”
She nodded.
“It’s a start,” he said. “But don’t kid yourself. I’m never going to be satisfied being just your friend.”
He closed the gap between them and kissed her with all the passion she remembered from that night so long ago. All the restraint he’d showed on the patio was gone. The kiss was carnal and then he pulled back, rubbed his thumb over her lips and walked away. She was shattered.
* * *
Kingsley stood in Conner’s doorway and watched his son sleep. His dad had once said there was no greater joy and agony than having a child. Kingsley had simply heard the regret in his old man’s voice and felt the guilt of his own failings. But recently he was starting to understand where the old man was coming from.
He wanted so much for his son. So much more than he could give him. He wanted to protect him and to give him everything he never had. But he’d had a lot of advantages. He wasn’t sure how he was going to keep Conner from ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time as he had.
That fear was always in the back of his mind. He hadn’t been a saint in college, but he’d certainly never pushed a girl to be with him—or drugged her. Both things were key in Stacia’s death. The cold case had left open the option that maybe after a night of crazy drinking and drugging Stacia had taken her own life. But Hunter didn’t believe it.
And neither did Kingsley.
He went into Conner’s room, trying to shake off memories of the past. This little guy was the future. The driving force behind him being here. That and revenge. He wanted the person who’d tainted his future to pay for what he’d done.
He wasn’t going to sugarcoat it. He wanted to ruin whoever had framed Hunter and him, and he knew that nothing was going to sway him from his mission. Not Gabi and her sexy legs. Not even Conner.
