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Sure, she’d been battling with the county commissioners for the last eighteen months trying to get that park and playground built. And Kingsley’s offer was too good to pass up. But he didn’t own her. She had to stay in control.
Except his cologne smelled so good.
“We have a lot to discuss,” she said. Her voice sounded thready and breathy to her own ears.
Ugh.
“Like what?”
“I’m not living in your house.”
“Nonnegotiable.”
She frowned at him.
“Everything is.”
“Not that. I travel a lot with my job and I work from my home office. I need 24-7 care for Conner.”
“I can’t work 24-7 for you. I have to run this business,” she said.
“I will give you an office in my home and if your office hours are flexible, I’m willing to work with your schedule to give you the time you need. But you must live in my house.”
No, she thought. She couldn’t do it. But there was something persuasive about him and she felt her resolve weakening. He was a client; she’d keep it all business.
“Okay. We can try it out. But if I feel like it’s not working, then we will have to figure out something else.”
“I’m sure it will work.”
Of course he was.
“Was that all?” he asked.
All?
He leaned in closer and she felt the brush of his breath over her mouth. Her lips parted and she realized that she was never going to be all business with him. There was no way.
“No.”
“No?”
“I need some resolution to the past,” she said. “You can’t be this close to me.”
“You’re the one blocking the door with your body.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. He had a point, but he was still crowding her and he had been since he came into her office. “I mean it. Our arrangement is strictly business.”
His left hand shifted on the door and she felt his fingers in her hair. Her scalp tingled and sensation spread slowly downward. “Things are never going to be strictly business between us, Gabi. The past is always going to be there along with that one question.”
Don’t ask.
Don’t do it.
“What question?”
He leaned in even closer and she had to fight the urge to bolt away from him. But she wouldn’t let him know he was getting to her. She had to stand firm. He was just a man.
No.
He was more than a man. He was her own personal demon. One that she hadn’t exorcised because she’d never been able to see him as anything other than a hot fantasy. They’d barely dated before they’d slept together and then everything had fallen apart.
She couldn’t let him continue to dominate every moment they had together.
“If that one night together was a fluke,” he said.
He leaned in closer. So close that she’d barely have to incline her head for their lips to brush. Sure, she remembered their night together, but it had become hazy over the years, tinged with regret and anger. She wanted to take back something that she hadn’t realized Kingsley had stolen until this moment, a part of her womanhood that he’d damaged when he’d left her.
She put her hands on his shoulders and went up on tiptoe, so they were eye to eye. He was impossible to read. He’d always been hard, but now there was a new layer of ice in his gaze. A new barrier that she couldn’t see past.
For her own sanity, she had to keep this strictly business. She was twenty-eight and finally felt that she was getting her life on track. She wouldn’t let a man like Kingsley derail that.
“Oh, I thought you meant if I’d still want you,” she said, trying to turn the tables on him.
“Do you?”
She dashed to the side, ducking out from under his arm. “I’ve sort of outgrown bad boys.”
“Have you?”
“All girls do when they grow up,” she said. “Melissa will send over a contract. Good day, Kingsley.”
Two
Kingsley wasn’t sure if he’d won or lost the battle with Gabi. She’d always had the unique ability to throw him. Even in college before...everything had gone crazy, she’d rattled him. But the past ten years had changed him. And though he’d enjoyed flirting with her—hell, he was a red-blooded male, of course he enjoyed flirting with her—that wasn’t why he was back in California, and he had to stay focused.
