Pulling back, he gulped in a breath of honeysuckle air. Instead of lessening the hunger, the flowery smell only drove home just how much he wanted her beneath him, on top of him, beside him—he didn’t care, as long as he was buried inside her.
It took every ounce of self–control he had to rest his forehead against hers instead of following his instinct to throw her over his shoulder and carry her upstairs. Eyes closed and jaw clenched, he shut down the want ravaging him.
“Sean.” Her breathy voice caressed his skin, taunting him with her closeness. “What just happened?”
He couldn’t open his eyes. If he saw her this close, at this moment, he didn’t think he’d be able to hold off. “I kissed you.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Firmer now, her tone sounded more like the no–nonsense efficiency expert turning his life upside down. Still, her fingers fisted his T–shirt like a woman barely hanging on herself, and she hadn’t made a move to put space between them. “Why?”
Because he was Sean Duvin, not Sean O’Dell. Because he couldn’t fill out a W–2 without Rupert Crowley and the other entrainment reporter jackals finding him. But that wasn’t really why he’d done it. Deep down, he knew he’d kissed her because even as frustrating as she was, Natalie made him forget all of that. She made him believe Sean Duvin had never existed. That the person he was trying so hard to be was who he really was.
“It just happened,” he said. A strand of her hair tickled his cheek, but there was no way he was easing back even a millimeter.
“Uh–huh. Look, despite what ‘just happened’, we can’t do this.” She still hadn’t moved away, and her fingers tangled in his shirt were so close to his bare flesh underneath that a piece of paper couldn’t fit between them.
“Why not?” He kept his hands still, afraid the smallest movement would send her flying away.
“I’m your boss. It’s wrong.”
“So why haven’t you moved?” And for that matter, why hadn’t he? The simple truth was
, he didn’t want to.
“Because wanting and needing aren’t always the same thing.”
“Ain’t that a bitch?”
“Yeah, it is.” She released her grip on his shirt and laid one palm against his fast–beating heart. “I have to go.”
The announcement sliced somewhere deep inside him. “Do you?”
She chuckled, a bittersweet sound that twisted his gut, and pushed him away. It didn’t take much. He was on his feet a second later, his hands shoved in his pockets to stop from reaching for her.
Natalie buttoned her cardigan in no time flat, picked up her bag, leaving the unfilled–out W–2 in the middle of his otherwise bare coffee table, and grabbed her coat from the back of the couch. “About what happened, it’s probably best…”
“Don’t worry.” He took her coat from her and held it up so she could slide her arms into the sleeves. “I’m not a big talker.”
Zipping up her coat, she turned to face him. “Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
He opened his mouth to deliver a rejoinder, but she brushed her lips across his in the briefest of kisses, stealing the words from his mouth. Then she opened the door and walked out into the cold night.
The teasing scent of her honeysuckle perfume lingered in the air behind her, the innocence of it reminding him of just how many dark secrets he was hiding.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, Natalie edged forward in her office chair and read the same e–mail for the hundredth time in the past five minutes. How had the Salvation gossip mill been so very wrong?
Even Ruby Sue at The Kitchen Sink didn’t know about this, and she was Salvation’s equivalent of the NSA when it came to uncovering the town’s secrets. Natalie’s fingers flew up and down her strand of pearls like a nun with rosary beads and glanced down at the calendar from The Organizational Outlet on her desk.
The dates lined up.
It made perfect sense.
Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.
A light tap on her office door snapped her attention away from the screen and onto someone who made her heart palpitate for an entirely different reason.
Sean filled her doorway in his uniform of jeans—slightly worn in all the right places, a Sweet Salvation Brewery T–shirt tugged tight across his broad shoulders, and baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. The cap hid his eyes but not the full lips that should be illegal on a man. And especially her employee.