The Off Limits Rule (It Happened in Nashville 1)

I sputter a laugh and grab Lucy’s now wandering hand to pin it to my chest. She grins up at me, eyes sparkling, and now I can add mischievous to my list of favorite expressions from her. “You’re going to be trouble, aren’t you?”

“Tempting, dangerous trouble,” she says, and I think the effect might have been stronger if all that eyebrow wagging she just did hadn’t made her glasses sink down her nose an inch. Still, I want to kiss her. I want to take her bottom lip in my mouth and taste it.

“Yeah, you gotta go,” I say, abruptly releasing her and turning to run my hand through my hair because that can’t happen until after things are settled with Drew. Everyone knows how difficult just friends is once you’ve both established feelings. It’s all happy times until one kisses the other and it breaks every boundary you’ve created. There’s no going back after lips touch. The ground shatters, and you fall. I’ll fall.

I hear her soft, pleased chuckle at knowing she successfully got under my skin, followed by the door to my office opening. “Sorry to interrupt, Mr. James, but your next meeting is here. Dr. Peterson.”

I expel a breath, not quite ready to tear myself away from Lucy and jump back into work mode. “Thanks, Ashley. You can go ahead and send him in.”

It’s only after Ashley has left that I realize Lucy looks like someone just stole her purse and kicked her in the stomach. “Whoa, what’s wrong?”

Her nostrils flare, and her jaw flinches. “Did she just say Dr. Peterson?”

“Yeah…he’s one of my clients, a doctor who’s working on rebranding his new private practice.”

Lucy whimpers and looks like she’s going to drop to the floor from sudden loss of feeling in her legs. “COOPER! Please tell me his first name is not—”

“Brent.” It’s only after I’ve said it out loud that I realize who he is.

Lucy begins gathering her purse and donut box as quickly as possible. “I have to go! Right now. I don’t want to see him today. I have to prepare myself before a face-to-face with Brent because he always has this way of making me feel small, and clunky, and like a puddle of muddy water. I don’t want to see him.”

But when she turns around, we both spot him through the glass wall, approaching the office behind Ashley.

Lucy’s shoulders sag in defeat, and my heart tugs for her. I know she doesn’t have feelings for this guy. I think he just reminds her of that time in her life when she was made to feel like she wasn’t enough for someone.

An idea forms in my mind, and suddenly, my pulse is jumping in my neck. They say bad decisions are made on

a whim, but I think what I’m planning to do next is the best decision of my life.

“Do you want a little confidence boost?”

She looks at me skeptically. “Yes,” she says slowly, sensing danger.

“Alright. Follow my lead, then.”

As Ashley opens my office door, I grab Lucy around the waist, haul her up to my chest until I can feel every one of her curves pressing into me, and drop my head down, kissing her directly on those lips I’ve been dreaming about since I met her.

So much for not crossing that boundary. I can practically hear the ground beneath me cracking.

Did I just have a stroke? Sure feels like it, because not two minutes ago, Cooper was telling me we could only be friends. And now…well, this does NOT feel like friends.

It does, however, feel like warm lips, a strong body, and all kinds of hot and bothered mixed into one as he hungrily caresses my mouth. I decide not to care (HA! Just kidding. It’s actually that I can’t form a thought coherent enough to resemble caring) and wrap my arms around Cooper’s neck. He drags in a deep breath through his nose, and I relish the way his hands are biting into my back like he can’t get me close enough.

Usually, kisses have a buildup, a soft-to-intense pliable rhythm that feels a lot like swimming in the ocean, floating over the waves one by one. Not this one. Cooper’s kiss is devouring as if he’s been dying for me. We tilt and slant, allowing our connection to somehow grow deeper. I’m not in the ocean; I’m on a roller coaster, and it’s just crested the first drop. When I taste mint on his lips, my world goes fuzzy around the edges and fire tornadoes spin in my stomach. His hands blaze a trail from my lower back up to my jaw so he can cradle my face, and I drop my hands to wrap around his waist. He smells like cologne today—nothing intense, just professional and clean and attractive. I tunnel in on this kiss—our lips, our breath, his scent—and I lock my arms tightly around him. I’m not sure what is happening between us right now, but I’m willing to do it all day.

Cooper begins to slow the kiss, his lips softer and more yielding than before, and I refrain from whimpering like a sad puppy. BUT THEN his hands slide from my lower back to drop into the back pockets of my jean shorts, and now I’m the coolest girl in school. My head is spinning because I feel like we just zoomed from zero to one hundred in a blink. Even in all the time I dated Grim Tim, we never kissed like that. My heart never wanted to beat out of my chest like it does right now.

It’s then that a throat clears, and I remember we’re not alone. I think Cooper remembered the whole time, though. I rip my mouth away from him, and he smiles slowly before pulling his hands out of my pockets and turning to Ashley and Brent standing at the door, mouths gaping and eyes blinking. I’m sure I look a lot like them, but Cooper is the hot guy from The Breakfast Club and doesn’t give a crap about things like public indecency.

Ashley finds her voice first. “I’m so sorry, Mr. James. I didn’t realize you two…weren’t finished yet.” She and I both cringe at her unfortunate word choice.

Cooper lightly clears his throat on a chuckle. “No, I apologize. Lucy was just getting ready to leave, and the goodbye kind of got away from us.” He looks over at me and winks. I wish I could focus on this moment to figure out what’s happening, but instead, all I can do is stare at Cooper’s mouth and think That mouth was just on my mouth. How can I make it happen again?

“Lucy?” Brent’s voice has me peeling my eyes from Cooper’s lips. “What—I didn’t realize you…” He can’t find the words to explain what he just saw. You and me both, buddy.

“Hi, Brent.” I raise my hand stiffly then lower it back down in the most awkward wave anyone has ever seen. Looked more like I should have been holding a traffic sign or introducing myself to extraterrestrials.

Cooper steps closer and puts his big, fantastic, possessive hand on my hip, holding me close to his side. It wraps around my entire hip bone as he grips me. “How do you know my girlfriend, Dr. Peterson?”