Hero (Hero 1)

Thirty seconds later I found myself stuffed into a tiny dressing room.

I spun the tag over on the dress and balked at the price.

Yeah, there was no way I was buying this freaking dress no matter how good it looked on me.

I huffed and yanked my tank top off.

“You look so familiar to me,” I heard the saleswoman say to Caine.

I practically rolled my eyes at the purr in her words.

Caine didn’t reply.

I smirked.

Certainty.

The word made me relax as I thought about it. I wouldn’t feel that certainty if I didn’t feel sure of Caine’s feelings for me. Although we hadn’t discussed changing the terms of our affair, there had also been no more mention of it coming to an end. We didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want it to end. Ever.

I froze middressing.

I was falling in love with him.

“Do you work around here?” the salesgirl tried again.

“Close by,” he said, and then the privacy curtain moved a little, jolting me out of my breathless realization. “Are you done?”

I sought to sound normal and not at all overwhelmed by a life-altering recognition of my feelings. I cleared my throat. “Unless the dress is supposed to be worn with my boobs hanging out, no.”

“Smart-ass,” he muttered, but I could hear his amusement in the word. Just as I tugged the dress up, Caine slipped inside the dressing room, taking up way too much space.

I stared up into his face, suddenly impatient for the right time to tell him how I felt.

I’d never been in love before. When was the right time to say it?

Caine was too busy checking me out in the dress to deduce that my thoughts had gotten mushy. “You look beautiful.”

I flushed with pleasure and smoothed my hands down the gorgeous material of the dress. “Thank you.”

He reached for me, coasting his own hands down my waist until they settled on my hips. He gave me a little tug until I was pressed up against him. “You’re getting this dress.”

I ran my hands up his arms and gently let him down regarding any fantasies he was creating about me in this dress. “No, I’m not. The price tag … it’s extortion.”

“Who said you’re buying?” He made a move toward the curtain, but I tightened my hold on him.

“Caine, no.” I shook my head adamantly. “You are not—”

He shrugged out of my grasp with an imperious rise of his right eyebrow and then disappeared out of the dressing room.

“Caine,” I hissed.

Cursing under my breath, I began to remove the dress, my hands stilling when I heard him say to the salesgirl, “We’ll take it.”

I huffed and shrugged back into my own clothes. By the time I got out of the changing room, it was too late. He’d bought the dress. I kept my silence as we walked out of the store, my new dress inside the paper bag dangling from my wrist, but as soon as we were back up onto street level, I stopped.

Caine glanced over at me and sighed at whatever he saw on my face. “What?”

“Why did you do that when I asked you not to?”

“Because you looked good in it and I wanted to buy you it.” He sighed again. “Lexie, I’ve never bought you anything before.”

“So?”

“So last week you bought me a movie and a book just because you thought I might like them.”

I was still confused. “So?”

“So the week before that you bought me a bunch of cushions and shit I don’t need for my apartment and for my office.”

I grinned. I had done that. I’d finally felt confident that I could introduce a little “nesting” into his life. “That sounds less like a gift, and more like an annoyance.”

Caine gave a huff of laughter. “True. But it was still a gift. And you did it just because. The dress? It’s just because.” His eyes suddenly smoldered and I melted under them. “And because I’d like to fuck you in it.”

A delicious shiver rippled over me at the thought. “So it’s a gift for the both of us?”

“Yeah. One that will hopefully keep on giving.”

I laughed and moved to lean into him, completely forgetting where we were.

“Alexa?”

The familiar voice stopped me. My pulse raced as I spun around to face my grandfather.

Although we’d spoken on the phone, we hadn’t seen each other in weeks. Caine’s revelation held me back from arranging a tête-à-tête with my grandfather. Not too long ago I’d cherished them. But after discovering the truth, I dreaded meeting up with Grandpa. So I put it off again and again. I suspected my grandfather was blaming my relationship with Caine for my distance with him. It had only increased his disapproval. Seeing the look on Grandpa’s face when his gaze darted beyond me to Caine, I knew that disapproval hadn’t lessened any. I’d always thought his feelings were born from concern, but now I was questioning everything. Was Grandpa really worried for me or was he just worried that somehow my closeness with Caine was going to unleash the secrets we’d all buried?

“Gran—” The word was abruptly cut off at the sudden appearance of my grandmother as she came striding out of the jewelry store next to us. I tried to hide my reaction, pretending all the while that my heart wasn’t banging away in my chest.

Adele Holland’s face hinted at what must have been her youthful beauty. Her style and perfectly coiffed ash blond hair and tip-tilted crystal blue eyes were still very attractive. She looked at her husband and then at me and scowled in confusion. Caine edged behind me, drawing her gaze, and that was when understanding paled her features.