For Her Son's Sake Read Online Free PDF Page B

walked around behind her big walnut desk and started to sit down, but Kell had followed her and stood by the plate glass windows that overlooked a view of the Pacific Ocean.
    “Jessi was unexpected,” he admitted. “But you’re more civilized.”
    “On the surface,” she said. She’d learned early on that she accomplished more when people assumed she was agreeable and malleable; it had served her well in her career up to this point. But underneath she was just as determined and willing to go to any lengths as Jessi was. Jessi had courted a Hollywood producer and gotten them exclusive rights to develop a game based on his upcoming action movie. She just went about it in a different way.
    “Stop it,” he said.
    “Stop what?”
    “Getting more interesting. Could you please go back to being the all-business Emma—the woman I had never kissed and pretty much never thought of except for crushing you in the business arena.”
    She looked over at him and tucked this new tidbit away to use later. She wasn’t ruthless...she honestly didn’t believe all’s fair in love and in war, because in those cases someone always got caught in the cross fire. But she did believe in using everything at her disposal to her advantage.
    “You think I’m interesting.”
    He closed the gap between them in two long strides and put his hands on her waist. His touch was light, but his body language was aggressive, and she had the feeling that she’d just pushed him too far. Another tidbit she should tuck away.
    She felt perfectly safe with him like this. She knew that he’d never hurt her—she didn’t know why she was so certain but she was.
    “I can’t help being myself,” she said, at last.
    “You weren’t like this last week.”
    “I was. You didn’t notice,” she said.
    He pulled her toward him. “I’m pretty observant. I think I would have been aware that you were flirting with me.”
    “You think so?” she asked, tipping her head to the side.
    He nodded.
    She lifted one finger up to caress the line of his jaw and felt a tiny scar there. Where had he gotten it? One little flaw in an otherwise perfect face.
    “What do you want me to say?”
    “That you can survive a no-holds-barred sexual affair that has a built-in end date.”
    Shaken, she stared up into those pewter eyes of his, eyes that she knew she’d never look into again and think of as icy, because they burned with such a white-hot flame now. The rawness in his voice scared her. What he wanted...well, she wanted it, too, but she was done leaping into affairs. She was done with trusting that the future would sort itself out—it never really did. She swallowed hard.
    He cursed under his breath.
    “Why flirt then?” he asked.
    “I can’t resist it. I know I should hold my tongue but I can’t.”
    “I have a few ideas of what to do with your tongue,” he said. “Give me a kiss, Emma. One last kiss just for this moment and then I’ll let you go and you’ll stop flirting with me and that will be it.”
    “One kiss? Wasn’t that what started this craziness?” she asked, licking her lips because just the thought of kissing him made everything feminine inside of her go on high alert.

Four
    K ell’s rational brain was no longer in charge. He had nothing left to lose. He wanted her, he couldn’t think when she was around and kissing her seemed like the most sensible thing in a world that had gone completely insane.
    “Was it the kiss that started all this? I thought it was that time we worked together in the copy room more than ten years ago.”
    Her breath caught. “I didn’t think you remembered that day.”
    “I don’t really dwell on it that often but it’s always in the back in my mind. I think that one incident set all of this into motion.”
    She kept running her finger along his jaw and it made it nearly impossible for him to think. But then holding her in his arms wasn’t really helping to keep him focused either. There was something about