Page 50 of All of You

I stepped back to give her some space, reluctantly letting go of her.

“You ready to go?”

I nodded. She led the way, and I placed my hand on her back again. She stopped by the organizer’s small circle and said thanks but we had to run. She waved to a few of the people she’d chatted with, and then we were moving to the exit. A whirlwind of people scuttled up to her to say one last thing, get her attention one last time, her wide smile flashing at everyone.

And then, I remembered I was supposed to kiss her. Here. Tonight.

I slid my hand around to her side and tucked her body a bit closer as we approached the doors, but stopped her right in front of them. We could see the crowd outside the restaurant on the sidewalk and the crowd gathering inside shoving to the front to watch her leave.

I turned her to me, there in front of everyone, and ignored the fizzing in my chest. She blinked, realizing what I was doing, and stepped closer. I leaned down, pulled her flush against me, and kissed the hell out of her.

Really. I’m not being arrogant. It was a great kiss. I didn’t leave the Earth and start floating above myself, letting sensation fill me and overwhelm every sense like our kiss earlier, but it was damn good and would have looked like a passionate kiss between lovers.

After a minute or so, I pulled back. My eyes took in the woman in front of me, looking thoroughly kissed, her chest and cheeks a touch red, even in the dim lighting.

“Ready?” I asked, admittedly feeling incredibly smug.

She nodded, biting her lip to hide the smile I knew wanted to escape.

We pushed through the doors, the flashes burning our eyes, and the shouting began.

“Whit! Whit! Over here! How does Jamie feel about your relationship with Ben?”

“Ben! How do you feel about Whit and Jamie working together again?”

“What’s it like dating a soldier, Whit?”

“When’s the wedding?”

It was amazing how entitled everyone felt to the personal details of her life. It hadn’t bothered me early on, but the stiffness registered in my neck, in the pull between my shoulders, as we hurried into the waiting town car.

I pulled the door shut behind me, and before I could do anything else, she pulled my face to hers, and her mouth was on mine as we sped away. She slid her hands from my cheeks to my neck and scooted closer as I savored the feeling of her fingers gliding into the short hair at the back of my head, of her smooth lips moving with mine.

Finally, I pulled back. My pulse was pounding, and I could barely find my voice. “We’re gone. No more cameras.”

I watched as her eyes flickered back and forth between mine, her chest rising and falling in a torturous way in that sweetheart dress, and then, it happened.

Whit Grantham didn’t pull away, tidy up her hair, and replace her lip gloss. No.

She shook her head just once, like she’d decided something, and then she pressed her cool hands against my neck and guided my head back to hers. She nipped at my top lip, then the bottom, while my mind resembled something like a record scratch, scrambling to make sense of what was happening.

This wasn’t for the cameras. This wasn’t for the PR. This wasn’t to clarify that she wasn’t cheating on me, hadn’t done anything wrong.

No. This was for her.

And let’s be honest, for me, too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Whit

If someone had looked inside my mind six months ago and made a list of the things that lit up my brain and made me hungry, made me come alive, those things would have been:

Performing my own music

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