Page 17 of The Brit and the Bridesmaid
But he didn’t drop his hand from her face. “Please don’t.”
She met his gaze again. “But you—”
“—promised my dad years ago to never kiss a girl without giving her ample opportunity to tell me to take myself off.”
He was waiting for her? “I didn’t tell you to take off.”
His gaze dropped to her lips. “I noticed.”
Matt closed the gap, his mouth brushing over hers. Abby set her palms against his chest. All thoughts of past heartache and disappointment and vulnerability fled from her mind. There was nothing in that moment but him and that kiss. Warmth spread through her like a slow-burning fire.
He held her close, earnest but gentle, as he deepened the kiss. Abby simply melted against him. She hadn’t expected this to happen. After Dirk, she’d promised herself that it wouldn’t ever happen again. But Matt had found his way past the barriers. Being held by him this way, feeling the warmth of him there beside her, Abby realized she was beginning to fall in love with him. More than just beginning to, in fact.
***
Abby hadn’t seen Matt since their kiss in his living room two days earlier. She’d missed him, but she didn’t want to seem desperate. When an order came through at the nursery for Sainsbury House, Abby jumped at the opportunity to make the delivery.
She didn’t find Larry in the gardener’s shed. She decided to slip inside the house and say hi to Matt. Abby was glad she’d worn her favorite pair of work jeans instead of the ratty ones she’d had on the last time she’d come to Sainsbury House. Her blue t-shirt was in decent shape too. She’d spent the day at the counter and not among the plants, so she was still clean. Not a bad day to drop in on the guy who’d somehow managed to lay claim to her heart.
Abby smoothed her hair as she stepped onto the porch and into the entryway. She hadn’t been to Matt’s office many times, but she remembered exactly where it was. His voice floated out his open office door. That accent had turned her off when she first met him. He’d seemed stuffy and arrogant. Now she loved the sound of it, loved the way her name sounded like poetry when he said it.
“We can, of course, accommodate you in that,” he was saying to someone inside. “At Sainsbury House we pride ourselves on making our clients’ experiences as close to perfect as we can possibly manage.”
Abby leaned against the wall beside the door, listening.
“And you can guarantee the staff will remain out of sight and unobtrusive throughout the night?” Whoever was in there with them seemed adamant on that point. “We don’t want the help getting in the way.”
The ones doing all the work have to stay out of sight. Some people were so arrogant.
“I will make note of that,” Matt answered.
She leaned around the doorframe, not stepping fully into the threshold. Matt sat at his desk, wearing a suit and tie, hair perfect like a model in a magazine. A couple sat across the desk from him—pearls, cufflinks, polished shoes, snotty expressions. Abby knew in a glance that they were exactly the sort of people Dirk had tried to make her fit in with, the ones who always sighed in dismissive annoyance at her appearance and her clumsiness and her plainness.
She must have made some kind of noise. All three people looked toward her. The same familiar discomfort she’d known every minute she’d spent with Dirk in public came rushing back. When it was just the two of them, things were fine. Not great, but fine. But as soon as someone else was around, she wasn’t good enough.
Matt was up and out of his chair in an instant, moving to where she stood. “Abby. What you are you doing here?”
He didn’t seem at all happy to see her. “Larry ordered some plants and things from the nursery,” she said. “I’m delivering them.”
Her eyes darted to the couple. They were watching her, their faces pulled in expressions of disapproval.
Matt slipped a hand under her elbow, moving her toward his office door with obvious determination. “Larry is probably in the shed. You should look for him there.”
“I was just there,” Abby said. “He was gone, so I came to see you.”
Matt glanced back at his office before returning his gaze to her. “He may have returned by now.”
“Maybe.”
Matt was still lightly pushing her back toward the entryway. He didn’t want her going in his office?
“I’m interrupting, aren’t I? I can just wait out here”
He shook his head no.He doesn’t even want me to wait?
He lowered his voice. “This is a very particular client. They can be very picky about things.”
“About things or about people?” The question slid unbidden from her lips.
