Page 56 of Honey Bee Library
He frowned. “Why would you think that?”
I paused. Was he serious? “She was a strange woman in your house in the early hours of the morning. Besides, why didn’t you introduce her as your assistant?” I wasn’t going to be the only person to take the blame for this misunderstanding. How hard would it have been for him to say,“This is my assistant, Maddie.”
“I didn’t?”
I snorted. “You didn’t.” If he had, it might have kept me a little more sane these last few days.
He paused. When he didn’t speak right away, I glanced over to see that he was trying to piece things together in his mind. “Was that why you suddenly got so cold with me?” Then he laughed as he pushed his hand through his hair, making some of it stick straight up. “Yeah, you got distant the morning we all ate breakfast at the kitchen table.” He shook his finger in my direction. “That was the morning you met Maddie.”
I sputtered and shook my head. “I didn’t get distant,” I lied.
He was grinning at me now. “Were you jealous?” There was a teasing tone to his voice that I did not appreciate. He narrowed his eyes and smugly nodded. “You were jealous.”
With no arsenal at my disposal, I did the only thing I could think of to stop this interrogation that was quickly leading to the truth I didn’t want him to discover. I reached out and splashed him with some water.
His jaw fell open as water droplets rolled down his face. The shock only lasted for a moment when, suddenly, he brought his hands out of the water, and I realized I was done for. I squealed and attempted to dodge the shot of water he sent my direction, but I wasn’t fast enough and took his retaliation right in the face.
I sputtered and wiped the water away before I turned to face him. Not wanting him to get away with what he’d done, I sent another stream of water his direction. He slid toward me, evading the water as he wrapped his hand around my wrist and pulled me toward him. His other hand wrapped around my waist as he stared at me.
“Truce?” he asked, his voice dropping an octave.
The butterflies in my stomach took flight from the nearness of his body and the heat in his gaze. “Truce,” I whispered.
I thought he was going to let me go. Instead, he tightened his grip on my waist as he straightened and pulled me even closer to his body.
His gaze slipped down to my lips. “I like that you were jealous,” he whispered as he returned his gaze to mine.
I didn’t have the strength to fight this man anymore, and the last thing I wanted was for him to let me go. “You do?”
He nodded before he reached up and tucked my hair behind my ear and then slid his fingertips down my neck before he leaned so close that his lips were millimeters from my ear. “If roles were reversed, I would have been jealous.”
The warmth of his breath and the sexy way he spoke sent shivers rippling across my skin. Out of instinct, I moved even closer to him.
“Really?” I breathed, scared that if I spoke louder, I would wake up from this dream to the reality of loneliness that I’d left back in Harmony.
He pulled back and met my gaze. “Really.”
In that moment, the only thing I could think about was needing his lips on mine. It had been so long since I’d kissed a man—so long since I’d found a man Iwantedto kiss—that I decided to just act. We were here, together, in this moment, and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip by.
Throwing caution to the wind, I rose up onto my tiptoes and pressed my lips to his. They were soft and warm and…perfect. Until I realized that he hadn’t reacted.
He was just standing there, letting me press my lips to his.
Fear gripped me as I pulled back. I’d made a mistake. I may have wanted this kiss, but Cole hadn’t. I didn’t know what to say or think. All I knew was I needed to leave. Now.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” I whispered as I started walking through the water to get to the side so I could climb out. This was not how I saw this interaction going, and there was no way I was going to stick around to hear what he had to say. The last thing I needed was an apology. For him to tell me, “You’re a nice girl, I just don’t think of you that way.”
Harold had already crushed me. A rejection from Cole would demolish any sort of self-esteem I had left.
“Willow.” Cole’s voice was low.
“It’s okay, I’m okay,” I said as I waved away his words.
“Willow,” he said again. Suddenly, his hand caught mine, and I was being yanked to him. He wrapped his arm protectively around my waist as he pulled me to his chest. He let my hand go and slid his fingers from my neck to grip my hair so he could tip my face up to meet his.
His lips captured mine possessively, taking my breath away.
It took a moment for me to compute what had happened. To realize that he wasnotrejecting me, but instead claiming my lips as his. A moment was all it took for my hands to find his chest and then slide up to his shoulders and into his hair as I started to move my lips over his.
