Page 24 of Secret Cinderella
She glanced at her sparkling silver heels. “Me too. I didn’t know that you’d turned into such a good kisser.”
Wait. Did she want him to kiss her now? He turned but her eyes were still wide open. He squeezed her knee. “You’re the only one I ever wanted to kiss.”
Her lips caught his attention as she said, “I… I don’t know what to say. I’d been so jealous when you and Donna-”
“She’s the past.” He came closer to her and his temperature spiked as his lips wanted another taste of hers. “Just tell me that you want this too.”
Her hands cupped his face and then she ran her fingers through his hair. “I do.”
Her kiss was like rocket fuel, sending him soaring to new heights. And Charlotte wasn’t arguing. As he ended the kiss, she held him tight like she never wanted to let him go.
“Can you love me some day?”
“I’ve always loved you," she said. "I was jealous for years at your various girlfriends but I couldn’t ever tell you. I didn’t understand my own feelings.”
Yet no woman in his life had ever shined as bright as Charlotte. Her lips burned right through to his soul and he never wanted to stop kissing her.
And now she was here. With him.
Chapter 10
Charlotte hadn’t rested so wonderfully in at least a decade—no, she thought as she stretched, she’d never slept so well before.
And it wasn’t just the cotton sheets that kept her body warm.
No, the best part of this morning was the muscle-bound man beside her who still slept. Jack. It was hard to imagine him as anything other than Jack O’Conner. She recalled how she’d glimpsed him naked a few years back when he’d dared her to join him and skinny dip in his backyard pool when she’d come over, uninvited, and Donna had taken off in a huff, mad at her interruption of the quiet night with the rest of the O’Conners gone.
Thinking back, she’d known Donna might be at his house and that had been why she’d gone.
Jack had let her in, like he’d been happy she'd showed up.
His hand went under the sheets, clearly checking to see if she still wore his t-shirt he’d lent her. The slight grin on his face told her he was awake. “Do you want room service?”
The last time she’d had room service was a business trip to Orlando her father had taken her on and he'd wanted coffee before the character breakfast. Now she had this again, here with Jack.
Until he realized she ruined dreams, never lived them. She couldn't think about that now.
He sat up and stared at the sun that blazed through the window and then at the clock that flashed the time. Almost ten in the morning. He met her gaze and his blue eyes warmed her as he said, “We should get ready to go downstairs. The Morgans are having a family breakfast from nine to eleven.”
His rich family would see she didn't fit into their world. Her body tensed and she turned away to get up from her side of the bed. “I see.”
He stood and stretched, showing off those muscles of his that he’d worked on both at the gym and moving boxes for years. “I don’t know if I’ll be a good Morgan.”
Last night he’d proven that he knew how to press her buttons. Her body relaxed near him. Jack pulled on his pajama pants. She said, “You'll be great.” She didn’t know how she would fit in, though.
With Jack she was happy, but with the rest of the Morgans it would be obvious that she was a fraud.
The idea of marrying Jack played in her mind like a dream in vivid color as she went in to shower. His blue eyes staring at her and his lips kissing her goodnight, for the rest of their lives. She emerged from the bathroom to see him doing push-ups on the floor. His body was in peak performance as she watched him stretch.
She perched on the edge of the unmade bed. “If I said yes to getting married, how do you see our lives?”
He jumped up to standing in a flash and didn’t seem out of breath at all from his routine. “I finish school and get my degree. You and I plan our wedding together. You can go to college for business management, if you want.”
Her lips quivered and she stepped out of the way to let him use the bathroom. She headed back to the boxes he’d left for her as last night’s gown wasn’t a good choice to wear for breakfast.
Dressed in the hotel bathrobe, she went through the gorgeous options he’d chosen for her, trying not to think of how expensive the clothes were.
The prices must be outrageous.
