Page 20 of Bred By the Boss

“Noelle,” I say firmly, kneeling in front of her and taking her hands. She falls silent as she stares at me, unshed tears pooling on her lashes. When she doesn’t pull away, I continue. “Yes, I knew he’d be here. Yes, I knew that you were connected with him. I can’t say I didn’t know how much of a scumbag he’d been to you, but I know how much of a scumbag he’d been to me.”

Noelle’s eyes soften. “What?”

“Do you want to know why I let you show up for that interview?” She nods. “I wanted to use you to get back at him for how he screwed me out of a lucrative business opportunity I’d scored with a program I’d coded fresh out of college. It’d left me homeless, and everything I have now I only have because I’ve worked hard to claw my way back to the top.”

“But … why me?” she sniffs. “Why would you try to use me like that? He doesn’t care about me. Never has.”

I take her face in my hands, brushing her tears away with my thumbs. “At first, you were going to be nothing but a pawn. I paid a private investigator to track you down and everything. I though Robert was hiding you in that run-down neighborhood, because there’s no way he’d actually let someone he cared about live there. I even went and checked out that laundromat you worked at myself, just to make sure you were actually working there.”

Her eyes widen. “That was you that day. The man I saw out the window, wearing a suit and staring.”

I nod at her, my heart clenching at the memory. “I put the pieces together eventually after my investigator turned up information on your debt to that loan shark. By the time I realized he’d been neglectful, I’d already started feeling things for you.”

“It was you,” she breathes. “You’re the one who paid my debt.”

When I nod at her, she closes her eyes and sighs to herself. I watch her center herself in an instant, her inner strength bolstering her as she processes all of this new information. “Wwhy am I here, Connor?” she finally asks. “Why did you even put me in the same room as him?”

“I thought I could keep him away from you,” I admit. “I just wanted you to have a night where you could be on my arm, so that people could see that you’re mine. So that you could seewhat it feels like to be mine.” I sigh. “It was selfish, I’ll admit it. Figured I could just feed one of the journalists here a lead or two to investigate his shady business practices instead of humiliating him in public. Instead … this happened. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep him away from you.”

My failure hits me with a pang as I watch Noelle’s bottom lip quiver.

“You idiot,” she mutters. “I don’t need some fancy night out to feel like I’m yours. You have me already. You’ve had me since I first saw you in the interview.”

My pulse quickens. “What?”

“Connor, you’ve ruined me for everyone else. You’re kind and courteous. You work hard and you take care of the people who work for you. Maybe you hired me for the wrong reasons, but until that moment in the kitchen when we kissed, you treated me with nothing but dignity.” She lets out a shaky sigh as she smiles. “I don’t think you realize how rare that is to find. It was so different for me that I started falling for you almost immediately.”

I can’t stop myself from surging forward to capture her lips with mine. Her lips part in a gasp, allowing me to deepen the kiss, pulling her closer as her hands wrap around mine. Her skin tastes just as sweet as it did in the car when I gave her the necklace.

“I will never let that man hurt you ever again,” I vow, peppering her jawline with kisses as I hold her close. “No one will ever get the chance to make you feel like that. Ever.”

Noelle whimpers into my mouth. My hands drop to start slipping up her skirt, brushing against the skin of her legs.

“Connor, here? Really?” She sucks in a breath at the sensation of my hands on her flesh.

“Why not?” I rasp at her. “I want to make this night better for you, want to make you forget what you had to go through.”

She scoffs. “That’ll take a while.”

“So be it,” I declare as I push her skirt up. “If I have to spend the rest of my life between your thighs to make you forget everything that you’ve been through, I’ll do it. I love you, Noelle.”

She gasps at my revelation, her eyes blowing wide with need and surprise.

“You do?” she asks me, her voice scarcely above a whisper.

“I do,” I nod, planting a kiss on her thigh. “I’m willing to spend the rest of my life proving it to you, if that’s what it takes.”

Her eyes start to brim with fresh tears as she shakes her head. “Please, you don’t have to prove anything. I love you, too. That’s more than enough for me.”

My heart soars. As I pull her close and make her see stars, I wonder how I managed to find such a perfect, beautiful kitten to call my own.

In the end, I decide it doesn’t matter if I know how it happened right this moment. I have the rest of my life to figure it out, with her at my side.

Epilogue

Noelle

Seven years later

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