liking the idea of holding that strong hand a little too much. Wanting to know what it would feel like when she slid her hand into his.
She wasn’t at all prepared for what happened when he pulled her to her feet and into his arms. The man wasn’t playing fair. He was humming quietly, moving them in a slow circle in time to whatever song he had playing in his head as he leaned close, his head close to hers so only they shared the music.
She would have tried to pick out the song, but her mind had gone to utter mush in his arms. He was strong and warm and his hands felt amazing, one holding her hand and the other on her back. It was low but not enough to be offensive. Enough, honestly, to make her wish he’d go lower.
Lord, what was happening to her?
“You’re a little different than I expected, Joy Wilson.”
She made the mistake of tilting her head back to look up at him, planning to say ditto.
The look in his eyes when she met his gaze stopped the breath in her chest. He was looking at her with such heat, she couldn’t get the word out of her mouth.
But he was accurate alright. He wasn’t what she’d expected either.
He lowered his head a fraction of an inch and for a minute, she thought he was going to kiss her. There was that moment where they were too close, closer than two people who didn’t plan to kiss would be. And if her breathing was any indication, her body was all for it. She felt that excitement in her stomach that came from the anticipation of connection.
Yes! that voice in her head started screaming.
Part of her knew she shouldn’t want this at all. It was a bad idea to mess with this man. Any man. She couldn’t have relationships in her life.
But this wouldn’t be a relationship. It could be a fling. A really fun amazing fling when she was about to go on the run again and lose the few people she had in her world. She could give herself that, couldn’t she?
His mouth hovered over hers, breath mingling as she felt her heart kick up, seeming to trip over itself at the anticipation of his mouth on hers.
And then he stopped.
Whether the song inside his head was finished or he’d just come to his senses or whatever, she didn’t know.
But he pulled back and cleared his throat. “Thank you for the dance, Joy.”
Well, at least he hadn’t called her Ms. Wilson. That was something.
Chapter 12
What happened the night before with Joy shocked the hell out of Kaeden. Asking her to dance hadn’t been something he planned. The idea had come into his head at the same time the words had come out of his mouth. And then he’d had her in his arms and the feel of her had stripped his defenses.
When she tipped her head back and looked up at him, all the walls he’d built so carefully in the past few years began to crack.
And it had been all he could do to plaster over those fucking cracks and step away from her without kissing the gorgeous curve of her bottom lip. The way she always looked like she was trying to hold everything together and keep people at arm’s length, he wanted to see if he could make her fall apart in his arms.
Christ, he had to think of something else. Standing in line for the buffet breakfast at the lodge with all of his coworkers wasn’t the place to get a hard-on.
He was all too aware of Joy as she replaced a nearly empty plate of bacon with one piled high with the perfectly cooked, extra crispy stuff that would probably kill him.
Jack and Andrew were busy adding eggs and pastries to their plates while they talked about a company that might be worth looking into when they got back to the office. They had a rule in place that business could only be discussed at breakfast each day.
“We’ll need to see if Commfarm is willing to hold off on phasing out their software department. We’d need that to remain in place for what we have planned,” Andrew said.
Kaeden was about to open his mouth to say he had a friend who worked at the tech company that they might reach out to, but Joy spoke first.
“Too late. They began phasing out software three years ago and it will