been men with dashing accents and fashionable wardrobes. She’d dumped and been dumped…but truth was, she’d never once really had her heart broken. So who was she to talk about hard landings?
She sighed and leaned back against the little desk and fanned her face for an entirely different reason. And admitted that never once, in her entire dating life, had she ever been kissed like that. And that the real reason she hadn’t walked across that street, and straight through that restaurant and right into Sean Gallagher’s kitchen and kissed him back in that same devastatingly slow and marvelous way he’d so perfectly claimed her mouth the other day, at precisely twelve fifteen—she’d noticed the Santa’s belly clock over the door he’d walked out of—wasn’t because she was afraid of men, or of dating, or of taking chances.
It was because, this time, she was afraid she could get her heart broken. Quite thoroughly shattered, in fact. All those things he’d said, each and every word had resonated inside of her, screaming one word: truth. She knew it, felt it, as surely as he did. Shocking and stunning as that was to even contemplate.
But the odds weren’t in her favor. He didn’t travel in her world and she most definitely didn’t travel in his. She had no idea what to do with a huge, boisterous family full of people who would likely scrutinize, judge, and hold her up to who knew what kind of impossible standards when it came to their beloved and cherished Sean. Yes, clients did that with her on a routine basis, but she knew her worth in the world of advertising.
She had no idea of her worth as it pertained to holding on to someone like Sean Gallagher.
And so, chicken that she apparently was, she’d shamefully stayed hidden in her haven of an inheritance and focused on answering the questions that had finite, rock solid answers instead. That she could deal with, and had to deal with, anyway. Sean and all that he represented and potentially promised was simply too huge, and seemed too…fantastical fairy-tale to seriously contemplate.
Her stomach growled. Loudly. It was well into the afternoon and she hadn’t eaten since the bagel she’d gotten from Margie’s, the little coffee and pastry shop two blocks down, earlier this morning. She could call the deli again, get another cold cut sub. She looked out the window. Or she could cross the street and order something more filling. And muster up the courage to tell Sean that she’d decided to lease the shop space to Mrs. Gillespie and would be heading back to London. Which wasn’t exactly true. Yet. But still, she wasn’t staying, that much she knew. So, it was for the best to go over there, make peace, not leave things in limbo, remain friends. Surely they could be adults about this.
Right. Who was she kidding? She wanted him so badly she could taste it. And it was ridiculous how badly she wanted to taste him. Again. And again. If she marched into his office, there was a far bigger chance she’d kick the door shut and beg him to take her right there, right then, right on his desk, than realistically discuss any rational thought of how to retain something as simple as a basic friends-only friendship. She’d certainly fantasized about the former. The begging part, the demanding part. Not so much with the rational let’s-be-friends part. In fact, she’d never realized how many places there could be to have spontaneous, erotic, hot as hell sex in a restaurant until she’d closed her eyes at night.
Jimmy’s Deli it was, she decided, slipping off the secretary, then tripping over the end of a rolled-up rug she’d shoved there earlier while checking things off lists. This sent her wheeling back against the little rolltop desk, which rocked hard back against the wall and caused a heretofor unseen spring loaded hidden compartment door to pop open in the recesses of the rear of the nook-and-cranny desktop. She bent down and peered into the shadowed interior of a newly revealed hidey-hole. “Huh. Cool.”
But, before she could investigate further, the sleigh bells rang over the door downstairs and she cursed under her breath. She’d forgotten to go down and lock up after Mrs. Gillespie had left. Customers, both old and new, had come by over the past few days and tried the door or pressed their noses against the glass. When she could, Holly just ducked them, leaving them to