Suddenly His - Jessa Kane Page 0,29

seems to gather herself. I find I have to gather myself, too. I’m too exposed. This isn’t the first time I’ve admitted to growing up with certain challenges, but it’s somehow completely different in front of Maisy. The wound is more tender when she’s the one examining it. She sees more of me than anything. All the shortcomings I need to hide if I want her to love me. “I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t,” I say briskly, adjusting the newspaper.

She reaches across the table and lays a hand on my wrist. “Will you talk to me about it sometime? When you’re ready?”

Unable to look at her, I incline my head. And promptly divert the focus of the conversation. “Are you telling me you’d have let her keep the money?”

Maisy takes back her hand, thinks for a moment. “Yes. I don’t know why she made those decisions, but…I don’t love her any less because of them. And sometimes when you love something or someone, you have to let them fly away, right? You have to accept that the thing that’s going to fulfill them or make them happy…isn’t you.”

I bark a humorless laugh. “Bullshit. In what world, Maisy, are you not the most fulfilling part of a person’s life?”

This simple question appears to throw her for a loop. “Maybe you see me differently than she does,” she murmurs. “Whatever her reason…I don’t want her stripped of her job and future, Jack. My eyes are open now and that’s more valuable than revenge.”

She’s too good for you.

Her heart is too pure.

I’m nasty soot on the inside and she’s clean light.

Is it too much to hope that I can learn from her? Or is too late for me?

I clear my throat hard. “You can return the money and plane ticket to her. In your own time. If that’s what you want.”

“Yes. Thank you,” she breathes, tension draining from her shoulders.

“But I won’t employ her again. Not after she hurt you.”

Maisy nods. “I understand.” Finally, she takes a sip of her orange juice and I watch, rapt, as she licks the excess moisture from her lips, my dick a stiff pike under the table. “I missed work last night. I’ll need to call my boss and explain I won’t be back for two more days.”

“Tell them you won’t be back at all.”

Her eyes flash with challenge. “I don’t know that for sure. I have to give proper notice.”

I grind my back teeth, barely resisting the urge to throw my steaming mug of coffee against the wall. My Maisy might be pure, but she’s stubborn as hell. And I have no doubt that if she doesn’t find and fall for the real Jack within the next two days, she will absolutely go back to scrubbing floors, even with the first hundred thousand in her bank account.

And I’ll turn into a stark raving mad man. “I want to give you everything,” I say, evenly as possible. “Home, comfort, safety. Everything you see behind me.” Deliberately, I let my tone drop way down. “Baby, I want to give you sex. The kind you didn’t even know you needed until I was inside you.”

A flush climbs her throat, her eyelids drifting down slightly. “I know what you can give me, Jack. I’m more worried about what you can’t.” She studies me with a wrinkled brow. “You’re still hiding. Do you want to be found?”

“I don’t know,” I say hoarsely.

After a brief stare down across the table, she nods. “When are you leaving for work?”

“I’m not.” I rear back a little, coffee cup poised near my mouth. “Did you think I would waste my three days?”

Her features register surprise. “What are we doing instead?”

I think back to the arrangements I made last night while she slept and I find myself…nervous about whether or not she’ll approve of my plan. Is this how regular, average men feel before a date? Jesus, am I one of them now? I fucking hope not. “It’s a surprise.”

Spoiling Maisy isn’t the way to her heart.

That doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it.

Excessively.

I just have to remember to carve open my chest and show her the inner workings of Jack Lincoln somewhere along the way…and hope she redeems me.

9

Maisy

Jack has to take back-to-back business calls during our drive to the city, but I don’t mind. It gives me the chance to center myself. To replay our conversation from earlier. Jack doesn’t have a mother? Where and how did