Summer Breeze Kisses - Addison Moore Page 0,3

just above the stove for the last twenty years, and I’ve hailed it as a shrine ever since.

“From virgin to whiskey in a single bound. Whiskey it is. How do you want that?” Holt growls it out like a sexual command, and my entire body responds.

“Make it any way you like,” I purr right back. I can’t help flirting a little with him. His brand of perfection demands it.

“That’s always a brave answer, sweetie.” He gazes at me a moment too long, and I drink him in with his dark stubble peppering his cheeks, his intense glowing eyes—lips of crimson—and my stomach squeezes tight.

He takes off, and Jemma starts in on a series of spastic kicks under the table.

“Would you stop?” I retract my feet and scoot back an inch. “I’m going to bruise. And I have a class to teach in a few hours.”

“He called you, sweetie.” She presses her lips together, but a laugh bubbles through anyway. “Oh, hon, he just tapped you on the shoulder and told you to get in his bed.” She shakes her head, pleased with her ability to connect the sexual dots—albeit incorrectly. “Ten bucks says you can have that shiny tight ass on a platter by midnight if you play your whiskey right.”

“Please. I’m not plating him or anybody else up by midnight, and I don’t plan on touching the whiskey.” Maybe just enough to wet my lips.

“Knew it.” Her eyes pull with sadness, an almost foreign emotion for Jem. “Does your daddy ever leave your mind?”

I slide down in my seat a few inches. Jemma Jackson has always had the uncanny ability to read me like a book—more like a picture book that shows the same heartbreaking scene on every single page.

“He does,” I whisper. “But lately he’s really been on my mind, and it makes me wonder what it means.”

“I know exactly what it means.” She touches her hand to mine. “It’s time to get you to a good therapist. Trust me, hon, this is long overdue.” She rakes her teeth over her bottom lip. “Make sure you get one of those touchy feely ones that know how to make you feel extra good when the session is through. We’ll find you someone who’s ready and willing to straighten you out a little.”

“I know where this is going, and I don’t need a sex therapist, Jem.”

Holt pops up like an apparition. “I should hope not.” His dimples dig in and—oh crap.

Turns out I don’t need to worry about Jemma’s wayward mouth. My own is quite capable of landing me in a steaming pile of humiliation.

He leans in, and his cologne washes over me like a heat wave at midnight. His cheek glides up one side as if all hell were about to break loose. And, judging by the way my thighs are quivering, it so is.

“Here you go.” Holt sets a pair of matching amber drinks in front of us and the vanilla rich scent permeates my senses. It’s a far cry from my usual catalog of virgin cocktails, and I’m pretty sure the only virgin in this scenario is me. It’s nothing I’m shouting out over the rooftops, but it’s something that’s been swirling around my mind now that Jemma so subtly suggested I see a therapist who might be bribed into a one-night stand with the hope he’ll straighten me out a little.

Holt lands a plate of burger and fries in front of Jem before directing his attention to me.

“Thank you.” I give a weak smile. I’ve known Holt forever. His little sister, Annie, took private lessons at my mother’s dance studio for years. Annie is one of the sweetest kids I’ve ever had the pleasure to teach. She was born completely deaf, but her determination to live a full life has put it in her heart that she can do anything she sets her mind to, and, for a while, that happened to be dance.

“How’s Annie?” I drink him in. Holt is the all-American real deal—the perfect package for any princess in the market for a genuine prince charming. Six foot two, dirty blond hair, muscles for miles and, judging by that semi-lewd grin that knocks the girls off their feet, I’m guessing a quasi-dirty mind to boot.

“Annie is doing great. She’s headed to Whitney Briggs in the fall. Her dorm is all set to go, so it’s a done deal.”

“Really?” I clutch my chest without meaning to. In my mind, Annie is still that lanky thirteen-year-old