He smiled. “Before you stroke out, I wished for Harper to have true love in her life.”
She nearly sagged with relief and tore her gaze off the rapidly vanishing quarter to stare at him. “That was mean.”
He just smiled.
“Like the meanest of all the mean.”
“So I take it you wouldn’t make a wish for one of your family members.”
She turned back to the fountain and pretended to be fascinated by it.
“You know, you never say much about your family,” he said quietly.
“Because we’ve known each other all of a week.”
His mouth quirked and he gave another slow shake of his head. “You do that a lot, deflect with sarcasm and wit. Your mom’s a lounge singer. Your brother’s bad at keeping in touch. Tell me more, Trouble.”
Again her heart started with a heavy drumming. She didn’t do this. Not here, not now. Not ever, actually. She didn’t share, and he was right, instead she deflected and she was good at it. “I thought I was going to show you a good time.”
“You are. This first.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing exciting. Just a normal upbringing, really.” If normal was hell on earth . . .
“There’s no such thing as a normal upbringing,” he said. “You were pretty adamant about me talking to my mom. Tell me more about yours.”
She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears. “Nothing to say, other than what you know. I left home when I was sixteen.”
This didn’t make him happy. “What about school?”
“I tested out and got my GED,” she said.
“How did you survive? Did you go to other family members?”
“No. And I did okay.” If okay was being scared and alone all the time.
He shook his head, eyes troubled for her. “I can’t imagine how rough that was for a young girl. You mentioned that your dad wasn’t around,” he said.
“Nope. Not at all.”
“You never knew him?”
“No. I could pass him on the street and I wouldn’t even know it.” And when Kel just looked at her, eyes solemn and sympathetic, she admitted something she’d never said out loud before. “I used to look at faces in crowds to see if I resembled any of them.”
“His loss,” Kel said with a quiet intensity that made her throat feel tight. He slid a hand down her arm to entangle their fingers, which he used to tug her into him. “I’m going to kiss you now, Ivy. Tell me if that’s okay.”
She stared up at his mouth. “Are you always going to ask me that question before you kiss me?”
He pressed into her, that long, hard, hot body against hers. “Until I can read you better and be sure of what you want, yes.”
Why did she find that incredibly sexy, as in maybe one of the sexiest things she’d ever heard? Her hands found their way to his chest and slowly slid up. “I know I’m not very easy to read,” she whispered, going up on tiptoe so that the words ghosted over his lips. And then, against her best judgment, she whispered one more word. “Yes . . .”
Kel framed her face with his hands. Ivy didn’t dare breathe for fear that it wouldn’t happen, because at some point in the past sixty seconds, she’d come to want his kiss more than anything she could think of. It was an ache working its way through her, twisting her up into a ball of hunger and desire.
Without breaking eye contact, his fingers slid into her hair and he held her gaze for a long beat, until finally she whispered “please.” In the next beat, his mouth closed over hers. She had no idea which of them deepened the kiss after that, only that she heard her own soft moan as a white-hot wave of need rolled through her. When his tongue touched hers, she shivered, pressing closer for more because he tasted amazing and she wanted to taste the rest of him, wanted to taste every single inch of him.
But he slowly pulled back and ran a thumb along her jawline. “I knew you were going to be trouble the very first moment I laid eyes on you.”
“Hello, I’ve been trying to tell you that very thing!”
Snatching her hand in his, he grinned at her, a very sexy, very naughty grin, as if maybe he thought she was the very best kind of trouble, and led her through the alley to his truck.