“What do you mean?”
“Love interests aside, I’m pretty good at reading people,” she said. “But I can’t figure you out. It’s clear to me how much you want this promotion. You’re planning the biggest headache of the year, and you even took yourself off the market to impress your boss. But you still picked up Baby in a bar, while in uniform, came here having no idea who she was, then two minutes later you kissed me, and have probably kissed a dozen other girls since—”
“I haven’t kissed anyone.”
“—even though you knew it would look bad.” She stopped, along with her heart. “Wait, you haven’t kissed anyone since me? But that was like two weeks ago.”
“I know. I haven’t even gone looking,” he said, sounding equal parts surprised and proud. She understood the first emotion, but the second confused her. It had only been a week that people thought they were dating, but he’d already taken himself off the market before that.
Why?
Was she that bad of a kisser that he’d gone into hiding? Or was she that good and he’d felt those darn tingles too? Not that she got the chance to ask, because he said, “Thinking back to that night with Baby, you were right, it was a stupid move”—his voice dropped to a low rumble—“but haven’t you ever needed to let go? Drop all of the BS and escape for a while?”
“Yes.” Harper had spent most of her childhood pretending that the sets in the play were real, that the cast was her family, and that she belonged in that extraordinary world.
“So you go out, meet someone, there is heat and zero expectation beyond mutual pleasure. And there it is, the chance to get lost for a while, blow off some steam, and before you know it, you’re in a ladies’ dressing room, caught up in the moment, waiting for the rush to take you over, like you’re free-falling from thirty thousand feet without a chute, and . . .” He paused, the look on his face one of confusion. “Really? Never?”
Harper realized she was shaking her head. Because embarrassingly enough, she’d never experienced anything like what he was describing. Even worse, she didn’t know it existed outside of books.
She’d had boyfriends. Some even knew how to make her hum. But to be so caught up in the passion of it all that she felt out of control? Thirty thousand feet without a chute out of control?
Sadly, no.
She had serious doubts that she’d ever elicited those kinds of feelings in her partners either.
“Well,” he continued, “I was a little slow in learning that the rush isn’t always worth the repercussions, and the only thing thirty thousand feet without a chute can get you is dead. So I’m changing, because I want this promotion. I need it.”
“I believe you.” She just didn’t understand why. She didn’t think he did either. But being sworn in as a lieutenant seemed to represent more than a promotion to him. It was a defining moment of some kind.
“But I still confuse you,” he said. If anything, that seemed to make him more frustrated than the thought of not getting the promotion.
“One minute I think you’re an overgrown frat boy,” she said softly, “but then you do something incredibly selfless and sweet and . . . you surprise me.”
“I’m not sweet, sunshine,” he said, cupping her face, “and very little of what I do is selfless.”
“You brought me my favorite cookies.”
“Because I needed to figure out why I was being shafted by every single woman in town.”
“You were sweet enough to ask what my favorite was. And you didn’t out me in front of Clay for lying, when you had every right to.”
“I wanted to kiss you.”
“You put your life on the line every day,” she said, and he gave an all in a day’s work shrug, but she saw the tips of his ears pinken. “You love to make people laugh, but when it really matters you do the right thing, always. Even when it’s hard. You’re loyal and protective of those you care about, which is why you took the blame for the rookie crashing the engine.”
He stilled. “How do you know about that?”
“I’m the oracle,” she joked, not wanting to rat out Emerson, who’d mentioned Adam was with Dax at Stan’s Soup and Service at the time of the accident. “I know everything and I know that hiding beneath that reputation”—she poked his pec—“is a sweet man.”
One who wanted to make amends for his past and build himself a better future. One who was determined to move forward, no matter how hard. From what, she wasn’t sure. But it impressed her almost as much as it turned her on.
He turned her on. Made her want to ditch the chute and free-fall. Heck, the way he was looking at her, as though her thinking him sweet made his day, made her want lots of things. A kiss for starters, which would lead to another, then another, then the dressing room and that rush she couldn’t stop thinking about.