“You and your friends are all very kind.” Elisa looked toward the house. “Your daughter is amazing. I don’t want to cause any more trouble for any of you.”
He shrugged. “We’ve all seen our share of trouble. It’s all sort of relative these days.”
In fact, Souze had run down a gunman just a few months ago right there on kennel grounds. They’d had some truly unfriendly visitors when Lyn had first come to the kennels.
Elisa didn’t argue further. She just took a step away. “I should go.”
Should. But she didn’t say she wanted to. Didn’t say she had to. Didn’t explicitly say she was going to. So he had no trouble lunging forward and catching her hand. “Don’t.”
She did yank her hand out of his. Souze surged to his feet and barked.
Rojas didn’t reach for her again, but he stepped right into her space. She didn’t back down. Her ex might’ve tried to repress her, but the core of who she was still had a whole lot of strength. He could push her, and she’d push back. Whether she consciously understood it or not, it was because she believed he wouldn’t hurt her. And she was right.
Chapter Eleven
Letting her employer kiss her was definitely not the way to manage expectations. But Alex’s lips were warm and firm against hers, and excitement zinged through her at the contact. Every bit of good sense she had flew right out of her head, and instead, she enjoyed.
The discussion had wrung every emotion out of her and then he’d gone and given her hope. He’d offered her protection, a support system, friends. And he was offering her this.
She almost believed in him.
But she was still going to leave, and the idea of leaving without knowing what it’d be like to kiss him would’ve haunted her forever. So she was going to savor this one kiss. Just one.
Alex’s hand came up slowly to cradle the side of her face, encouraging her to tilt her head, and she did. He deepened the kiss then, his tongue running across her lips and coaxing them to open for him. She opened with a sigh, and his tongue swept into her mouth, gently tasting. She kissed him back in return, leaning into him until she had one hand braced against his hard chest.
A needy moan escaped her, and he responded in kind. When he lifted his mouth from hers, she almost tipped into him, her knees not holding her upright anymore and her head spinning. Wow.
She took not one, but several long breaths to clear her head, looking down at a black and tan face staring up at her with soulful, dark eyes. Souze wasn’t shy about watching, apparently.
The thought brought her the rest of the way to her senses, because weird. Yeah. Weird.
She took a step back, and Alex let her. He’d done that since the beginning. Letting her go if she wanted. So why was it so hard to leave now even if she kept saying she should?
“Thank you,” she told him, not looking up into his eyes.
“But?” Alex’s voice came cool, deep, and so sexy it just wasn’t fair.
“But I should go. Especially because this is obviously not a professional thing now.”
“No. But none of your previous employers particularly cared if you left, did they?” He sounded reasonable. “Did they bother to try to check on you?”
“Not that I know of.” She said it slowly. She’d had her phone with her, and she’d been checking her e-mail. Both big mistakes, she knew now. But she’d been paid under the table and they didn’t really have a way to contact her after she disappeared.
“I think that’s a little odd.” Rojas lifted his hand, giving her plenty of time to avoid him, and brushed her hair back from her face. “Maybe this time, it wouldn’t hurt to have someone care about whether you disappear.”
Tempting. Oh, it was tempting. “Getting tangled up with my boss is exactly how I got into this mess in the first place.”
“Ah.” There was a pause. “I take it you started working at your ex’s company, then got involved with him?”
Shame burned through her. She just nodded. This entire sharing exercise had gone way beyond her comfort zone. But Alex and his friends had already done so much for her, and this was some of what she could do to balance the ledger.
Personal information was a valuable currency, after all.
“Well, in the first place, your ex is an asshole, but only one representative of the human race,” Alex said slowly. “And, secondly, you’ll technically be working for Forte since he owns the place.”
“Semantics!” Scandalized, she looked up into his eyes and saw humor and amusement.