A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(21)

Jesus, she was beautiful. Garrett hadn't been paying any attention to the nonsense Milo was complaining about while he put in his coffee order. He had been too busy wondering if it would be wrong to walk across the room and kiss her.

Garrett briefly wondered if there was something wrong with him. Maybe he didn’t get enough sleep last night or something. Since when did he ever want to just walk up to a complete stranger and make out with them?

Since he saw one that looked like her, obviously.

Garrett didn’t know a God damned thing about hair, but hers was chocolate brown with some highlights mixed in. It looked so soft his hands were itching to run his fingers through it to see if it felt like silk.

She had on a pink, low-cut sweater that was showing just enough cleavage to make his dick stir in his jeans.

Milo must have been fed up with Garrett ignoring him and turned around to see what had kept his friend so silent.

“Fucking hell. She’s hot,” Milo whispered as he handed Garrett his usual cup of black coffee with two sugars.

Garrett took the steaming cup from him without looking and just nodded.

The beautiful girl had glanced back and forth between them and smiled with confidence. It was like a magnetic pull neither man could resist. They had blindly walked, elbow-to-elbow, over to her table.

A few feet away from her, Milo had leaned his head close to Garrett and whispered, “I saw her first.”



Garrett always wished he’d been the one to voice those words, but he’d been too enraptured by Parker at the time. All he wanted to do was stare at her, drink her in, and memorize every inch of her. While the three of them talked over coffee, he laughed at her snarky attitude and admired her fierce independence. Over the years, the hard edge that he first noticed in Parker diminished slightly. She could still out-argue anyone and stood her ground with things she believed in, but she definitely became more complacent. Garrett often wondered about the change in her but chalked it up to her being comfortable enough with them to let her guard down and be who she really was. There were moments through the years, every once in a while, where she almost became another person for a split second. The steal resolve and the strength would shine behind her eyes, then just as suddenly, almost as if she forgot where she was for a moment, she’d blink herself back to reality.

He watched Parker shift her body closer to his and rest her elbow on her armrest. Her shoulder pressing against his sent a shiver down his spine.

“I’m a little concerned with your ability to handle this though, Garrett,” she said softly. He had to swallow roughly at the sound of his name on her lips. She always made it sound sensual, and his mind usually conjured up images of her naked and pinned beneath him, moaning his name.

This time was no exception.

Her face inched closer to his, and when she spoke next, he felt her breath on his lips.

“Are you going to be able to hold my hand when we walk through the streets and look me in the eyes like I’m all you’ve ever wanted?” she asked breathlessly as she placed her hand on his stomach and slid it up to his chest. “Will you be able to touch me like you’ve done it a thousand times before, pretend that you know the spot on my neck that makes me sigh and where to graze your fingertips to make me moan?” she whispered as she traced lazy circles on his chest with her fingertips.

Garrett had no idea just how well she could lie when she needed to. She was lying to him as she leaned in closer, feeling the heat from his arm against her and the smell of his skin surrounding her. She told him she was concerned with his ability to handle this, but she knew without a doubt he could. He could hold her and call her his wife and talk about a life they didn’t have and forget all about it when the mission was over. Lucky for her, none of her acting ability would need to be put on display. Every word, every touch, and every moment would be real for Parker. Every minute she spent with him chipped away another piece of the wall she’d so carefully built. She knew the first day she met him that he’d be the one to do it. Through the years she’d been able to stop it from happening, but now she didn’t have a choice. She didn’t have Milo as a buffer or her job to take her away from the confusing emotions so she could get back on track. Her conflicting feelings would be on display, making her question every decision she’d made in the last eight years for the duration of this mission. Parker was good at her job. She was phenomenal at separating life from work and concentrating on the job at hand. But there would be no way to do that this time. Life and work were colliding into one big, fiery inferno. She would be alone with Garrett, falling easily into the fantasy of the two of them as a couple, while at the same time, the guilt of being unfaithful to Milo would be eating her alive. It didn’t matter if he was dead and buried. Garrett was Milo’s best friend. No matter how or when it happened, no matter that the feelings were only one-sided, it would be a betrayal of Milo’s memory and all that he meant to them.

Garrett stared at her lips while she spoke and tried to keep his hand away from his dick when she talked about sighs and moans and let her tongue dart out to slide across her top lip. He wondered what the hell she was doing right now with her voice. He had never heard her talk that way, all breathy and seductive—at least not with him. Garrett needed to get his head and his dick out of the gutter pronto before he did something really stupid like ask his best friend to join the Mile High Club with him. Thoughts of bending Parker over the sink in the bathroom at the back of the plane and lifting her skirt up so he could run his hands over her smooth, heart-shaped ass before sliding into her, temporarily took over his brain. He needed to get back on track so he moved a few inches away from her.