To Have and to Hold (The Wedding Belles #1)(64)

“You weren’t supposed to like me?”

Blue eyes latched onto hers. “I wasn’t even supposed to meet you. You weren’t in my plans, and I like my plans.”

“I’m shocked,” she said teasingly. “Absolutely shocked.”

Brooke placed both palms against his face and drew him down to her, their lips meeting softly as they kissed sweet and slow.

His free arm wrapped around her back, pulling her close as his head tilted, deepening the kiss. She gave a small sigh, leaning all the way into the kiss. Every time he got closer to her, her breath caught, her pulse quickened, and she wanted. This kiss was no different. If anything it was even more dangerous to her. The passion was still there, hot and furious in the way their fingers clawed at each other, in the way they couldn’t get close enough. But this time there was another layer to this kiss that made it all the more intoxicating.

I like you, he’d said.

She smiled into the kiss, her hands sliding up to his hair, even as her fingers longed for the moment that they were out of this car so she could tear off his ever-present tie, run her hands over his perfect chest . . .

Brooke pulled back and blinked up at him. “Where are we going?”

“My place?” he said, his lips sliding along her jaw.

Brooke’s neck fell back helplessly as she struggled to hold on to her thoughts.

“Wait, no,” she said, pushing him back slightly. “Can we go to my place?”

“Ah . . . sure? If you want.”

“I do want,” she said, feeling a little foolish. “It’s just, last time we went to your place, it didn’t end well, and I don’t want all that bad energy to crash my horny, you know?”

“Crash your horny, huh? You’re something else, Baldwin.” He kissed the side of her head. “Okay.”

Seth reached for the small button that controlled the partition separating the driver section, and rolled it down just enough so that Dex’s busy salt-and-pepper eyebrows were visible in the rearview mirror.

Brooke fought the urge to hide her face in Seth’s shoulder. Groping in the back of a car, for God’s sake.

“We’ll be going to Brooke’s place,” Seth said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Eighty-Second and Second.”

“Yes, sir,” Dex said with a nod.

Brooke’s head whipped around to stare at Seth’s profile as he rolled the divider back up. “You know where I live?”

“Obviously.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’ve never told you.”

“Nope.”

She pinched his arm. “Don’t be creepy. How do you know that?”

He caught her fingers before she could pinch him again, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing her knuckles. “Maya told me.”

“But how would Maya know?”

Brooke thought back, remembered that Maya had given Brooke a crash course in the various Manhattan neighborhoods recently. They’d discussed Brooke’s current neighborhood of Yorkville. But had she mentioned her specific address?

Possibly. Probably.

Maybe it wasn’t so weird that he knew. It was just—

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his lips still warm against her fingers as his mouth drifted down toward her wrist, his tongue flicking against the delicate pulse there.

“Nothing,” she said. “Not really. It’s just a little unnerving that you can be so . . .”

“Controlling,” he said.

“I don’t know that that’s the right word,” she said.

But it wasn’t the wrong word, either.

“I think you might find people appreciate you asking them directly if there’s something you want to know rather than just deciding it’s your right to know.”

He met her gaze steadily. “This isn’t really about your address, is it? It’s that I’m still against the Maya/Neil thing.”

“You have a right to your opinions and your hunches; I just think you should talk to your sister about it.”

He turned his head slightly toward the window, his face looking bleak and hollow. “I’ll consider it.”

“Do. And to bring this back to us, I don’t want to be one of your projects that needs fixing.”

His head snapped back to look at her. “Why the hell would you need fixing?”

She lifted her shoulders. “Because of the thing with Clay.”

Seth touched a knuckle softly to her cheek. “Thought you were over that.”

“I am,” she said automatically. “It’s just important to me that you don’t see me as that woman. The one that got ditched at the altar.”

“All right,” he said slowly. “Is it all right that I think of you as a woman though? Maybe my woman. For tonight.”

She leaned forward slightly and brushed his lips with hers. “Yeah.”

The car slowed to a stop, and Dex came around to open the door for them. Brooke accepted the chauffeur’s hand, forcing herself to smile as though she wasn’t horribly embarrassed, hoping that the dark night sky would hide her blush.

Seth muttered something to Dex along the lines of don’t wait up, and a moment later the car pulled away, leaving them in the quiet of her neighborhood.

His hand rested on her back as he glanced up at the mid-rise where she lived on the fourth floor. “It’s lovely.”