DONOVAN (Gray Wolf Security, #1)(53)
“It’s okay. I promised you I would find you.”
She nodded, unshed tears making her chin quiver. “So much wasted time,” she whispered.
“Too much.”
She kissed me lightly, then a little harder.
It was the best medicine I could have asked for.
Chapter 33
Kate
It was a while before Donovan got out of the hospital, but when he did, Ash sent his private jet to pick us up. I insisted that he stay with me until he was healed. Donovan didn’t complain.
“You should just move in,” I said one night.
“Here?”
“Why not? You’ll be spending most of your time here, anyway.”
“I will?”
“Yeah. That place of yours is just ridiculously small. I don’t know how David gets around inside of his. And Kirkland, all those girls…crazy.”
Donovan laughed. “Okay.”
I turned into him and kissed him. “I adore you. I don’t see why we should be separated.”
“Adore? Is that the best you can do?”
“What’s better than adore?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I can think of a few words.”
“Like?”
“Appreciate. Esteem. Desire. Worship.”
“Worship?”
“That’s a good word. Don’t you think?”
I laughed. “Only if we were in the 1940s and I was subjugated by the weaker sex.”
“The weaker sex?” he asked, his eyebrows rising even as he grabbed my arms and shook me just slightly.
“Weaker in the mind. Not the body.”
“Well, you might have a point there.”
I laughed again. But then I grew serious as I looked into his eyes.
“Seriously, what word do you think we should use?”
He ran his thumb over my bottom lip. “I’ve always been partial to love, myself.”
I nodded. “I always knew you’d be the first one to say it.”
His eyes widened, but then he just laughed and said, “I always was your puppy dog.”
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Blindsided
Prologue
Harrison
I stared out the window of the car, watching familiar neighborhoods flash by outside. I love New York! The first time I was here was the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. I came with a group of friends for a summer of recklessness. And what a summer that was! I still have a few of the tattoos I got that summer, the first of dozens I now have to keep covered when conducting business.
Who would have imagined my life would go the way it did? Well, I suppose it was always my father’s plan. He just thought he’d be here to watch it happen.
We pulled up to the hotel and a valet arrived at my door, yanking it open and welcoming me with that rote speech all service people learn on the first day at the job. I climbed out and stretched my back a little, relieved to be out of the confines of one vehicle after another. I had some free time—thank goodness—before my meeting in the morning, so I thought I’d take a walk after I checked in. Visit a few favorite places.
The moment I stepped into my room—a nice suite with a balcony that overlooked Manhattan—I pulled out my smartphone and took note of all the emails and phone calls I’d ignored on the long flight from Oregon. I started to answer a few, but then decided it could wait. My life was a succession of meetings and emails and phone calls. Surely it could all wait for a few hours, for once.
I changed into jeans and a t-shirt, feeling halfway human for the first time all day, and slipped out of the hotel through a side door. A taxi deposited me in Brooklyn, not far from the rat infested motel where my friends and I stayed that long-gone summer. My stomach growling, I ducked into a little hole in the wall restaurant that served the best shrimp scampi I’d ever had. The ma?tre d’ recognized me, his face breaking into a huge smile as he charged through a group of people waiting impatiently for a table to greet me.
“Mr. Philips! How lovely to see you again.”
I smiled. “Thank you, Jack.”
“Let me show you to a table.”
Those words set off a few grumbles in the people around us, but I didn’t really pay much attention to it. I was used to this sort of attention. It used to bother me, but maybe I’ve gotten a little too comfortable in the world of privilege I’d shunned as a young man. There were few perks to the job that was thrust on me eleven years ago. Shame on me for enjoying the few that did exist.
I took a seat and ordered a nice bottle of wine, enjoying a glass as I waited for my salad to be delivered. My table was in the center of the room, so I sat back and watched the other diners. I like to watch people, imagining what their story might be. Like the young couple sitting to my right. They were clearly arguing, even though they were trying hard to keep their voices down and their gestures to a minimum, it was hard to ignore the intensity in their expressions. I imagined they were fighting over another woman—or perhaps a man—who was coming between them. Or maybe it was something to do with the in-laws. There was another couple behind them who were displaying such sickly sweet affection for one another that it almost made me sick to my stomach. I watched as the man’s hand moved slowly over his woman’s wrist and tried to remember the last time I’d touched a woman like that. It was kind of pathetic that I couldn’t remember with any certainty.