Tempted & Taken (Men of Haven #4)(60)
“See?” Katy said. “I told you it’d be no big deal. The code was solid and we both tested the heck out of it. Now it’ll go out with the rest of this week’s updates over the weekend.” She sat back in her chair and snagged her ever-present Starbucks to-go cup. “So? How’s it feel to be a bona fide developer?”
Darya rolled her eyes, closed out of the application and opened her email. “It was a bug fix. Hardly worthy of calling me a developer.”
“Hey, everyone’s got to start somewhere, and the best way to dive in is fixing what’s broken.” She sipped her drink and studied Darya over the rim. “So, I suck at dancing around topics. Though, I’d like to point out I made it two and a half work days before I brought it up.”
Darya kept her eyes trained on her screen and tried to keep her face passive. Not an easy task since she had a pretty good idea where Katy was headed. “Brought what up?”
“That you’re seeing Knox.”
Like it always did when she was reminded of her new blossoming relationship, her body resonated with a subtle tuning fork buzz and any semblance of coherent thought fluttered right out the window. She rolled her lips inward and forced herself to face Katy.
“Oh my God!” Katy laughed and planted her drink back on the desk with enough force Darya was a little surprised nothing sloshed out the top. “You can’t seriously think we didn’t know. I mean, it’s not like he’s made it a secret.”
“He told you?”
“With words? No. But everyone here has worked with Knox for two or more years, and he’s never so much as touched a woman in front of us except to shake hands.”
Okay, the touching had been excessive the last few days. Crazy possessive excessive. Especially around Vance, who barely managed to make eye contact with her anymore. It was such an about-face from the way they had been, that the claiming yet gentle touches still caught her a little off guard.
Katy propped one elbow on Darya’s desk, leaned in and waggled her eyebrows. “So?”
“So?”
“How’d it happen? What’s he like? Is he as bossy one-on-one as he is at work?”
Knox spoke from the doorway. “When you weren’t looking and none of your damned business on the other two counts.”
Darya jolted taller in her chair and Katy’s eyes bugged out.
Before Darya could summon up an explanation or at least derail Knox’s focus to something other than Katy’s questions, he prowled up beside her, leaned in and pressed a lingering soft kiss to her lips. “You get your fix in?”
Her fix?
Oh. Right. Her job. As in the thing that she and Katy were supposed to be working on instead of gabbing about their boss and her...well...whatever he was. She nodded, fingers curling reflexively in his soft T-shirt. Today’s was soft gray with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man smooshed between two graham crackers and a slab of chocolate. She nodded and fought the urge to answer with another kiss instead of words. No small feat with his handsome face still inches from her own. “Yes, just now.”
“Good.” He straightened, grabbed her hand and pulled her up as well. “’Cause you’ve got about two minutes to brace yourself and that’s only if Katy does a bang-up job of running interference.” He shifted his attention to Katy. “Front desk. Now. The horde is on the way in.”
Katy shot to her feet and tagged her coffee. “All of them?”
“The whole lot. And since they’re in one of our Escalades, my guess is Beckett helped ’em plan the attack.”
Katy saluted and scurried out the door. “I’m on it.”
“On what?” Darya urged Knox to face her with a firm grip on his shoulder. “What kind of attack?”
Despite the conversation eluding otherwise, Knox grinned in a way that said he was more tickled than worried. “You’re about to meet my moms.”
For a second, Darya’s brain wouldn’t compute. Just sat there, more unresponsive than the first time she’d tried to compile code with the wrong executable. “Your mothers are here?”
“Well, technically they’re Jace’s and Axel’s moms—Ninette and Sylvie—but I claim ’em as mine and they seem all right with it, so yeah...my moms.”
Panic set in, her arms trembling even more than the frigid office temperature called for and her palms growing clammy. She glanced down at her jeans and T-shirt. Of all the rotten times for her to finally cave and dress like everyone else at the office, she had to pick the day she’d make a first impression on the two women he cared about enough to call mother. Heck, the only thing decent she had on were the cute Jimmy Choo sandals she’d picked up secondhand on eBay. “Knox, I can’t meet them like this. I look terrible.”
He guided her face to his with soft fingers beneath her chin. “They’ll love you. Promise.” He smirked and wrapped her up with both arms around her waist. “And trust me when I tell you they’re not your stereotypical mothers.”
The thick metal door at the far end of the hallway chunked open and a cloud of feminine voices billowed right behind it.
Her face must’ve blanched or reflected the sheer terror coursing through her, because he swooped in fast and sealed his lips against hers in a chaste, but lingering kiss. “Relax,” he murmured softly as he lifted his head. “You met Viv, Gabe and Nat already. They’ll be with you, too.”