Games of the Heart (The 'Burg #4)(107)

And there it was, when it hit me. He knew me as a kid. On one occasion I’d rather forget, I was a bitch to him as a teen. Not even two months ago, he stormed into my hotel room and my life and that bond he mentioned snapping tight did just that.

He knew me. He paid attention to me as a kid and he’d known my family for years. He knew what was in my heart. He knew what made me. He knew the love I grew up in. And he just knew me.

“I’ll bake you a cake, you tell me what’s workin’ behind your eyes,” Mike muttered, not lifting his forehead or taking his hand from me.

“I thought you said you’d never baked a cake,” I remarked.

“I said I’d bake you one. I didn’t say it would be a good one.”

Laughter bubbled up instantly and then rolled out of me. I moved back but lifted a hand and curled my fingers around his at my neck.

Still chuckling, my hand holding his, I did what I always did.

I gave it straight.

“I like that you know me. I like that we’ve been together for weeks, back in each other’s lives for less than two months and you know me. I like it that you stepping into family business seems right and natural. I like that everything about us seems natural. I like that I’m thirty-eight and starting again with another guy but I get the best of both worlds, I get the new, I get the discovery but we still have the history. I like that we started with something deep and rich where we could plant the seed of wherever this is going instead of still digging.”

I was so busy laying it out I didn’t catch the look on his face changing. And I almost still didn’t catch it because he moved fast. He went from standing at my side to forcing his h*ps between my legs. Then from “Little Dusty” to my br**sts I was plastered tight to Mike, his arms steel bands around me and his mouth had crushed down on mine.

And then he was kissing me.

This kiss was not a slow burn. This kiss didn’t start sweet and end in an inferno.

This kiss was not like any kiss he ever gave me.

This kiss was not like any kiss anyone ever gave me.

His kiss was a once in a lifetime kiss. It was the kind of thorough, heart-melting, stomach-plummeting, mind-numbing, soul-enriching kiss that altered lives.

And I swear to God, it altered two, right there, in Mike’s kitchen.

His and mine.

When he broke his mouth from mine he instantly uttered his understatement.

“I like all that shit too.”

“I think I got that,” I wheezed, still recovering from the kiss and holding onto Mike like I was about to fall down even though my ass was planted on a counter.

“And I like that No is totally cool with you and I’ve seen more of my girl in the past couple of weeks than I have in a long time. Her comin’ out from under whatever cloud was followin’ her around because you shined on her the light that’s you. And I like that so much, I’m not f**kin’ it up by bakin’ a cake. DQ ice cream cake. All the way. We’ll get it after we eat lunch and then we’ll dig in with Reesee after we have dinner.”

DQ ice cream cake.

Nothing said celebration like an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen.

And better, having it with Mike and his girl.

His girl who liked me.

“We have to save No a piece,” I said quietly and watched Mike’s face get soft.

Seriously, that was the hottest of it all.

“I can lay waste to a DQ cake so if you want No to have a piece, we’ll get a big one,” he murmured.

“Big one it is.”

Mike smiled at me but didn’t let me go.

I smiled back.

Then I thought it, I felt it so I said it.

And I did it by whispering, “I’m falling in love with you, Mike Haines.”

As I spoke, with every word his arms got tighter and tighter and his face, already close, became a breath away.

“Angel, you’re already gone.”

I blinked and asked, “Sorry?”

“I read your diaries. I caught your pass in that hotel room. I listened to your offer to stay. I saw you wave good-bye at the airport and got your call before I’d pulled out of the parking lot. You fell with a kiss. I know, honey, because I was right there with you.”

Oh my God, did he just say that?

Oh my God, did he just say that?

I blinked again but in the nanosecond it took me to do that my eyes had filled with tears.

“What?” I breathed.

“You heard me.”

He just said that.

“Mike –”

His tight arms gave me a squeeze and he whispered, “That seed you’re talkin’ about is planted, Angel. We got some shit we gotta get through but it isn’t about this,” his arms gave me another squeeze, “it isn’t about us. As far as that seed’s concerned all you and me gotta do is tend it and watch it grow.”

I stared into his eyes.

Then I exclaimed loudly, “Damn it, Mike! Why are you always making me cry?”

Then I avoided his face, twisting my neck and curving my back to do a face plant in his bare chest.

A chest, incidentally, that was shaking with laughter.

“I’m not finding avowals of love in the kitchen of the hot guy I fell for when I was twelve amusing, Mike Haines,” I warned his chest in a thick voice and that chest started shaking harder as his humor became vocal.