Kissing Under The Mistletoe (The Sullivans #10)(28)

She walked over to a group of similar, smaller boxes. “And what about this?”

“This is a voltage generator. It’s what we use to power up the prototype motherboards.”

She put her hand on his arm. “It really is magic, isn’t it?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw as he stared down at her. “I think you’d better show me the pictures you brought.”

Suddenly realizing how close she was standing to him, she took a step back. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be wasting your time—”

“You don’t have a damn thing to be sorry for,” he said, cutting her off before she could finish her apology. “But I will be sorry in a moment if I don’t figure out how to gain some self-control around you.”

She’d always thought she was a fair person, and a strong one, too. But how could either of those things be true when she was desperate for Jack to lose control and kiss her again so that she could get lost in his arms and not have to make any tough decisions at all?

He deserved her honesty at the very least, if she couldn’t give him fairness or strength. “I missed you these past few days, too. There’s no point in trying to pretend I didn’t.”

But even that wasn’t nearly honest enough. She needed to finally tell him why she was trying so hard to keep things professional between them during the campaign.

“Remember how I told you about the mistake I made a few years ago? His name was Romain. He owns a big Swiss watch company, and I was the model they chose for a crucial campaign. He was very charming, very persuasive and attentive, and we began dating soon after I started working for his company. We were seen everywhere together. He made sure of it so that his profits would soar even higher. Until he decided profits would be even higher without me.” She sighed, thinking how young, how foolish she’d been. “He was about to inform me of my future replacement on the day I decided to surprise him at his penthouse.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “All three of us were surprised.”

“Three?”

“Me, Romain, and the model in his bed. She was quite a bit younger than me, one of the up-and-coming girls who was as naive as I used to be when I first started in the business. Clearly, she’d been just as easily charmed by him as I’d been. I broke things off with him, of course, but I had signed a contract, and I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I broke my promise to his board and the investors. Those last few photo shoots were horribly painful.”

“You would have been perfectly within your rights to break a business promise, since he had done far worse by breaking his personal promise with you.”

“No. I couldn’t let him know how badly he’d hurt me, or admit to the world what a fool I’d been. I was just as foolish as my mother accused me of being all those years ago.” She took a breath to try to shake it all off and come back to Jack and his garage full of magic. “Since then, I’ve always been careful not to blend my work life with my personal life.”

“I would tell you I’m not like him, but you already know that, don’t you?”

“I do, but—”

How could she explain that it wasn’t Jack she didn’t trust, but herself? The biggest mistakes she’d made in her life had been about giving and losing love.

“Every day I had to work with him shattered another little piece of me. It’s taken a long time to heal those cracks.”

He reached for her hands and threaded their fingers together. “I promised to try to be patient, and I couldn’t live with myself if I broke my promise to you.”

She’d never met anyone like Jack. He had such respect for the meaning of a promise…not to mention such respect for her as the model that so many people had discounted over the years as nothing more than just a pretty face.

“You know what you want and what you need to do to get it,” she said softly, “but you never compromise your values—or your word—to get there. How do you do it?”

“I could ask you the same question. You’re so beautiful that you could have anything you want, but you earn everything through hard work.”

“You make me sound better than I am. Especially when I know it’s not fair to want so badly to kiss you after I’ve just laid down the rules again…but I can’t figure out a way to stop myself from asking.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” he said with a smile that didn’t do a thing to mask his desire.

It was just the right thing to say after the pressures she’d faced while building a career based on perfection. “In that case, I hope that means you’ll forgive me for what I’m about to ask.” She moved closer again, putting her hands on his chest and slowly sliding them up to wind around his neck.

“Ask me anything, Angel.”

Her insides turned to liquid heat at his endearment. “Kiss me, Jack.”

She was still saying his name when his mouth covered hers in a kiss that stole her breath away entirely. Both of them fed greedily from each other’s lips, their days apart having fueled their hunger for each other and bringing it to new heights.

Mary had been kissed at the top of the Eiffel Tower. She’d been kissed in a horse-drawn carriage in the middle of Prague. She’d been kissed on the Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. But this kiss with Jack, in his garage surrounded by cables and machines and stale cups of coffee, was the most romantic, most thrilling kiss she’d ever shared…and one she knew she’d remember forever, regardless of how things turned out between them.