Page 25 of Secret Bump

“Because I love her,” I point out with a laugh.

She stops kicking, just long enough for me to set her into the limo, then she scurries away from me as I join her.

“You don’t love me,” she says.

“From the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

The car starts and pulls away from the curb. Isabelle looks out the window. “Where are we going?”

Somewhere we should have gone three months ago. “I’m taking you home.”

“Oh.” Her voice goes small, then she nods. “All right, I understand.”

I frown. “What exactly do you understand?”

“You’re sending me home.” Her chin lifts defiantly. “After all of…” She gestures around the interior of the limo. “What we did here, I understand. But once you are out of the office again, I intend to return to work. You can’t force me out of my job.”

“I’m not forcing you out of your job,” I snap. “And I’m not taking you to your apartment. I’m taking you home. To my house. Where we can finally be properly alone and talk about our relationship.”

Chapter 15

Isabelle

I don’t understand.

“We don’t have a relationship,” I point out.

Also, I actually need to go back to my apartment because he made a mess between my legs and now that the drama of the bookstore is behind me, I’m painfully aware of it.

But I’m not going to tell Mr. Emerson that.

I reach for anything else that feels obvious. “Besides, it’s the middle of the workday. Don’t you need to go back to the office?”

He doesn’t answer. Just stares at me, his dark brows yanked together.

“And what about the bookstore?” I’m grasping at straws now. “That was sort of rude, how we left them without saying goodbye.”

His frown deepens, something I didn’t think was possible. And then he growls my questions back at me. “Don’t you need to go back to the office? What about the bookstore?” He mimics my gesture around the limo, too. “These are the things you say to me after I tell you that I love you, that I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you?”

I stare at him. “Are you mocking me?”

“Jesus, Isabelle. No.” He grunts and holds out his hand. “Can you please get your pretty little pregnant self over here so I can hold you?”

My mouth falls open.

“Ineedto touch you,” he continues. “I can’t explain it properly yet. I don’t understand it myself. But it’s so hard to be close to you and not hold you in my arms. It’s been like that since the very first day. Don’t you feel it, too?”

I do. Scared, but unable to deny it, I nod.

His expression softens. “I know I was wrong to run from that instinct. Let’s not make it worse by refusing it again. Come here, little one, I won’t touch you again if you don’t want me to. Not sexually. But please, Isabelle, just let me…”

I launch myself at him, and his exhale is full-bodied and desperate.

“That’s better.” He settles me sideways on his lap and tips my face up, his finger under my chin. “You’re pregnant?”

I nod hesitantly.

He shakes his head. “I’ve missed so much. How do you feel?”

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