Page 52 of Until I Find You

“That’s not fair.” I pout. “You can’t throw the ball right into my court.”

“Well, it matters to me how you feel. I know how I feel. I think you know how I feel too,” Jack says in his simple and direct Jack way. At once infuriating and calming.

“Do I?”

Jack smirks. “You’re going to be a brat about it?”

“A brat?” I think about it for a second and realize he is right. But also, it feels right.

Jack shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “You’re impossible.” And before I have a chance to reply, he places his mug of coffee on the nightstand, leans in, and kisses me. So gentle and delicate. Not too forceful to spill the coffee in my hands. Not too friendly to be misconstrued although I don’t know how many friends or business partners kiss on the lips alone in the room they’re sharing on a work trip because one friend lied that they were dating the other friend.

When he pulls back, Jack tucks some curls behind my ears. His brow is pinched at the center. “That clear enough for you?”

Daddy. That’s my Daddy.

Jack trails the back of his hand down my cheek and smiles to himself. “You say the word, and I’ll stop.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because we’re in business together. You can’t forget that.”

“You seem to have forgotten that quite well.”

Jack chuckles. “You’re impossible, brat.”

I snuggle in toward him, sipping my coffee, letting myself be taken care of.

I haven’t been taken care of in so long. I was always the one taking care of others. Of everything. And then some. Now, here I am, protected. Safe.

I smile at him. “How did you know?”

“How did I know what?” He lightly pinches my chin between his fingers.

“That I needed this. That I needed…”

Jack lifts an eyebrow.

The answer clicks into place. It is not a fact or a figure, and it isn’t something that would make sense or hold up in a court of law.

He saw it because it was meant to be him. Who else could have seen it but the person who I needed most?

“I’ve never done something like this before,” he says. “The Daddy thing.”

My cheeks heat up and my eyes lower. “Me either.”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t know I even wanted that until you called me sir when you quit. And though that felt so wrong to feel so right, it was not quiterightright.”

I gape through a smile. “No wonder you were so annoyed by that.”

“Of course, I was annoyed. I was having an argument with my infuriating assistant now business partner, and the second she said ‘Sir’, my lizard brain went off and something–” Jack snaps his fingers in the air.

I place my coffee next to his on the table and wrap my arms around his neck, pulling him into a kiss.

Jack hums like I’m a sweet confection he’s just put on his tongue. “So, if you’re my Daddy, what am I?”

He grins against my mouth. “You’re Daddy’s princess, of course.”

My body shivers. “Why does that feel so good?”

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