Page 5 of Kiss Me, Mr. Bridge

My heart is drumming to a quick beat. He pushes from the door, grabs the handle and opens it as he steps outside.

I’m waiting for him to say something…anything, but he walks away like somehow I’ve pissed him off.

I reach for my neck, to the place his thumb stroked over the skin at the top of my spine, and close my eyes as I imagine everything he wants to do to me.

And it’s the moment I realize I want him to.

Chapter 2

Ronan

I pace my office, phone in hand, still convinced Lucia will agree to my offer. Why wouldn’t she? Now she’s single, she can accept it.

I smile to myself. The prospect of her being mine. Her being under my control and obeying me makes my neck prickle.

Lucia needs me. She doesn’t know it yet, but she will.

I press my hand over my neck, feeling the heat of my skin as I think about her.

I don’t know why I want her so much. She’s too young for me. She’s my friend’s daughter, my daughter’s friend. I should run from her, not want her.

But she’s rankled me since her hand touched my thigh in Florida months ago. And now every time I talk to her, it stirs up emotions I’ve tried and failed to suppress.

I love the way she challenges me, but I refuse to dwell on the deeper implications of how she makes me feel.

I turn my cell in my hand again.

I only left her office an hour ago, but I’m already regretting walking away from her without my answer.

Yes, she said no. But that’s an answer I won’t accept.

She wants me. I know it.

My office door creaks. I turn to it.

“We never received the Champagne order,” my brother Caleb tells me.

Caleb is seven years my junior. The product of my father’s affair with a much younger woman. But when his mother died, my mom took him in and treated him like her own.

I doubt I would’ve been so amenable.

“Can we get an emergency order from another supplier?” I ask him.

“I’m waiting for some call backs. In the meantime, I rang around. The Boston club has ten bottles we can pick up.”

“Ten. That won’t be enough. Can you call Zander and ask if his supplier can help us out? And then call our supplier and tell them they’re in breach of contract.”

Zander Silk is my business partner and jointly owns and runs my club in New York.

Caleb nods as he leaves the room and I go back to staring at my cell.

Exasperated, I call her.

Her phone rings and rings and when she finally answers with a soft “Hello, Mr. Bridge” I smile.

“Miss Simmons, I need you to look over the legal documents for drink suppliers. What clauses do we have for non-compliance?”

She laughs, the sound like music to my ears. “Mr. Bridge, you could have just asked me earlier.”

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