Page 97 of The Wrong Boss

“I would’ve said yes!” I exclaimed, caught in his grasp and unable to escape the truth. “But I wouldn’t have deserved it.”

Cole’s eyes were soft. “I’ve been thinking a lot over the past couple of months. About you and what you hid from me. And about me and why it made me so angry.”

“Well, that’s a no-brainer,” I quipped.

His thumb stroked my jaw to quiet me down, and he shook his head softly. I could feel his breath against my lips, could smell the scent of his cologne. I missed him so much I ached with it.

“Carrie, I love you,” he said without preamble. “I think I fell in love with you the first time you glared at me with your shoe stuck in a storm drain. I loved you so much that I thought I’d made you up—and then you came back.”

“But I didn’t tell you?—”

“You were protecting your daughter,” he interrupted. “If you felt even one tenth as strongly about me as I did about you that day in my office, then how could I blame you for reeling?The sight of you standing there made me ready to throw everything away for the chance to hold you again.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” I whispered.

His thumb stroked my jaw again, and his lips curled softly. “How could it be anything else? Carrie, you’re the one. The One. I’ve never fallen as hard or as fast for anyone else. I’ll be the first one to tell you that I expected it to fade. I thought that once I got to know you, my feelings would leave as quickly as they’d come. But they just kept growing and growing and growing, and now I’m here, staring down the barrel of a life where I’m close enough to touch you but I’ll never have the right. I can’t do it, Carrie. I can’t have you in my life without calling you mine.”

My throat had sealed shut at some point, so I couldn’t reply. Tears fell freely from my eyes until I could only croak, “You would forgive me for not telling you about Evie right away?”

“Sweetheart, I already have,” he told me. “I think I forgave you when you let me buy Evie an entire brownie sundae all to herself just so I could come off looking like the good guy.”

I sniffled. “She had such a bad stomachache later that night.”

A gentle laugh slipped through his lips. “Well then, I’m sorry too. How about we call it even?”

My fingers trembled as I brought them up to touch his cheeks. His stubble was rough against my fingertips, his skin warm. I traced his upper lip, not believing that this was real.

“You know, I also wanted to come off looking like the good guy when I bought those Broadway tickets. I shouldn’t have bought a third one for myself without running it past youfirst. Even if Evie wasn’t mine, I didn’t have the right to meet her without your say-so. Watching you with her these past months opened my eyes, Carrie. You’ve done so much work for so long—and all on your own. I didn’t get it before. I mean, hell, the kid asked me to be her study buddy for a first grader’s spelling bee and I’m worn out trying to find new words every day.”

I laughed. “She’s relentless.”

“You’ve been doing it for years,” he said. “I should’ve respected that. I owed it to you—and it would’ve given you the chance to tell me the truth on your own terms.”

“You’re not real,” I said, letting my fingers skate over his cheeks to touch his hairline. “This is all a fantasy, and I’m going to wake up and cry.”

His lips curled, and his thumb moved up to catch one of the tears running down my cheeks. “I’ve got bad news for you, Carrie. You’re already crying.”

My laugh was interrupted when he leaned forward and finally pressed his lips to mine. He kissed me like he’d been dying without the taste of my lips on his. He kissed me like he’d missed me.

I knew, because that’s exactly how I kissed him. My heart soared, and I wrapped my arms around his neck to drag him closer.

“Cole?” I said between kisses.

His lips caught mine and his tongue swept into my mouth. He pulled away, breathless. “Yeah?”

“Can we wait a bit to tell Evie about this? About us?”

“You don’t want her to know we’re together?” he asked, frowning.

“I want us to slow down,” I said, stroking the hair at the nape of his neck. “I wanttime. We haven’t had that, ever. We had one night seven years ago, and then a few stolen days at the retreat. So I want time to get to know each other, to go on dates, to figure out each other’s flaws and warts and bad habits.”

“You think time is going to change my mind?”

I smiled. “No,” I said. “But I don’t want to mess this up again. I’m in it for the long haul, so I want to do it right. Evie deserves to build a relationship with you too, so that when we tell her about us, she isn’t blindsided.”

He kissed me once more, slow and tender. When he pulled away, his eyes were soft as the velvet on the jewelry box he’d saved for me for seven years. “We’ll go as slow as you like, as long as I get to put a ring on your finger and call you mine at the end of it.”

A grin broke over my lips, and I dipped my chin in agreement. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Mr. Christianson.”

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