Page 4 of Bounced Into Love

Kiara waited until she walked away to ask, “How did you know to order me a strawberry lemonade vodka?”

The truth sounded more than a little bit stalkery, but it was the only answer I had unless I wanted to lie. I wasn’t about to start our relationship off with dishonesty. Not when I had more than enough baggage she was going to need to accept. “It’s what you’ve gotten each time you’re here. Just one, before you switch to Sprite and then water. I was hoping you’d want to stay long enough to have another, but if not you can stick to the water.”

She shook her head, and a lock of her red hair spilled over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t want a perfectly good strawberry lemonade vodka to go to waste.”

“Don’t worry about that. It’d be my fault since I’m the one who ordered it without asking you first.” I reached out and slid her lock of hair between my fingers. It was so damn soft. “Whatever you want is fine by me.”

“What I really want”—she paused to smile up at me—“is for you to tell me your name.”

Fuck. I was so off my game that I hadn’t even realized that I’d skipped over introducing myself to her. “It’s Jaxson Swift.”

“Jaxson Swift,” she echoed softly. “I like it.”

It was a damn good thing because as much as it made me sound like a teenage girl writing some guy’s name in her journal, I could too easily picture her with Swift as her last name too. “And you’re Kiara.”

“Yes.” She was fucking adorable as she held out her hand to shake mine. “I’m Kiara Kelly.”

“I should’ve figured you had an Irish last name to go with that red hair,” I chuckled, brushing my thumb over her knuckles.

“The only thing I’m missing is the green eyes.” She stared up into mine. “And it looks like you got them instead.”

I barely restrained myself from suggesting that when we had kids, maybe some of them would get her red hair and my green eyes. I didn’t want to scare her off, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t be successful in making it sound like I was kidding. “And here I am, not even the tiniest bit Irish.”

“Shh,” she giggled, pressing a finger to my lips. “Don’t say that too loudly or else my mother might find out.”

I nipped at her finger and grinned. “Already worried about what your mom is going to think about me, eh?”

“Oh!” she gasped, her cheeks filling with a deep red color. “Um. I didn’t really mean anything by it.”

The waitress set our drinks on the table, and Kiara took a gulp of her strawberry lemonade vodka. I waited until she put it back down to say, “You’re even prettier when you’re flustered.”

“You think I’m pretty?”

If she were any other woman, I would’ve thought that she was fishing for a compliment. But Kiara’s eyes lacked any guile as she stared up at me.

“That first night you came in here, l thought you were the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.”

“And now?”

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer to my body. “And now I know that pretty is too tame a word to describe your beauty.”

“Wow,” she breathed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a line quite so smoothly delivered.”

“That’s because it isn’t a line.” I slid a finger under her chin and tilted her head back so she could see how serious I was about the promise I was making to her. “One thing you can always count on from me is complete honesty. About anything and everything.”

Even about the things I’d prefer she never knew about me. Eventually.

Her pretty blue eyes scanned my face as she tried to figure out if I was telling the truth. She must have found what she was looking for because a blinding smile spread across her face before she whispered, “Complete honesty sounds perfect to me. And I think I’m going to start.” After gulping down some of her drink, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she confessed, “I just found out tonight that my coworkers have been so insistent about us coming back here over and over again because they noticed I have more than a little crush on you.”

My thumbs brushed over the hint of blush on her cheeks, proof of how difficult it had been for her to admit to liking me. “I guess I’ll have to rethink my opinion of your coworkers since they did me a favor by bringing you back to Ice enough times for me to finally pull my head out of my ass and make my move.”

Her brow wrinkled and her blue eyes filled with confusion as she stared up at me. “I don’t understand. Why would you need to pull your head out of your ass before you could hit on me? Were you not sure if you really wanted to?”

Shit.I couldn’t let her think she wasn’t worth the effort or some bullshit like that. I’d been hoping for more time before I had to give her any of the brutal kind of honesty, but it looked like I wasn’t going to get it.

Chapter 4

Kiara

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