Secret Kiss (19 page)

Didn’t he want to get away from lies, from pretending? Hadn’t he just left an entire career, a relationship, because of that very thing?

“Because…” Jane shifted her feet and shook out her hands, her agitation growing by the second. “If I don’t, they’ll think that you’re my boyfriend.”

“Okay,” Adam said.

“Okay?” Jane repeated, a question in her tone. “Why would you… You don’t have to… I know that kiss didn’t mean… I mean it was great, but I know it didn’t mean—”

Her phone buzzed, interrupting her rambling about a kiss he sure as hell couldn’t explain, but he’d been enjoying watching her attempt to. Looking down, she groaned, and the first thing he thought was,
I wonder if that’s how she’d sound if I was buried deep inside her.

Her face blushed as she spoke. “It’s my nana.”

Something about her not offering what her grandmother had texted made him want to know what it was. His lips turned up in grin. “What did she say?”

“Nothing.” Jane typed back furiously before glancing back up at him.

“If we are going to be pretend boyfriend and girlfriend, you can’t keep this kind of thing from me.” He was half teasing but half serious. He honestly did want to know what had made Jane blush.

Sighing in resignation, she showed him the text.

When you two lovebirds are finished playing tonsil hockey, your papa and I would like to eat. Proposal my hiney. I know what you two went back there to do. LOL!

Adam thought it was adorable that such an innocent, playful text had caused her face to flush.

“Your grandmother uses ‘LOL’?” He thought that was adorable too.

“Oh, yeah. She’s very big on text slang. Half the time I have to Google what she puts because I have no idea. The first time she wrote SMH, I thought it was a new medication that she was taking. My grandparents have always been much cooler than I am.” She smiled and ducked her head.

Without even thinking, he tucked the stray hair that tended to fall across her face behind her ear. He let his fingers rest there for just a second. Then his fingertips grazed the soft skin of her jawline. A shiver ran through her body, and he had to admit that he liked the fact that he could affect her that much with only a small touch. Hell, she could affect him that much with just a look. They didn’t even need to have physical contact for her to have a stronger impact on him than any other girl ever had.

Her honey pools met his gaze, causing a shock of arousal to flow through him. As soon as their eyes locked, the rest of the world disappeared. Faded away. Adam lowered his head, pulled by a force he couldn’t control even if he’d wanted to. He needed to kiss her. He needed it like he needed air to breathe.

Just before their lips met, Jane closed her eyes and leaned into him. It was the sweetest feeling in the world, having her in his arms. Her body melted against his. Nothing could ever be better. Well, unless less clothes were involved.

As his tongue ran along the seam of her mouth, she parted her lips and sucked his top lip into her mouth, her teeth grazing it before she licked where she’d just bit. The sensation sent his body into overdrive. Not only was it a seductive-as-hell way to kiss him, it was doubly sensual coming from Jane. Someone he never would have expected that from.

He gripped her hips, getting ready to lift her onto the desk, but her phone buzzed again.

Their time was up. But fake relationship or not, this wasn’t over between them. He might have been able to tell himself that nothing could happen between him and Jane before he had known what it was like to feel her lips against his, but now that he’d experienced their heat and explosive passion, there was no way he was delusional enough to believe that things could stay the way they were.

They both pulled back, breaking their kiss at the exact time her phone vibrated yet again.

“We’ll talk about the kiss later. Right now, we need to go have some chili.” He wanted to make sure they didn’t leave before she had accomplished the task she had come back for in the first place. “Did you send the proposal?”

“Yeah.” Jane nodded, still looking a little dazed.

“Okay. Good. Then is there anything I should know?”

“About the proposal?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.

Adam couldn’t get over how cute the tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows was. He wanted to run his fingertip over it. “No. About us. Our relationship.”

She still looked like he was speaking a different language, so he tried another route.

“Your grandpa said that he’s heard a lot about me. What have you told them? I don’t want to contradict anything and blow our cover story.”

“Oh!” Jane smiled as she caught on. “That. No, I’ve told them a little bit about
you
, but not any details about ‘us.’” She used air quotes again as she leaned down and grabbed her purse. “I felt so guilty about lying that I was very vague on any relationship details. Everything they know is pretty much the truth. Well, except the part about us being together.”

As she locked the door on their way out, she explained what she’d told them about him—general things that were actually true. Like when he’d moved to Hope Falls. That he’d moved from the East Coast. That his cousin, Levi, owned a bar in town—the one they’d actually met at. That he used to work for the government but had created a successful app and retired.

As they neared Sue Ann’s, Jane stopped and touched his arm. “Thank you. For doing this.”

Adam grinned. “Believe me. Pretending to be your boyfriend is not a hardship.”

Jane’s appreciative smile grew bigger, and her eyes fell to the ground. Every compliment he’d given her seemed to not only surprise her, but also make her just a little uncomfortable, like she didn’t believe the things he’d said. Somehow, that made him want to convince her more. Thankfully, as her “boyfriend,” he’d have ample opportunity to do that.

‡

J
ane pulled the visor down and flipped the vanity mirror open, cringing when she saw the reflection. Her hair was a frizzy mess, and she looked so pale that her skin was practically transparent. Combine those with the dark circles she was sporting beneath her eyes and you would think she was starring in
Night of the Living Dead
.

“Oh God, did I look like this all day?” she mumbled under her breath. She pulled her purse from the back seat to try to work some magic before heading into the Book Club meeting.

She’d taken the day off to spend with her grandparents, and from the time they’d stepped out the door for their six a.m. hike, it’d been a marathon of nonstop activities. Where they got their stamina, she had no clue.

She was more than a little relieved that Sue Ann had invited them to join her at Bingo tonight. Except that it had freed her up to attend the Book Club meeting, which was going to be an interrogation about what was going on between her and Adam.

Last night at Sue Ann’s, they’d raised more than a few eyebrows. Thankfully, everyone who’d stopped by their table to say hi and meet her grandparents had played it cool and not commented about the fact that Jane and Adam were “together.” But she had no delusions that that would continue tonight.

Grabbing her brush, a ponytail holder, and some lip balm, Jane tried to make herself semi-presentable. She also used that moment of solitude sitting in her Prius in front of Amy’s house to process the last twenty-four hours. Other than the little bit of sleep she’d gotten last night, she hadn’t had a moment alone since Adam had kissed her and her grandparents had shown up.

There were more thoughts running through her head than people at the Running of the Bulls.

Dinner had done quite a number on her. Adam had given an Oscar-worthy performance, though. He’d been so natural and believable. When they’d gotten back to her house, he’d taken her grandparents’ luggage inside (because he was just that much of a gentleman), and by then, even Jane had been having a difficult time remembering that he wasn’t really her boyfriend.

She
had
enjoyed the attention he’d lavished on her. The way he’d kept his arm around her chair during dinner, his thumb making lazy circles on her shoulder blade. The way he’d leaned over and whispered in her ear when her grandparents were talking to each other or one of the many Hope Falls residents who’d introduced themselves. But the thing that had affected her the most was the way he’d looked at her. Not just while they’d been around her grandparents, either. It had started right before he’d kissed her the first time.

As Jane applied her lip balm, she could still feel the tingle of his kiss. All day, she’d felt it. Like some people had phantom limbs, she had phantom lips thanks to that kiss.

Kissing had always been something of a mystery to Jane. The handful of men she’d dated had been decent kissers, but it wasn’t something that registered on her turn-on-radar as mind-blowing—at least, it never had before Adam. The second his lips had touched hers, her mind had officially been blown. Like Mt. Vesuvius volcanic-eruption-size blown.

It was unnerving to say the least.

When Jane’s phone buzzed, her heart leaped in her chest. She thought the laws of attraction might once again be working in her favor and Adam was calling her. But she looked down and saw that it wasn’t the kissing bandit of her dreams, and her leaping heart sank.

“Hey, Nikki,” Jane answered, trying to tamp her ridiculous disappointment down.

“You look beautiful. Now, stop stalling and get in here. You have some serious explaining to do, lady lu!” Nikki said cheerfully.

Beautiful? Stalling?

A quick glance over at the house revealed that Nikki and several other Book Club ladies were waving at her through the bay window, and some were giving her a thumbs-up.

Jane’s head fell back as she laughed at her uninvited audience.

Waving back to them, she hung up the phone. Then she took a deep breath, knowing what she had in store for her. On the bright side, explaining to her friends would be a lot easier than explaining to her heart and hormones that this wasn’t a real relationship. So there was that.

Before she even made it halfway up the walk, the front door flew open.

“So, you and Adam, huh?” Nikki called out. “I knew if I gave you guys enough time alone—”

“I knew that’s what you were doing,” Jane interrupted, pointing an accusing finger at her friend.

“Yeah,” Nikki said as if Jane had just announced that the sky was blue. “I wasn’t trying to be subtle.”

As she walked in the house, a chorus of whoops and cheers from the room full of women gathered under the guise of a book club (even though she was fairly sure only about three of them—herself being one—ever actually read the book they were supposed to be discussing) exploded.

Being the center of attention of these incredible, beautiful, and accomplished women was a little—a lot!—overwhelming. Her friends were all very different but all extraordinary in their own rights. And they’d all been able to achieve something Jane never had, they’d all found their Prince Charmings and were living their happily ever afters.

Jane took a quick inventory of the girls in attendance tonight. Two of the usual crew were missing. Tessa, who was married to Nikki’s brother, Jake, was a new mom and home with their newborn. And Lily, who was married to their oldest brother, Eric, was in LA on a job. She was an amazing choreographer who turned down work more often than not to live the simple life with her smokin’-hot police chief husband.

And who could blame her?

Most of the gang was there, though. There were the founders of the Book Club, a.k.a. the “Fabulous Four,” who’d been friends since childhood and grown up in Hope Falls together. This group included Amanda, who had always reminded Jane of Tinkerbell, with her big, blue eyes and wavy, blonde hair. She owned and operated Mountain Ridge Outdoor Adventures with her husband, Justin, who she’d been in love with since she was five and he was ten. From what Jane could tell, she was the romantic in the bunch.

Then there was Sam, who was a gold-medal snowboarding Olympian. She had retired from the sport when they’d tried to turn the athletic, stunning redhead into a sex symbol, and started working at Mountain Ridge as the ski pro. Her husband, Luke, was also an Olympian, and Sam had been crushing on him for years before he had taken a job at Mountain Ridge to run the snow program with her.

The third in their foursome was Karina Blackstone. The dark-haired beauty was probably one of the most famous people on the planet. At the age of twenty, she had risen to fame as a pop princess, but she’d separated herself from her pack of contemporaries when she’d walked away from the auto-tuned bubble-gum music (which Jane loved, btw!) and stripped down to the basics with just her and a guitar, which was equally amazing.

Since moving home to Hope Falls and completely reinventing herself, Karina had done the impossible and actually grown more popular. She’d also met and fallen madly in love with Ryan Perkins, Sue Ann’s grandson, who’d come from Montana to help his grandmother run the café. Legend had it that Karina was speechless the first time she laid eyes on the cowboy, but that was very hard for Jane to believe since Karina was the Queen of Witty Comebacks and had more poise in her little finger than Jane had in her entire body.