Kiss Me Again Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Kiss Me Again

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  “I’d have to kiss you first

  before I can kiss you again.” The low intimate timbre of his tone sent a prickle over her, tightened her skin.

  To disguise the sudden wired sensation in the pit of her stomach, Riley popped the sweet into her mouth, smiled then shrugged. “Well, there’s that.”

  Even from the distance of his desk that separated them, Riley noticed the way his gaze dipped to her mouth then darkened as she crunched the chalky sweet.

  “C’mere.” His voice, richer, darker, and sexier caressed her.

  Riley gulped against the tension constricting her throat; her heart pounded in anticipation as she swallowed the chewed candy. “I don’t think that would be wise, Sam.”

  “I’m not asking you to be wise, Riley. I’m asking you to come over here.”

  “Why? Do you need me to look at something in that file you were reading?” She kept a playful smile in place as she thought of a way to ease out of yet another potentially awkward moment she’d created with Sam. She was pretty sure she’d make a fool of herself if she closed the space between them.

  “Riley.” Her insides liquefied whenever he said her name with such command. “Come here.” With that rusty edge to his usually smooth voice, she couldn’t help but obey.

  She slowly pushed to her feet and, on shaky legs, she moved around the desk toward him. “Sam?”

  He stood, closed the remaining space between them. “Say my name again.”

  “Sam…” This time it came out breathy and needy.

  Kiss Me Again

  by

  Monique DeVere

  A Candy Hearts Romance

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Kiss Me Again

  COPYRIGHT © 2015 by Monique DeVere

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by RJ Morris

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Champagne Rose Edition, 2015

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-0474-8

  A Candy Hearts Romance

  Published in the United States of America

  Chapter One

  Crunch!

  Every cell in Riley Flynn’s body jolted in shock. The unmistakable sound of fiberglass colliding with carbon fiber meant only one thing. She’d backed into Sam Rutherford’s brand new Alfa Romeo Spider. The man barely tolerated her as it was. How much more was he going to hate her for backing into his precious car?

  Riley sank her hands into her hair and held her head as she slowly forced her gaze to the rearview mirror. Was her week destined to keep getting worse? First, she got fired—okay, she should’ve been smarter than to carp about her boss on a social networking site, but still! Then, if that wasn’t harsh enough, she arrived home last night to find a wedding invitation from her ex-fiancé.

  Her ex-fiancé of all people. The snake she packed up her life in the UK five years ago and moved 4,116 miles to Nevis to be with. What a total idiot she’d been. Now she was stuck here in the Caribbean without a job, very little money, and no fiancé. What was she thinking when she followed Beto here?

  Oh yeah. She loved him. What a joke.

  And of course he and his bride couldn’t have a normal wedding like ordinary people. Oh no, they would have to get married on a Caribbean beach at sunset.

  If that wasn’t a poke in the eye, she didn’t know what was. The scuzzbag had stolen her wedding plans and given them to another woman, then had the boldface front to invite her. She bet he expected her to refuse the invitation, which was what she wanted to do, with a few added choice words for him, but her pride wouldn’t allow her the easy option. She would force herself to that wedding and hold her head high. Beto-the-insensitive-jerk would never know how much he’d hurt her, or that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to date anyone since he left eight months ago.

  In her rearview mirror, Riley watched as the driver’s door to the black sports car opened and her neighbor stepped from his car—all six-foot-two of athletic muscle, sex appeal, and raised hackles.

  She gulped down the lump lodged in her throat. She wasn’t sure whether her sudden inability to breathe was due to dread, or the sight of Sam Rutherford looking especially dashing this morning. She cracked open her car door and eased out of her pink Toyota Aygo.

  When Sam paced to the back of his sports car, glanced at the bumper, then focused his blue-gray stare on her, Riley quaked.

  “I’m so sorry.” She rushed to inspect the damage. A small dent and a bit of a scuffmark on the Spider’s rear end. Her Aygo had sustained most of the damage. The knock had resulted in a smashed bumper for her pretty, pink car. Yet despite the damage to her vehicle, relief allowed her to breathe again. At least Sam’s sporty number hadn’t been as dented as she imagined.

  “Oh, thank goodness. That was lucky.” The morning sun warmed her while the briny sea breeze ruffled her hair. She pushed the strands back from her face.

  “Lucky?” Eyelids squinting, he clenched his teeth. “Lucky?” He folded his arms. Riley tried not to notice how wide and deep his chest appeared beneath his white dress shirt. Or how his neatly trimmed stubble always made him look so chiseled and drop-dead delicious. “Lucky for whom?”

  “Well…lucky for you, obviously.” She gestured toward the back of his car with a hand that shook. She interlocked her fingers in front of her in an effort to disguise the nervous tremor. What was it about this man that made her insides jitter every time she saw him? “Your car hardly has a scratch, while mine…well, look at the poor thing. The bumper is about to fall off.”

  “Let me get this straight. You smack into the back of my car and I’m lucky?”

  “Only in the sense that you’ve no more than a few scratches.” Riley rubbed at the pink scuffmark her car had left on his. “I bet we can buff it out. It’ll be good as new.”

  The sound of teeth grinding drew her attention back to Sam. He looked like steam was about to shoot from his ears at any second.

  “Buff out?” His hand shot forward. Riley flinched, but Sam’s hand continued to its destination. He ran his long fingers over the scratches and pink smudge. “I’m going to have to get it repainted.”

  “I don’t think you need to go that far.”

  “Really? Since you seem to be a fan of the botch job, I suppose you’re planning to use string to tie up your bumper until the whole thing falls off eventually.”

  Riley shifted her attention to her car’s bumper. While it looked in need of a bit of TLC, she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to fall off anytime soon. Besides, she had pressing problems. Like finding a job and showing her stupid ex she was doing just fine without him.

  As she stared at the mess she�
��d made of their cars, two things dawned on her. One—she was going to have to pay to get her neighbor’s car re-sprayed. And two—she hardly had any money left in her bank account. Despite how hard she’d saved in the last few years while she worked as PA to a market research analyst, she only had around four thousand dollars to her name. And that was disappearing faster than the banana cream pie she’d hidden in the back of the fridge last weekend.

  “No, actually, I was planning to crawl back into my house, grab what’s left of the pie in my fridge, and hide under my bed covers for the rest of the year.”

  Sam took a hasty step back and gave her that look some men got when they thought a woman might be about to come unglued. Riley clamped her lips together and bit down on them, but nothing stopped the giant lump from rising into her throat. Or her eyes from filling with weak tears and then, to her utter horror, spilling down her face in sync with a sudden sob that burst forth.

  “I’m having the worst week.” Dear Lord, this can’t be happening. She was sobbing in front of a stranger, a man who had only moved into the house her ex’s lover had vacated two months ago. A man who exchanged only a handful of sentences with her since he moved in, all consisting of “good morning” on the few occasions they spotted each other on their driveways as they headed out to work.

  Work.

  The word brought a fresh batch of tears. How was she going to survive without a job?

  “Hey, don’t cry.” Sam patted her awkwardly on her shoulder.

  His unexpected compassion only drew more tears until Riley was sure she’d never stop crying.

  “I’m so sorry I backed into your car. I have parking sensors, but my mind was elsewhere.” Riley wanted to stop talking, but the words kept coming. It was as though an emotional dam had burst and she was helpless to stem the turbulent flow. “I called my boss a lech on social media and he fired me. My fiancé cheated on me with our neighbor. Now he’s marrying her and giving her my wedding.” She could barely articulate the jumble of words and despair. “I have no job, hardly any money, and your car will probably cost a fortune to fix.” She pressed her face into Sam’s warm chest.

  How did she get into his arms?

  And why did they feel so good closed around her?

  “It’s okay, Riley. You’re having a bad time of it. It’ll get better, you’ll see.”

  “Will it? Because I don’t think so. It just keeps getting worse and worse.” Reluctantly, she eased out of his loose embrace, reached into her pocket for the pack of tissues she always kept handy, and used them to wipe her face and blow her nose. “And you know what the worst part is?”

  “What?”

  “That the jerk invited me to his wedding.”

  “Oh.”

  “Who does that? Invite an ex to his wedding?” She blew her nose again. “That’s crazy. Don’t you think that’s crazy?”

  “People do crazy things all the time.” His sympathetic gaze roamed her face, making her uncomfortable and very aware of him.

  “Is he trying to rub my nose in it? Or is he just insensitive?”

  “You can always decline the invitation.”

  “And give him the satisfaction of winning? Never.”

  “Then go and show him you’re doing great without him.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You want to go to your ex’s wedding but you can’t?”

  “I don’t want to go. I have to go. But I can’t.”

  “Right.”

  “No, not ‘right’. You’re missing the point.”

  “There’s a point?”

  “Yes, there’s a point. And the point is: Beto is expecting me to say no to his invitation. If I do, he’ll think I’m heartbroken or too messed up to function. I have to show him my life is perfect.”

  “Okay, so go.”

  “Aren’t you listening? I can’t go without a date. That would be all Beto needed to feel like he won.”

  “Won what?”

  “Knowing Beto, probably the world. That his life turned out to be a bed of roses while mine’s all thorns.”

  Sam shook his head then nodded like he couldn’t keep up. “Right.” Great, he probably thought she was a complete loon. “Then find a date.”

  Like it was that easy. Her circle of acquaintances all revolved around work. After her faux pas with Sanders, she was too embarrassed to ask any of them for a favor. And her friends were all Beto’s. No way would she risk any part of her sorry business getting back to her ex. So she was left without any possibilities.

  Except…

  He must’ve understood her brain’s calculation as she let her gaze travel over his body, because Sam shook his head, took a step back.

  “I don’t do weddings.”

  Riley matched his backward step with a hasty forward one. “Maybe backing into you this morning is fate giving me an opportunity.” She was starting to warm to the idea.

  “Or perhaps fate is trying to interrupt my day and ruin my first big meeting in months.” He turned, glanced down at his car’s rear end, then back to Riley. “We can exchange insurance details later. I’m late as it is. I hope you get your personal life sorted.”

  As he stepped toward the Spider’s driver’s door Riley saw her last and only opportunity head out of her life. Before she stopped to think, her hand shot almost of its own accord and clamped on Sam’s forearm. His flesh burned the palm of her hand, sailed tingles up her arm.

  “Sam, please think about it. It’s only one day and you’ll be doing me a huge favor. I really need your help.” She’d almost said I need you, but stopped herself. She’d never admit she needed any man ever again.

  As his gaze collided with hers. Expression arrested, his stare roamed her face, paused on her mouth, dipped to her throat then back to her eyes. Like a fiery touch, his scrutiny brushed over Riley and something in her responded to the primal call. A something that cast her body in heat, scalded her cheeks and the back of her neck.

  “Please just give going to Beto’s wedding with me some thought. It’s only one day.” She repeated the sentence as if it might somehow sway him. She certainly hoped it would.

  Riley saw the moment Sam relented. His blue-gray gaze softened a little. “Which day is it?”

  “Four weeks away on Valentine’s Day.”

  Sam smiled. She’d never witnessed a sarcastic smile before.

  “A real romantic, your Beto.”

  “He’s Julia’s Beto now, and she’s welcome to him.”

  He eased his arm out of her grasp. “Can we talk about this later? I’ll be home around six.”

  “I can make dinner, and you can come over.” Oh, no! That sounded like she was asking him on a date. “Not that it’s a date or anything. It just makes sense since it’ll be dinnertime anyway.”

  Sam smiled—properly this time—and Riley’s entire insides melted on impact. A dimple appeared in his left cheek and his eyes sparkled with mischief.

  “See you at six, Riley.”

  Chapter Two

  “Do you like your food mild or spicy?” Riley glanced over her shoulder, a jar of jerk seasoning in her left hand, her British accent tugging him into a haze of obsession.

  “Spicy.”

  She flashed him a nervous smile and got to work seasoning the chicken pieces. Her hair fell in soft whiskey-color tendrils to the middle of her back. She usually wore it up for work, but he preferred it down. It gave her a homey image he liked, even if he wasn’t ready to admit that the sexy approachable air it lent her enticed him. The white tee she wore fitted just this side of tease, molding her breasts and nipped in at her tiny waist without being skin-tight and obvious. He should have given her just a cursory glance, but her cut off frayed jean shorts displayed her lightly golden legs to distracting advantage. Snagging his attention. Reminding Sam that he hadn’t had sex in months.

  What had he gotten himself into?

  He’d asked that same question no less than five times since he arrived at Riley’s. The trouble was
he didn’t know how to deal with a bawling woman. Just one glance at those big tearful eyes, and his resistance dissolved.

  The last thing he wanted or needed was to get tangled up in anyone’s drama, yet here he was.

  Tangled right up!

  To think he’d imagined St Kitts and Nevis was the perfect place to escape his troubles. Three years ago, he lived in New York. His life was sweet and he loved every minute of it. One year later, it had gone so devastatingly wrong. Sam would have never guessed that hooking up for a one-night stand with a woman he’d just met could ruin his life so completely. He’d been out with friends celebrating his big win in a case that made newspaper headlines and television coverage, when a slinky blonde struck up a conversation. She’d seen him on TV. Sam felt like a celebrity—plied with free drinks and fawning women—nothing could touch him. She’d been sophisticated and pretty with a hands-off air about her. In essence, she was Sam’s type. By natural progression, he and the blonde decided to move things to his place—a loft apartment on 15th Street. They had a wild time that spanned hours. The sex was so-so, but he was still on a major high from his win so that didn’t bother him.

  The next night when he heard the knock on his door, he hadn’t even hesitated to answer it. What he wasn’t expecting was the husband of the blonde woman—Lacy—to barge into his apartment fist first. Sam had two inches and a few pounds of muscle on the husband, but the sucker punch laid him on his back. Lacy’s husband—he hadn’t even suspected she might’ve been married—tuned him up good. Left him with five broken ribs, a punctured lung, fractured jaw, and internal bleeding. That night Sam almost lost his life.

  It took months to regain his health. By then, another golden boy had taken his place, and Sam felt like the piece of shit Lacy’s husband called him as he’d delivered the last kick to Sam’s ribs and left him for dead.

  New York had become a place of humiliation and shame. The last place he wanted to be. So when he crossed paths with an old Law School buddy on the lookout for a partner to join the law firm he was setting up on his home island of Nevis, Sam saw it as an answer to a prayer. He hadn’t hesitated to snap up the offer and within weeks he’d quit his job, sold his loft and moved to the Caribbean to start his life afresh.