It was on the tip of her tongue to say, I don’t want you, but she was certain he’d know it for the utter lie that it would be. Thinking about the box of chocolates she was going to devour the second he left her office, she replied with utter honesty, “I never turn down Brooke’s chocolate truffles.”
But she was turning him down, beginning with pulling her hand from his and forcing herself to stop thinking about what kissing him would be like.
“I don’t want to take up any more of your time,” she said in her most polite tone. “I’ll walk you out.”
And though he didn’t try to ask her out again, but simply walked beside her back to the front door of her building and then out into the downtown Seattle streets, Kerry couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t anywhere close to being in the clear yet where he was concerned.
Not only did Adam Sullivan not play by any rules but his own, but something told her that he always won, too.
CHAPTER TWO
Adam closed his front door behind him at nine o’clock that evening and headed for his home office. He’d bought his home eight years ago. It had been a wreck—a teardown, according to everyone else who had seen it. But Adam had seen elegance beneath the rot and a foundation of strength in the beams behind the thick ivy covering the windows. The garden had looked beyond repair, too, but his mother hadn’t been the least bit daunted, and over the years they’d spent plenty of weekends working to transform it into something pretty darned spectacular.
The house, however, had been entirely his project, and his passion. The restoration of the old Craftsman had grabbed him by the heart and had shown him what a difference it made when he was one hundred percent invested in a project. In the winter months, when he needed to draw plans or work up quotes, he’d light a fire in his den, sit down behind his antique Arts and Crafts desk, and get to work.
A great idea for the stairwell in one of the historic buildings he was reviving had come to him during dinner, and he wanted to get the sketch down right away. He was glad at least one good thing had come of his date tonight. He’d done his best to pay attention to the woman sitting across from him, an aspiring actress who had been all but throwing herself at him during their too-long meal. But Adam couldn’t get the image of the shockingly sexy wedding planner out of his head. Heck, it was going to take some serious focus to sketch his idea tonight, given that Kerry was still front and center in his brain.
He grabbed his pencil and notepad and began to draw and make notes. Nearly an hour passed before he stopped to stretch out his back. After letting his initial sketch sit overnight, he knew he’d make more changes tomorrow.
Before leaving the den, he checked his watch and saw that it wasn’t yet ten o’clock. Normally, he would still have been out with his date, usually back at her place by now. But since he’d dropped her off without so much as a good-night kiss—all while deftly ignoring her hints about getting together again—he’d gotten home pretty early.
Figuring Rafe and Brooke were probably still up, Adam dialed their number at the lake. Rafe picked up after two rings, sounding a little out of breath. “Good to hear from you. I’ll put you on speaker.”
Adam was grinning as he asked, “Are you two ready for your meeting report, or have I called at a bad time?” His brother and his fiancée couldn’t keep their hands off each other, so he figured the odds were pretty darn high that he was interrupting something. And from what he could hear on their end, he was all but certain Brooke was currently throwing on some clothes.
“Hi, Adam.” Yup, her voice sounded a little breathless, too. “How was your meeting with Kerry?”
“I was impressed with her. She’s clearly good at what she does.”
“I know, isn’t she amazing? And even though she looks so perfect, she confessed that she has a terrible sweet tooth, so I’ve been sending her tons of chocolates. All of which she says are the best she’s ever tasted,” Brooke said happily. “She’s even going to be using them in her weddings from now on!”
“That’s great news, Brooke.” Adam had known Brooke since she was a little girl and couldn’t think of a woman who was a better fit for his brother. “You and your chocolates are going to take over the world.”
“As long as people are happy eating them, that’s all that matters to me,” Brooke said in her typically modest way. “But, back to Kerry—considering how beautiful and intelligent she is, can you believe she’s actually still single?”