Marriage of Inconvenience(Knitting in the City Book #7)(126)

“What?” Now I was glaring.

“Nothing.” He shook his head, the smile he was fighting morphing into something else as his eyes traveled down the length of me and then back up, his gaze coming to rest on the button I’d undone. “You’re just really sexy when you’re bossy.”

Now I was fighting a smile, and also the heat sliding up my cheeks. “I wasn’t bossy.”

“You were bossy.”

“I was communicating my expectations.”

“Bossy.” His gaze slowly rose to my lips.

“If I were a man, you would call me assertive.”

“If you were a man, I would have called you a bossy motherfucker.”

I huffed a laugh, he was cheeky and unbelievable and I loved this about him. “Then call me a bossy motherfucker.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d never call you that name.” His gaze came to mine; the earlier teasing and heat were still present, but now tempered with sincerity. “I would never call you any name other than your own.”

“You call me Kit-Kat.”

“Exactly.” He pushed away from the wall of the elevator, reaching for my hand and bringing it to his lips. His voice lowered, “I promise you, if you were any other woman, I would definitely call you a bossy motherfucker.”

Somehow he’d made that last sentence sound like a seduction. My heart skipped a beat, my stomach fluttering. I watched and felt him place a sensual kiss on the skin between my middle and index fingers, wicked thoughts dancing behind his expressive eyes.

The elevator dinged, the doors slid open, and he held me transfixed.

“Let’s go.” He finally said, tilting his head toward the exit. “I’m sure you’re tired from a full day of being bossy.”

I rolled my eyes and scoffed, mostly to cover the fact that Dan calling me “bossy” twisted my lower belly into warm, velvety knots.

Hand in hand, we walked through an almost empty lobby. The security guard unlocked the door for us and soon we were in the car, driving back to Dan’s mom’s house. Once we were on our way, his palm settled on my skirt over my knee. I stared out the window, thinking over all the information I’d learned today about the nature and structure of my family’s fortune, and feeling the weight of it all.

“What’s going on in that sexy, bossy brain of yours?”

Turning toward the windshield, I became acutely aware of his thumb tracing a circle over my knee. Glancing at my leg, I realized Dan had pushed the hem of my skirt up on one side, his fingers now curled over the bare skin of my thigh.

I leaned my elbow on the windowsill and angled my legs toward him. “I’m going to need to assemble a team of people I trust to help me manage our investments.”

“You have Eugene.”

“That’s true.” I did have Eugene. “He’s loyal, but he keeps secrets. He doesn’t trust that I can handle things on my own.”

Dan glanced at me, then back to the road, saying nothing, his fingers inching higher on my leg as he slid his palm upward.

“He thinks I need to be protected.”

“Yeah. He does.”

“How do I prove that I don’t need to be coddled?”

Dan seemed to think it over before saying, “Just keep being you. He’s smart. He’ll figure it out.”

A new kind of warmth, which had very little to do with his hand on my leg, uncoiled in my stomach. It had everything to do with this man. This wonderful amazing man.

I love this man.

It wasn’t a realization or an ah-ha moment. More like, just an acceptance of fact, like knowing myself deep down and acknowledging who I was.

I am Kathleen Caravel-Tyson. I am good at delegating. I’m a little neurotic. I have brown hair and brown eyes. I like cheese too much. I rely on order and routine. I’m in love with Daniel O’Malley.

I trusted him. I trusted him implicitly and explicitly and I couldn’t imagine a situation where he’d ever break that trust. I loved him and I trusted him and I was happy.

“Thank you for believing in me,” I said before I realized I was speaking.

His smile was small as he lifted an eyebrow, glancing at me again. “Thanks for making it so easy.”



By the time we’d made it back, my skirt was at my hips, the first three buttons of my shirt were undone, and my heart was racing. Dan’s fingers were scant millimeters from the apex of my thighs, his jaw was tight, and he was speeding.

Taking a corner entirely too fast, he finally slowed to pull into the street parking spot across from his mother’s three-story house. As soon as he engaged the emergency break and cut the engine, he clicked the button for his seat belt as I undid mine. He helped me—i.e. pulled me—across the center console. I hit my head on the rearview mirror and banged my knee against the cupholder. I didn’t care.