“Right, the house!” Kerry put in gratefully. “We always need to meet to talk about the house.” As if she realized that she was acting a little strangely, she quickly asked Drake, “Am I remembering right that you have three siblings?”
“A sister and two brothers,” he confirmed.
“How’s everyone doing?” Adam asked as he reached for Kerry’s hand under the table.
“Same as always,” Drake said. “Alec is busy building his planes, Suzanne is busy with her computers, and Harrison is busy with his academic research. Dad is still painting rings around me, of course.”
“I’m really looking forward to meeting all of them at the wedding,” Kerry said. “Although I keep thinking my biggest job all weekend is going to be keeping everyone’s names straight between your relatives in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Maine.”
Drake laughed. “We Sullivans definitely know how to take over a country, that’s for sure. I’ll put in a vote for name tags,” he joked, “and that way I won’t forget any names, either.” His phone rang then, and even though he clearly wanted to ignore it, he said, “I’m sorry, I need to take this.”
As soon as his cousin stepped away from the table, Kerry pulled her hands from Adam’s and said, “He thinks we’re a couple.”
“The way he was flirting with you makes me wonder if he does.”
But she shook her head. “You’ve got to tell him we aren’t. You’ve got to tell him we really were just meeting to talk about the plans for my house. Otherwise, he might say something to someone in your family, and then they’ll—”
“Sorry about that.”
Drake sat down, cutting Kerry off before Adam could find out what exactly she thought his family would do if they thought he was dating Rafe’s wedding planner.
A beat later, Kerry slid from her seat. “Thank you for the drink. It really was lovely to meet you, Drake, but I’m sure you two would like to catch up without me before your meeting.” She was talking too fast, her cheeks too flushed, her eyes looking everywhere but at Adam. “I’ve actually got to head out now to take care of some business I forgot about, so, Adam, I think it would be best if we rescheduled our meeting for another time.”
“Kerry—” He was already halfway out of his seat when she put up her hand to stop him.
“No.” She swallowed hard. “I really can’t stay.” Her skin flushed an even deeper rose as she shook her head. “Not tonight.” And then she was spinning around on her sky-high heels and heading out of the bar in a flash of long legs and silky hair.
Drake looked from Kerry’s retreating back to Adam. “What the hell is going on with you two? At first I thought you were an item, but now I’m getting some pretty mixed messages.”
Hard-core frustration rode Adam as he said, “It’s complicated right now.”
But hopefully it wouldn’t be for long. Because even if she’d just said she didn’t want to talk to him tonight, he wasn’t planning to wait. Still, he couldn’t forget her request. Couldn’t ignore how serious she’d looked as she made it.
“Look, Drake, I’d appreciate it if you could keep seeing Kerry and me together to yourself for now.”
His cousin raised an eyebrow. “So you’re not a couple?”
They were. She just didn’t know it yet.
Instead of answering Drake’s question, Adam threw some money down on the table. And when Drake said, “Good luck,” it was clear that he thought Adam was going to need it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
What had she been thinking?
The question kept running through Kerry’s head, over and over and over again, while she sat in the back of the cab that took her back to her house. Normally, she appreciated the peace and quiet of her home—but when she stepped inside tonight, she didn’t feel at all relaxed.
How could she relax the slightest bit when she knew this wasn’t even close to being the end of a day that had begun badly and gotten worse by the second? Though she’d left him sitting with his cousin in the hotel’s cocktail bar, Adam Sullivan wasn’t the kind of man who did what someone else told him to do when he didn’t agree with it.
And it had been perfectly clear to her that he hadn’t wanted her to leave.
It was bad enough that she had to break things off with him. But to run into his cousin in the hotel lobby and have Drake clearly think they were a couple right before she did it?
Had she really thought there would be no tears shed for Adam Sullivan? What a fool she’d been…
She closed her front door behind her and put her head in her hands. There was no point in locking it, she knew. Not when—
Adam’s knock came at the same time as he said, “Kerry, let me in.”
As she turned to open the door, she couldn’t stop herself from bracing as if for battle. And from the look on Adam’s face, he was clearly itching for one.
She decided not to pretend nothing was wrong. There was no point even trying to do that with Adam when he was one of the most direct people she’d ever known.
“I know you’re angry with me.” The second she’d asked him to explain to his cousin that they weren’t really a couple, she’d seen the frustration move across his face. Frustration that seemed to have amped up several levels since then.
Now, she struggled to make herself say the words she needed to say. It’s over. We can’t do this anymore. It’s been fun, but I can’t get in any deeper with you.
But none of them would come, even though he was walking inside and closing her door behind him. The sound was loud enough with her already brittle nerves to make her jump.
He looked worried, then frustrated again as he ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not angry with you, Kerry. I’m angry with the whole damned situation. With continuing to play this game.”
Finally, her tongue came unstuck. “It’s not a game, it’s an agreement. An agreement we made together.”
“Call it whatever you want,” he said as his brows came down low over his dark eyes, “we need to change it.”
Surprise came first—surprise that he’d want to change what she’d assumed would be most guys’ perfect arrangement with a willing woman.
And then, close on its heels, came longing. A desperate longing to have a real relationship with Adam.
But then, a beat later, panic swept in. Panic that gripped her just as tightly as longing did.
“No.” She needed to take a step back from him, needed to have more space between them to be able to say, “We can’t change it.”
Even as his frown deepened at her refusal, she watched stubborn determination light in his beautiful eyes. Eyes that she’d felt were seeing all the way into her when they were making love and he was taking her to places she’d never even dreamed existed.
“Yes,” he said in just as firm a tone as her no had been. “We sure as hell can change it. We don’t need to sneak around anymore. We don’t need to pretend to my family—or yours—that we’re not an important part of each other’s lives. We don’t need to do things like ask my cousin not to tell anyone that he saw us together, or have you jump out of my arms when your mother finds us dancing.”