Passionate Persuasion (Entangled Indulgence) Read Free Page B

That she’d won some Kansas Corn Queen beauty pageant when she was sixteen. That her mother had named her after a character in a romance novel and she knew how to drive a tractor and play the freaking cello.
    All those things were a precursor to this beautiful, polished woman in front of him. All those things had come rushing back when Ted Benwick gave him her card with her email address.
    All those things turned him into a complete idiot at the thought of seeing her again.
    “I know you’re not going to believe this,” he said, stepping in front of her so she couldn’t leave the bar, “but I’m usually not so stupid.”
    “Oh, I totally believe you could run the gamut of stupid,” she said.
    “Are you seriously still angry about something that happened eight years ago?”
    For a moment she just stared at him in disbelief. “I’m angry about something that you did eight minutes ago, you moron.”
    “Come on, Kan—Kiara,” he said, trying to hide his desperation. He didn’t want her to leave angry. He didn’t want her to leave, period. He wanted to fix this—he was good at fixing things, damn it—but he hadn’t gotten as far as figuring out why. “It was a little lie of omission because I wanted to see you.”
    “So I’m supposed to be flattered ?”
    Shit.
    “Here’s a clue, Alex Drake,” she said, in a voice like the sharp sting of a snapping rubber band. “You don’t play games with a girl’s heart after you’ve dumped her. Not back then, not right now, not ever .”
    She was right, he knew she was right, but that didn’t make her holier than thou tone any easier to take.
    “Look, if you’ll just get off your high horse for a second—”
    “My high horse ?”
    “You always take a fortified position on the moral high ground and don’t give it up—”
    “How do you know what I always do? You haven’t talked to me in eight years.”
    “Which I’m trying to fix right now.”
    “By being the same callous reprobate you were back then?”
    “Well, if you’re going to act like the same prissy, self-righteous—”
    “You know, Alex, maybe it only seemed I had the moral high ground because you were always so deep in the valley of fuck up.”
    For a second all he could do was stare at her. He should be defending himself—or not, since she was right. But Kiara Fredericks, virgin Corn Pone Queen from Podunk, Kansas, had just dropped the F-bomb in the middle of a crowded pub. So instead of arguing, he did the worst possible thing.
    He laughed.
    Not at her. God, he wasn’t that much an asshole. But he did laugh in surprised shock and a surreal sort of feet-knocked-out-from-under-him delight.
    Whatever else she’d been doing in the last eight years, Kiara had developed some lightning reflexes. He never saw her hand move to her glass on the bar until the watered down remains of her drink hit his face.
    He sputtered and choked, but it was hard to tell who was more shocked—him or her. She stood, frozen, her eyes huge, one hand covering her mouth, the other barely holding onto the highball glass. It tipped out of her nerveless fingers, and somehow, Alex was able to catch it before it fell.
    “I—Oh my gawd ,” she wheezed.
    He blinked through the vodka dripping from his hair, tempted to laugh at the look on her face, tempted to lean down and kiss her—because what was his shirt and his dignity compared to getting to see the old Kiara come out of the cool, composed, sexy woman he’d hardly recognized at the bar.
    She fumbled open her purse and pulled out a few more bills, tossing them on the bar without looking at them. “For the mess. The waiter, I mean… I… I have to go.”
    “No, you don’t—” he started, but she was already darting around him and through the crowd, which backed off to give her a wide path—a swath , even—to the door.

    Alex had hoped to get into the office and change his shirt before running into his business partner, but he was out of luck.
    “What the