Where There's a Will (Whiskey River Book 1) Read Free

was going to tear everything apart. It was—is—my worst nightmare. I just…I know we’re safe most of the time but every time those sirens go off I want to hide and forget. But I never can.”
    He shifted around in the closet and came over to sit next to her. He wrapped his arms around her, tipping her chin up so that she could see he had a small scar on the underside of his own chin. He made her feel safe. She didn’t want safety to be a person. She needed safety to be something she carried inside of herself.
    But for right now safety was Ryder. His spicy aftershave and his deep, soothing voice.
    “You don’t have to forget, Addison, that storm made you stronger. Made you into the woman you are today.”
    She stared at him for a long moment and realized that the storm had changed her. That night she and Adam had realized they couldn’t depend on their mom and had finally admitted it. The both of them had looked out for each other and made a solid plan to change their lives.
    And that change had brought her here to Ryder and this moment in a storm shelter. Her entire life she’d been running from that storm that had shaken her world and finally she was in a place where she could slow down, breathe, take what she wanted. She didn’t have to keep running.
    She looked up into his dark blue eyes, shoving all thoughts of the tornado to the back of her mind. “I have a question for you.”
    “What is it?”
    She hesitated. But she wasn’t a meek person. And the stuff that she wanted the most, her law degree, a well-paying job and a house of her own—those were things she found it the easiest to go after. But a kiss from the one man she knew she shouldn’t have kissed and the one man she hadn’t been able to forget, frightened her.
    She lifted her hand and stroked her finger down his jaw to that tiny scar and shifted back just a little bit so she could see his face more clearly. “Why haven’t you tried to kiss me again since the Christmas party?”
    She could tell she’d shocked him. His pupils dilated and his arm around her shoulder tightened and then he lowered his head and she felt the brush of his breath over her lips before he kissed her again.

Chapter Two
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    S HE TASTED JUST like he remembered. No, better. Sweet, like melted honey. With a spicy kick that made him want more. Ryder knew there were reasons he shouldn’t be kissing Addison. But he’d spent the last three months thinking about kissing her again. Kissing her, and more.
    He pulled her closer, deepening the kiss. Running his hands up her back, feeling the softness of her body against his.
    Instant heat. She felt it too. He could tell by how her body molded against his and her tongue answered his in a wicked rhythm.
    Wow.
    Addison moaned and snuggled closer, but it wasn’t close enough. He helped her straddle him, her dress pushed up and then flowing around them. She wiggled her hips, not much, just enough to have his eyes crossing and him thinking about the only thing that would feel better—skin to skin contact.
    He drew back to look at her. “Addison.”
    “Ryder.”
    Her lips were already swollen, her eyes dark pools of emerald. Damn, he was really going to regret this. Firmly, he moved her to sit beside him, wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug.
    “That’s why I haven’t kissed you again.”
    Confused, she said, “Because it was good?”
    With his free hand he traced his fingers over that beguiling, pouty mouth. Unable to resist, he kissed her again, brief and hard. “Too good. In about thirty seconds we were going to reach the point of no return. We were going to make love right here, right now.”
    She thought about that a moment. “And that would be bad, why?”
    “Because the first time with you should be special. I don’t want it to be in a closet in the middle of a tornado warning when you’re doing anything you can to forget the memories the tornado brings up.”
    “ If we made love, which is by no