Wrong Man, Right Kiss Read Free

to hear that his voice had regained its usual playful note. “Yeah. You’re right. I am better at screwing around than both my brothers put together. Not that Landon would ever look at another woman now that he’s married.”
    He leaned back and watched her with the beginnings of a smile that carried a hint of danger while he linked his hands behind his head in a deceptively relaxed pose.
    “So let’s screw around with Garrett. Why not? He’s always been ridiculously protective of you and Kate. He’d go Donkey Kong if he ever found out you were dating someone. Especially someone with a bad reputation. You don’t even really have to date the guy, just make him agree to play your doting lover for a while, ask him to be convincing enough to yank ole Garrett’s chain.”
    Delighted that Julian was at last addressing her predicament, Molly almost jumped out of her seat and found herself clapping twice. “Yes! Yes! He sounds charming. But the question is, do I actually know such a man?”
    Julian’s smile was perfectly wolfish. “Baby, you’re looking right at him.”
    * * *
     
    His words appeared to strike Molly like an electric shock, and Julian wondered if that was a good thing, a bad thing or totally irrelevant to his newly hatched plan.
    “Excuse me?” She jerked upright on his couch and gripped the leather cushions with such force that it looked as if she was on a roller-coaster ride. “I’m sure I heard wrong. Did you just offer to be my boyfriend or something?”
    “Or something,” Julian agreed, his lips curling upward.
    He knew he looked calm. Collected. But inside his head, the wheels were turning with particularly inspiring ideas. Ideas he might later regret. But they were still damned good.
    “Wh-what do you mean ‘or something’?” she asked him.
    Julian could hardly get over how adorable she looked sitting there, shocked and disbelieving as if she’d just won the Megabucks.
    Her eyes were just so wide and so damned blue you’d have to be made of freaking stone not to be willing to move mountains for her. Honestly, he’d never seen such expressive, genuinely innocent eyes in his life. It was a guarantee that Molly would lose every poker game she ever played, her expressions were so real and so clear. Hell, just the way she looked at him with those eyes made him feel like some sort of superhero. Not even his own mother gazed at him like Molly did.
    With an amused smile, one he sometimes found himself wearing when he was with her, he explained, “‘Or something’ means I don’t have girlfriends, Molly. I have lovers. And I’d be happy to pretend to be yours.”
    He’d meant to emphasize the word pretend, but somehow when he spoke, the only word he seemed to be able to emphasize was yours.
    Because obviously he would only ever do this kind of stuff for Molly.
    “You’re kidding me, Jules,” she said as she somberly scanned his face. She was not even moving, had practically become a statue on the couch.
    He might have laughed at that, except to his own disbelief and amazement, he was dead serious. Dead. As heck. Serious. And now he needed to know if she was, too. “I may like to kid around, Molls, but I wouldn’t kid you with this.”
    “So you’re prepared to pretend to be in love with me?”
    He nodded, and his hands itched to wipe away a green smudge of paint from her forehead and a red one from her cheek. “I figure I’ve probably done worse, Moo. Like that girl who just left…not really prime in the head, if you get me.”
    He tapped his forehead, but she wasn’t even paying attention.
    As though in a trance, Molly rose to her feet, all five feet of chaotic red hair and heavy turquoise necklaces and creamy paint-streaked skin, her eyes shining as his proposal finally seemed to dawn on her. “And Garrett will see us together and be madly jealous! Oh, my God, yes, yes, this is brilliant, Julian! How long do you think it will take to get him to realize he loves me? A couple of