Read Online Accounting for Cole (Natural Beauty) by Holley Trent - Free Book Online Page B

different for a while. In the fall I’m going to teach a couple of accounting courses at the community college here in Edenton, but between now and then I’m going to take a bit of a sabbatical.”
    He perked up a bit and turned his olive gaze to me. “Where are you going?”
    “Dublin. I have some family there who’ve been begging to take me in for a few years. I figured now’s a good time.”
    “Nice. We’re doing Paris next month, you know. It’s a bit of an exchange. A club there is sending their cast here to plug in some dates on our tour and we’ll be stationary there for about a fortnight.”
    I scoffed. “That sounds conveniently serendipitous.”
    “Yeah.” He pulled his phone out of his back pocket, looked at the clock, and then grimaced. “I’ve got to head off to make sure those hags make it onto the stage tonight.” He leaned forward and drew me in for another kiss. When he let go and I’d gotten control of my breathing again I said, “Call me when you get to Paris? Maybe we can meet up in London.”
    “No.”
    “No?”
    “No, Macy. Bradley’s right about one thing. I do need an anchor. Some smart lady who makes me grin like a teenager and not a thirty-seven-year-old. Someone who’ll ground me even after I do stupid shit like sign contracts to appear on reality shows.”
    My eyes went wide. “You didn’t.”
    He cringed and nudged my gaping jaw back to its usual place. “I did. This is bad timing. Such bad timing, because I’m so private, but—”
    “Yeah.” I caught the drift. He was saying there was a whole new level of difficulty to accessing him, as if it wasn’t hard enough before.
    He shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. Hear me out. The moment you bumped into me at Club Sapphire, I knew what you were.”
    “A klutz?”
    “Quit it.” He planted a kiss on my forehead. “No, Macy, I could tell were salt of the earth.”
    “Dull.”
    “Stop. No . Someone grounded. Rational.”
    “Me? The woman who just closed her business because it didn’t feel right anymore?”
    “Even because of that. There’s nothing aimless about you, you just have to allow yourself to find some passion. You’re not used to that, are you?”
    There he went again, reading me like a newspaper.
    I shook my head.
    “No regrets. You don’t want to be seventy, regretting the things you did and didn’t do at thirty…or thirty-seven. And I regret letting you leave that morning without making you promise to come back.”
    I regretted that, too.
    “Listen…” He grazed his lips over my forehead, planting kisses here and there and holding me tighter. “I’ll call you tonight the moment I get those rascals off the stage, and you’ll answer no matter what time it is.”
    I chuckled. “Oh, will I, now? What about Bradley’s English teacher?”
    “Yeah you will, because if you’ve been thinking about me even half as much as I’ve been thinking about you, you haven’t been sleeping. I want you to get some sleep, hon.” He ran the pad of his thumb lightly against my jaw. “I’ll even unplug the alarm clock so we can have extra uninterrupted cuddle time.”
    I laughed.
    “Don’t worry about the teacher. She’s got nothing on you. She can’t even calculate a tip.” He kissed me again, winding his thumbs into my hair and tipping my chin back so he could flutter his lips along the line of my jaw. “Besides, if you don’t answer the phone, I’ll drive back down here and make you watch police dramas with me all night.”
    He grabbed the lobe of my ear with his teeth and gently pulled.
    “Maybe I won’t answer then,” I managed breathlessly.
    “Then maybe you should give me your house keys. I should get used to parking in your driveway, anyway.”
    “Or maybe I’ll just wait at your hotel. You probably shouldn’t leave your post. Dom might need an aspirin or something.”
    “Damned Dom,” Cole said. He slipped his keycard into the back pocket of my shorts and helped himself to