Read Online Just One Kiss by Carla Cassidy - Free Book Online Page A

by the burst of joy that had accompanied the dream. A joy he hadn’t experienced for a long time, a joy he’d believed he would never feel again.
    When the last of the dream images had left his mind, he’d scoffed at his own emotions. Marissa, with all her talk of Mr. Right and love forevermore, had apparently seeped into his subconscious mind. But in his conscious mind he knew better than to fall for the fantasy.
    â€œBeen there, done that,” he muttered to the new morning. And he’d never be fool enough to fall for the fantasy again.
    It had taken him five years to recover when hislife had fallen apart. He wasn’t about to allow one sexy blonde with dewy eyes and crazy dreams to disrupt the tentative peace he’d finally managed to find for himself.
    What he couldn’t figure out was how a woman he’d known less than three days had managed to invade his dreams. It was ridiculous.
    He looked at his watch and stood. It was exactly six, and he had a feeling Marissa would be prompt. He walked through his bedroom and to the front door. He gazed out the door just in time to see her rental car pulling up out front.
    He hadn’t maneuvered the stairs since the day she’d brought him home from the hospital. Going up somehow seemed easier than going down. Falling upstairs held less chance for damage than falling down. He’d left one crutch in his bedroom, figuring by now he needed only one. He gripped the crutch tightly and started down.
    He’d reached the third stair when Marissa magically appeared before him. “Let me help you,” she said. Before he could protest, she took the crutch from him and instead placed herself beneath his arm. “Now lean on me,” she demanded.
    She fit perfectly beneath his shoulder, her blond curls tickling the side of his neck. The smell of her, a clean, fresh scent with a whisper of floral perfume, enveloped him, and the warmth of her body against his sparked flames in the pit of his stomach.
    â€œAre you doing all right?” she asked when they were halfway down the staircase.
    He grimaced. “As well as can be expected, considering what you and your kid have put me through.” His tone was sharper, more gruff than he’d intended.
    He saw a flash of answering fire in her eyes, but she said nothing. He almost wished she would get angry with him, exchange barbs of ire with him so he could get rid of some of the energy that coursed through him at the moment.
    As he slid into the passenger seat while Marissa stowed his crutch in the trunk, he felt mean-spirited and small. Nathaniel greeted him from his car seat in the back. “Daddy,” he said, and laughed.
    â€œWrong, kid. Jerk is more like it,” Jack mumbled in reply.
    Marissa slid behind the steering wheel, studiously refusing to look at him. She started the engine.
    â€œGo on. Say it.”
    She turned and looked at him curiously. “Say what?”
    â€œTell me I’m a jerk.”
    â€œOkay. Jack, you’re a jerk.” Her eyes glistened with a touch of good humor. “Now you feel better?”
    â€œYeah, I do.” He adjusted the seat to give him more leg room for his cast. “Don’t you ever hold a grudge?”
    â€œNot really. I try not to expend energy on negative emotions.” She put the car into gear and drove away from Jack’s house. “Besides,” she said, shooting him a teasing side-glance, “if I held a grudge against you every time you were cranky or said something ugly, I’d be completely exhausted.”
    â€œStill, I was out of line and I apologize.” He tunneled a hand through his hair. “I just hate feeling so…so…”
    â€œHelpless?”
    â€œYeah.” Surely it was the feeling of helplessness that had attacked him on the stairs. It had absolutely nothing to do with any desire he might feel for the Pollyanna sitting next to him.
    â€œWhen you get to the