Read Online Lucky Break by Kelley Vitollo - Free Book Online

day—all those days in the past when he’d felt helpless. “I’m good.”
    “Me, too,” she replied, and then her cheeks flushed as though she recognized that she had no reason to say that.
    “Conceited.” Kade winked at her.
    “I am not.” She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. She always bit her lip when she didn’t want to show how upset she was—or when she was faking it.
    “You might be some fancy actress now, but you can’t fool me. I know when you’re playing me.”
    That seemed to make her mad. She took an unenthusiastic swing at him. “Don’t you call me a liar.”
    “Then don’t be one, Sidney.”
    The playfulness drained from her face, and he tried to figure out what he did wrong.
    When she spoke, he didn’t expect what she said. “You almost never used to call me Sidney. It was always Peaches…”
    Kade turned, trying to figure out how to say what he felt. She wouldn’t like it, but he couldn’t be anything except honest with her. “Things are different now.”
    They were okay and he was glad for that, but he also didn’t plan to let himself get pulled in for any more than friendship. It was too easy with Sidney. Just like the way he’d played around with her inside, or how she knew to come to his truck a few minutes ago. This was the woman who chased away his demons just by talking to him. It would be easy for her to become his Peaches again and to get himself right back in the mess he had before. He was too old now, had too much going here to let himself get too tied up in her again.
    They were both silent. Everything inside him tugged to give in, but he couldn’t.
    Finally, after what felt like ten years, she spoke. “Well…I’m just not willing to take that for an answer.”
    “Ah, hell.” He let his head fall back against the seat. Leave it to Sidney to push him now that he didn’t want to be pushed.. “I see you’re even more stubborn than you used to be.”
    “Me?” she said, feigning innocence. “You’re the stubborn one here.”
    That he could fully admit. It didn’t change things, though. “I think it’s pretty safe to say we’re both stubborn.”
    “True. It’s just—I’m glad things are okay between us, but I miss how things were. I miss us, Kade.”
    Her tongue snuck out of her mouth and licked at her bottom lip, and he looked up to notice her eyes weren’t as bright as they used to be. She was sad, and it made his gut twist. He wasn’t supposed to make her feel this way. Not Sidney.
    Kade’s hand itched to touch her. To hold her. To find a way to make things the way they used to be. “You’re killing me here.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    Another one of those things that didn’t change anything. “I know.” For years he’d wanted to see Sidney again—to have her this close. As time went on, he thought about it less and less, but having her sit right across from him, it slammed into him again.
    And then she touched his hand. He couldn’t stop himself from cupping her cheek, needing to feel her skin beneath his.
    She breathed heavily, so deeply he felt it against his arm.
    Kade needed more. Stupid or not, he felt himself leaning forward and damn if she didn’t do the same. He couldn’t have stopped himself if he wanted to—which at the moment he didn’t. He’d deal with the rest later.
    What he wanted to do to her definitely wasn’t the friendship they’d agreed on, but at the moment, nothing else mattered. It was a pull that he always felt to her. One he’d been too chicken to act on as a kid, until the time when everything changed between them.
    She looked down. At first he thought she was turning away from him, but she just nuzzled her cheek against his hand.
    That did him in. “Sidney.” His voice came out rough, laced with need, and when she looked up at him again with hooded eyes, nothing was holding him back.
    The warmth from her cheek and the softness of her went right through him and friendship or not, he needed to taste