Read Online Unwrapping the Playboy by Marie Ferrarella - Free Book Online Page B

slipped into exile.
    Don’t go there, don’t go there, he warned himself.
    But he knew that was easier said than done. He’d al ready crossed the line once. And each time it would get easier.
    And all the more difficult to come back.

Chapter Six
    T hey were doing justice to the pizza. Kullen had a hunch that they would. It was almost like old times.
    Almost.
    It would be easy, so seductively easy, to let his guard drop. To allow that feeling to overtake him, the one that had whispered that this was like old times—the times when he had struggled so hard to create and win. And finally had.
    He had fallen for her the very first moment he’d ever laid eyes on her. The first time he’d glimpsed her face with its regal, aristocratic lines and felt his stomach muscles tighten into a knot so hard, he could scarcely breathe. There was no question in his mind that Lilli McCall was easily the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.
    But back then, his “pre-shallow period” as Kate referred to it, it had taken more than just looks, no matterhow incredible, to captivate him. What had drawn him in was the sadness in her eyes. It made him ache for her and want to erase her pain. He had launched a full-scale, albeit subtle campaign to get to know her, to get close to her, a feat his best friend at the time, Gil Davis, had warned him was doomed to failure. Gil had had his finger on the pulse of the campus social circles and he’d said that Lilli McCall was a loner, a serious, self-contained fortress. Word was that no one really got close to her.
    It was a challenge Kullen couldn’t refuse.
    And the more he’d worked at getting closer, the more he’d found his own defenses going down. In the space of a few days Lilli had stopped being a challenge and had begun being someone he just wanted to help. Someone he was determined to get to trust him. They’d had several classes together and had been in the same study group. The latter had turned out to be his first triumph with her.
    â€œC’mon,” he’d urged her cheerfully and relentlessly. “Law school’s tough. This is a communal effort to help us all survive. What one of us doesn’t know, maybe some one else does. It’s a give-and-take situation.” It had been his eyes that had held her, he’d later discovered, not any physical touch of the hand, something that she’d avoided religiously then. “You can’t deny us the benefit of your brain, can you?” he remembered coaxing.
    When she’d finally, somewhat reluctantly agreed to study with him, he had wanted to shout his victory from the rooftops, but prudently refrained, pretending to take it all in stride.
    That had been the real beginning. The beginning ofwhat in time had turned out to be an all-too-short relationship that had, on the outside, held such promise.
    He could still remember the first time he’d made her smile, the first time he’d heard the sound of her laughter.
    And the first time she hadn’t stiffened when he’d kissed her.
    There was no way to measure the intensity of the feelings he’d had for her. Feelings he would have bet his life were returned. In the short time they were together, he’d bared his soul to her and caught just the tiniest glimpses of hers. It had by no means been a balanced exchange, but that was okay. With Lilli things were different, all the rules were thrown out and new ones had taken their place. He was fine with taking the tiny, baby steps. As long as they eventually led to his goal.
    He’d been so sure, so very sure that they would.
    Which was why his entire world had fallen apart when she had disappeared from his life.
    At first, he’d thought that Lilli had been kidnapped. He was incredibly, stupidly certain that the woman he loved above everything else on earth wouldn’t have just taken off on him. Especially not after he’d proposed to her.
    But