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.“Kiss me, and I’ll show you,” he said breathlessly.Kari exhaled a breath before she closed the small space between them and kissed him.There was something between them, something deep and real that was floating to the surface.He kissed her back with all the emotion she gave him.“Kari! Hank!” Austin yelled out.“Dinner is ready!”They broke apart.Kari opened her eyes slowly and Hank looked at her with lust filled eyes.That look told her that he wanted to skip dinner and go back his house.Looking away from his eyes quickly, Kari knew if she continued to stare into those eyes she would ask if they could leave.“Hank, I…We can’t do…”“We can just go with the flow,” he said.“Just think about it,”“It’s time for dinner,” she said, walking away from him but not before she turned back to meet his eyes.Don’t be stupid, Kari told herself as she walked into the kitchen.Minutes later, Kari sat at a glass table in the kitchen in front of huge floor to ceiling windows that gave a scenic view of the ranch as the sun was beginning to set.Farrah had outdone herself with grilled lamb chops with roasted garlic.“This is so delicious,” Kari said, biting into her lamb.Her tongue was met with rosemary, thyme and cumin.“I’m happy you like it,” Farrah said between bites of her lamb.“My husband and his cousin would tell you in a heartbeat they only eat red meat and potatoes.”“I’ll have you know that we do eat chicken,” Hank said.“So, Kari, tell us about yourself,” Austin said, looking at her from the head of the table.“Why design?”“My grandfather owns a successful architecture design firm where they specialize in the exterior and interior.I followed in his footsteps, except I wanted to earn my way in life and not have it handed it to me.”Hank’s fork clattered on his plate, he was shocked to hear that come from Kari.He pegged her as a spoiled brat with the designer clothes and shoes she wore.“Why move to Nashville?”“I’m from the 90210 and moving to Nashville gave me the opportunity to slowdown my life a lot.Everything you see that glitters is not gold,” she said with a shrug.Hank sat there eating, but his mind was occupied with thoughts of Kari.His judgment about her was way off.He’d allowed his bitterness to get in the way of seeing Kari for who she was.Hank tried to look away from her but he couldn’t, her smile, the excitement her eyes, the laughter and the angriness she sported after argument with him.Those were all the things he liked about her.Deep down he wanted to get to know her a little better.Sitting there, he watched as Kari and Farrah interacted together.They acted like there were old friends.Natalie wasn’t close friends with Rebecca, but somehow found it to hate Farrah with a passion.“What’s wrong with you?” Austin whispered.Sitting next to him.“Nothing.”“That look don’t say anything,” Austin said.Cutting in his lamb chop and eating another bite.“I swear you have this look on you face like you did when you was in 12th grade with Ally.”Hank picked up his fork and knife and cut into his food.He tried to appear unbothered by the mentioning of his ex-girlfriend and first real love of his life.Was it odd that he was thirty-three years old and had a crush on a woman? He needed to get a grip and figure out what was happening to him.Hank tried to convince himself mentally that the only reason why he was smitten with Kari was the physical attraction he had to her.Yeah his body craved to have her underneath him, but let’s face it, he wanted it all.Damn he was in trouble, especially if Austin could see that Kari had an effect on him.Hank felt like he was crossing the line with Kari.He was still married on paper.It had to more than a physical attraction that he had for her.Maybe it was because they shared an emotional connection from the time she flipped him off or when she’d cut her hand.He tried to pay attention to something other than Kari but nothing was working.“Ask her out to the state fair,” Austin said in a low voice.“Jiggy saw her when she came up and he was asking about her earlier.”Hank wasn’t about to allow Austin’s sound engineer, Jiggy, to take Kari out anywhere if he could help it.Hours later after dinner, Hank and Kari left the McBride’s house at the same time.The short walk to the car was in silence.When she unlocked the car Hank knew his time was almost up for him.“Have you ever been to the state fair?” Hank asked, looking down at her.“Not that I can recall,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear.“Austin asked me to play back up for him.” He stuck his hands into his pockets to keep himself from touching her.“And I want you to be my date.”“I thought you were married?”“I’m separated,” he said quickly.“I don’t cheat it’s not in my vocabulary.”“Why don’t you come to my house for dinner tomorrow?”“You don’t cook,” he reminded her.“I’ll order something.”“Chinese food, I haven’t had that in a long time.” He reached pass and opened the door.“I live above my design studio.” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek before getting inside her car.“Drive safe and I’ll call you when I think you’ve made it home.” He closed the door and watched her drive away.***Kari just took a shower and was in bed anticipating Hank’s phone call.Her eyes drifted to the wall.Should she really do this? Kari thought to herself.This man was still legally married to another woman.Her mind was telling decline the date but her heart was telling her to go out with Hank.The two shared a connection and that was hard to ignore.Immense with her thoughts she barely heard the phone ring.“I didn’t think you would call,” she said softly, laying her head back on the pillow.“I needed to hear your voice to make sure you made it home safely.”A shiver of want and need ran though her as she listened to his deep, southern voice.“What is going on with us?”“Kari…I haven’t felt this way in a long time.”“Hank, what happen with you and your wife?”Silence.“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you that.”“It’s okay.It’s hard to tell people that my wife left me for another man,” Hank said.“Are you okay?” she asked.“I’m moving on.You can’t keep marinating a heart break.I learnt that I don’t have to stay hurt,” he said.“Don’t you wish you could remove the bad part sometimes? You want to forget but you can’t.”“You speak like a person who knows what a broken heart feels like,” he said.“Yes…A bad break-up that sent me running away from my problems, but I think I’ve been running in circles.”“For almost a couple months I’ve been analyzing and obsessing over my actions and wallowing in self-pity-”“You realize that nothing gets solved,” she said, interrupting him.“I learned at a young age when my mother died, that life always go on even when you don’t want it to.”“How do we seek closure?” she asked.There was a long pause, then he replied softly “You want those questions answered, you want to know what exactly went wrong.We want them to know they caused our heart some pain, but I wouldn’t give my ex or yours the satisfaction that we’ve been hurting.”“It’s easy to self-indulge in the pain,” she admitted.“I guess my mother is right when she says that other people hurt and I’m not the only one hurting in this world from a measly broken heart.”“Everybody hurts including him, especially when he realized that he let an amazing woman walk out his life [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]