Page 100 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

The elevator chimes.

Every thought in my skull goes silent at once.

The doors slide open and Killian steps out with his suit jacket and tie bunched in one hand, his other hand working open the top three buttons of his shirt like he’s been wanting to do that since the moment he left the office. His hair’s slightly mussed, like he’s run a hand through it more than once in the last hour, and there’s a tiredness around his eyes that he never lets the board see, the kind that makes him look fifty-one instead of timeless. Then he looks up and finds me across the room, and something in his face just loosens.

He smiles. Soft. Like he’s finally allowed to breathe.

I’m across the room before I’ve decided to move, and then I’m in his arms, and his mouth finds mine like it’s the only thing either of us has done right in eleven days.

I’ve missed him. I’ve been furious at him. I’ve wanted to cry more than once over how cold and clipped he’s been whenever we’ve crossed paths during work hours, routing every question about me through Mallory like I’m a line item on a spreadsheet instead of a person he supposedly can’t stop thinking about. All of it disappears the second I’m against him. Every sharp edge I’ve been carrying around for eleven days just dissolves, like his presence alone is enough to quiet the noise in my head long enough for me to actually be here.

I breathe him in, scotch and mint and underneath that the warm, familiar spice and cedar that’s just him, and for one full second I forget every single thing I came in here to say.

He pulls back enough to look at me, and I’m dazed, smiling without having decided to, and he cups my face in one hand and runs his thumb slow over my bottom lip.

“Sorry I’m late, Princess.”

I open my eyes. He’s grinning down at me, his eyes warm in a way that looks dangerously close to something I don’t have the nerve to name out loud yet.

“You’re just in time, Mister Thorne.”

Something flashes hot behind his eyes, and for one disorienting second I almost let myself forget why I dragged him across this room in the first place, almost let the last eleven days dissolve into nothing more than this, his hand still cradling my jaw, his thumb still resting against my mouth.

He leans in to kiss me again, and I put both hands flat against his chest instead.

He looks down at them, then at me, brow lifting.

“Are you in the mood to be spanked tonight, Harper? Because stopping me from kissing you after going eleven days without you is a dangerous road to walk.”

Under any other circumstances I’d take that bet without blinking. Tonight I swallow, take a breath, and make myself hold his gaze instead.

“We need to talk, Killian.”

I glance past him to the table, where Asher and Maddox have gone quiet over their plates, both of them clearly having forgotten I knew they were even in the room until just now. I look back at Killian.

“The four of us. The four of us need to talk.”

I step back, and he lets me, though I can see the worry land behind his eyes immediately, see him already theorizing that whatever this is must be about him, about whatever he’s been doing for the last eleven days, about whether he’s finally about to pay for it. I can’t comfort him through that right now. The baby comes first.

I step back far enough that all three of them are in my line of sight at once, Killian still half undone from the elevator, Asher with his fork frozen halfway to his plate, Maddox watching me over the rim of his glass with an expression I can’t quite read yet.

“If you’re ready, I’d like for this conversation to happen in the living room.”

I turn and walk toward the couch without waiting to see if they follow. I hear them anyway, the scrape of chairs, the click of forks set down a beat before footsteps fall in behind me, Asher and Maddox’s dinner clearly forgotten the second I said the word talk.

I turn back around and ask them to sit.

“What’s this about, mon coeur?” Asher lowers himself onto the sectional, Maddox settling in near him with a tumbler of whiskey he must have grabbed on the way over. “Are you sick?”

Killian doesn’t sit.

I look at him, already certain he’s going to be stubborn about it, and decide I’m not giving him the satisfaction of an argument over something this small. I shake my head instead and start shaking out my hands, pacing again without meaning to, my bare feet silent against the rug while three sets of eyes track every step.

“Sweetheart, what is it?” Maddox leans forward, elbows on his knees.

Killian crosses his arms over his chest. “If this is about breaking up⁠—”

I huff out a laugh, sharp and a little disbelieving. “No. Nope. After the way you’ve been since Midsummer, you and your soapbox aren’t invited to the podium. This isn’t a BYOO type of party.”