Their Virgin Secretary

Chapter Nine

Belle woke to soft light filtering through the filmy curtains covering the windows. She glanced at her phone. One of the pluses of having her bosses show up was Eric’s knowledge of fuse boxes. All the plugs worked again, so she’d been able to charge her phone while it sat on her nightstand.

Nine a.m. Wow, she rarely slept that late. She stretched and nudged Sir, who had managed to hop up on the bed with her. She’d tucked him into his little dog bed on the floor, but he’d chosen to cuddle up with her instead.

Despite having three gorgeous men in this house, she’d slept with the dog. Yep. Her life was surely looking up.

Stop it, Belle. You can’t think about sleeping with them. Absolutely not. No way.

She had to be strong because she wasn’t going to be a doormat, a novelty, or a friendship wrecker.

But would Kell drive five hundred miles to walk over a doormat he’d already wiped his feet on? Would Eric come all this way just to rubberneck at the silly virgin again? Would Tate actually tag along with them to declare his undying love once more if he thought their relationship was over? Belle doubted it, but even so she couldn’t pretend that Saturday night in Dallas hadn’t happened—or that it hadn’t crushed her. In fact, that event had been a turning point. She needed to do more with her life than pine over them. Today, she would start.

As she climbed from bed, she glanced around the room she felt sure had been her grandmother’s. The high ceilings with elaborate crown moldings and the fireplace gave the room such grandeur and elegance. All she had to do was rip down the yellow floral wallpaper that looked like spring had puked and the tacky green marble mantle and hearth. Otherwise, the lines of the room were classic and clean. The door to the balcony overlooking the courtyard invited her outside to bask in the bright autumn morning. Belle pictured sipping coffee there and never hearing the sounds of the city or seeing anyone go by. It would be her own private escape.

She needed a distraction, a creative outlet, something to launch her new career that would fund her life away from her former bosses, a project that would help her focus on something besides her broken heart. This place fit the bill. With enough money and a lot of elbow grease, she could make it something to be proud of again. As she made the house a home again, she could unravel the mystery of the past that had shaped her departed loved ones. Already, the snippets she’d read of her grandmother’s journal hinted at the woman’s life. The initial entries Belle had read had waxed positively poetic about how sweet her baby boy was and how much she loved being his mother. But soon, she’d begun repeatedly apologizing to him in her writings.

Her grandmother never once mentioned the child’s father. The journal started the day of the baby’s birth and lacked all mention of a man or her romantic life. Belle had to wonder how hard it had been to raise a child alone back then, when the stigma had been far greater. Her grandmother had clearly possessed backbone.

But how had a single mother afforded this grand house? According to the records Mr. Gates had sent her way, Marie Wright had paid cash for this house in 1960. No mortgage. Even then, this real estate would have been spectacularly expensive. Belle had never heard a whisper about her grandmother inheriting money. Had she been the mistress to a man who’d left her pregnant and given her the money for this house to ease his guilty conscience? Belle didn’t know a lot about the woman, but somehow that scenario didn’t seem right.

“Maybe Grandma really was psychic and she got stock tips from the dead,” she murmured to Sir. “If not, she had to have read a whole lot of palms to buy this place. What do you say we explore it today and start adding to our to-do list?”

Sir wagged his tail and headed out of the room, more likely because he needed to scurry downstairs and heed nature’s call than because he understood her.

As she stepped into her fluffy slippers, Belle kind of hoped the men had overslept or had rebooked an early flight back to Chicago. She wasn’t looking forward to the coming confrontation, so the less time they stayed, the better. But she owed it to them to at least hear what they’d come all this way to say. Those three men had been better than good to her for over a year. One disastrous personal catastrophe shouldn’t undo all her professional goodwill. The very least she could do was give them the courtesy of an exit interview and tips on finding a new assistant.

The idea of some other woman taking care of them made her heart clench and pang, but Belle did her best to ignore it. She’d made her choice to move on and find another happiness.

Sir scampered down the stairs on light feet. She wasn’t quite so nimble, wincing at every creak she made with each step. On the second story landing, she peeked around, wondering where the guys had slept last night. According to the information she’d received when she inherited the house, it had four other bedrooms. No doubt, they’d all been dusty and not ready for guests. Guilt niggled her. Last night, as soon as she’d finished talking to Tate and Eric and they had restored the electricity, she’d run to her bedroom and locked herself in. Otherwise, Belle had feared she would be too tempted to see if there was any hope they could somehow reconcile. But no. She had to strip away her little-girl dreams and stop wishing for a happily ever after.

Running out on them probably made her a coward, but Belle had been so relieved to see them. She hadn’t wanted to give them the wrong impression or lean on them. They made it so easy. Comfort her after a nightmare, secure a screen door, fix a breaker, check the windows… She’d had a long list of things to do and now? Poof. They were done. Last night, some part of her had craved nothing more than to let them shoulder her problems, but it would be unfair to rely on them now—to give Tate false hope, to wheedle Eric into giving her more elbow grease, to force Kell into the uncomfortable position of setting her aside again. Her heart probably couldn’t take it either.

When Belle started down the second set of stairs, the smell of coffee wafted up from the kitchen. Damn. There went her hopes for a peaceful morning.

She really should have showered before leaving her room. But she still needed to clean the bathrooms and wash towels. No clue if the hot water heater was even working. With a sigh, Belle turned back, thinking a cold shower might do her some good, when the door to the kitchen swung open and Kellan stood, hands on hips, staring down at Sir.

“We need to have a talk, dog. I saw you sniffing around my dress shoes. Don’t even think about it.” He lifted his dark eyes from the canine and looked her over. Heat flared there briefly. Then he banked it. “Good morning, Belle.”

No skipping out now. Eric might not press her to talk immediately. She could invent a reason to convince Tate that she needed to go upstairs. But Kellan would either tie her to a chair…or follow her upstairs. God knew what would happen then.

“Good morning,” she murmured. “I was just going to grab some coffee before I showered. I bought some things from the convenience store down the street, but I haven’t made it to the grocery store yet. I’ll go out in a few minutes to find us some breakfast.”

That would take a chunk of time. Today was Monday, so she had to believe the guys intended to get back to work and Chicago soon. They wouldn’t leave Sequoia alone at the office for long, surely. So if she could survive a couple of hours without pining for them too obviously, then she would be alone again. Rattling around all by herself in the empty house would be unnerving, so Belle promised herself that she’d call today to get a good security system. And find a nice bottle of wine because she was probably going to cry herself to sleep tonight.

Kellan shook his head. “Eric’s already been to the grocery store. He cooked bacon and eggs. They’re waiting for you. It’s going to be a little simple for a few days, until we can get the oven working properly. You should get in there. Tate’s already had a plate. He’ll go back for seconds and thirds. Eric claims he eats like a hobbit. I don’t know what that is, but apparently it’s always hungry.”

Kellan wasn’t big on fantasy films. Tate really did eat somewhat like a hobbit. He was constantly snacking, but somehow that didn’t affect his perfect body.

Belle walked into the kitchen and found utter chaos. The big table was covered by paperwork and computers. Cords slithered across the tables like snakes entwined with one another. Cups of coffee cooled in between all the other clutter. Someone had placed a TV on the counter. Currently, the little device spit out news and stock quotes while Tate and Eric both spoke into their cell phones.

“Don’t you dare pull that clause on me. That is not the intent of the verbiage, nor is it the language. I will sue you so hard, your children will still be feeling it when they turn eighteen. Do you understand me?” Tate was a sweetheart with her, but he got pissed off when people used his words against him. Belle swore sometimes that he grew claws and fangs when he went into lawyer mode.

“No. No, I can’t make that date. We need to settle this. I understand that we have science on our side, but they have a sick little girl with asthma holding her teddy bear. Have you looked at the visuals on this one? No one is going to listen to a bunch of boring medical journals. We’re going to lose.” Eric ran a hand across his head in an obvious sign of frustration. “We need a different strategy pronto.”

Belle stared at her formally grubby kitchen. Every surface she could see appeared to have been wiped clean, then utilized as office space.

She turned on Kellan. “What the hell is going on here?”

He smiled sardonically. “Welcome to the New Orleans branch of Baxter, Cohen, and Kent. I think it’s going well for a startup, don’t you?”

She gaped at them. They could not be serious. In fact, she could think of a dozen reasons that was impossible—starting with the fact that they didn’t have licenses to practice law in Louisiana. Not only that, they could not run a business out of her kitchen. What about their office and life back home?

Eric put a hand over his phone. “Belle, baby, did you get the latest numbers from the EPA on the Hanover case?”

She’d put them on his desk last week. Unfortunately, his desk was in Chicago. “This is my kitchen. There are no latest numbers on the Hanover case here.”

Kellan reached over her toaster and pulled some paperwork off what appeared to be a damn fax machine. “Here you go. I had Sequoia fax them. What a surprise. He sent a note protesting the use of fax machines and said to pass that on to you, too. Apparently we shouldn’t use hard copies because it’s bad for the environment.” He turned back to her with a sigh. “Give me one good reason I can’t fire him.”

Belle half heard Kell. What had these crazy men done? Instead of using their heads and realizing they couldn’t possibly run a practice from her house, they’d bought every piece of office equipment known to man and set it up in her kitchen. She was fairly certain she glimpsed a copy machine in the butler’s pantry. “Given his connections, you know you can’t. Don’t forget, you have a very nice office in Chicago. Then Sequoia wouldn’t have to fax you anything. Much comfier chairs there as well. This doesn’t make a good office.”

Eric covered his phone and murmured, “But you’re here.”

Belle didn’t want to, but she melted a bit.

“See that you do, you piece of crap,” Tate yelled into his phone, then paused. “Sure. Yeah, tell your mom hi for me.” Another pause. “I doubt Wednesday will work. It looks like I’ll be here for a while and the Internet sucks, but I’ll see what I can do. Good luck on the raid.” He frowned as he hung up the phone. “Sorry, that was Phil from Greene and Associates. He’s such an ass, but he’s in my guild. We’re supposed to raid Jondor on Wednesday.”

Most lawyers made deals on the golf course. Not the new geek. Instead, they made contacts in role-playing games online.

“There’s something deeply wrong with you.” Belle shook her head, trying not to smile.

Eric grinned, and before she could stop herself, her heart skipped a beat. “Hey, you should be glad you weren’t around for his LARPing days. You think online games are weird, try a hundred geeks dressed in medieval wear, throwing little bags at each other and calling them spells.”

Tate flushed. “I was trying to sleep with a girl. At least LARPing was more fun than those foreign films Belle made me see.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t make you do anything. You showed up at that festival and said you were a huge fan of Siberian cinema.”

Tate groaned. “Babe, not even Siberians watch that shit. Seriously. It made me want to open a vein and bleed out.” The sexiest smile heated his face, taking him from boyish to such a man. Then his voice dropped to an intimate growl. “But I was trying to sleep with a girl then, too.”

Just like that her pussy clenched. Oh, they couldn’t stay—or she’d do something she would regret. “You’re going back to Chicago today, right?”

“Of course not.” Eric frowned. “We need to put the HVAC unit on the list of items to have serviced. It seems to be malfunctioning. You look awfully cold.” His glance lingered on her, and Belle had no idea what he was hinting at. “I’ve also felt icy spots in the house.”

Belle wasn’t worried about being chilly now, not when she was getting hot just being near them. “It’s on my list. I’ll take care of it.”

She wasn’t about to fess up that her room had gotten so cold the night before that she’d seen her breath. Surely, that had been a freak occurrence.

Fighting a smile, Kellan’s stare caressed her chest before taking a slow path back to her face. “I believe Eric is referring to your nipples, Belle. They’re very hard right now. If you’re not cold, then you must have been having some juicy dreams.”

She gasped and folded her arms over her chest. “The state of my nipples are none of your concern.”

“I could warm them up for you,” Tate offered. “Hands or mouth? Your choice.”

She ignored him. “What am I supposed to do with all this stuff when you leave? You are flying back to your jobs and responsibilities soon, right?”

“Nope,” Eric replied. “Like we said, you’re here, so we’re opening a practice in New Orleans. Unless you’re ready to go home with us.”

She held out a hand. “You were serious? No! You can’t do that. This is my home now. Yours is in Chicago. And have your forgotten than you’re not licensed to practice law in this state?”

“We’re not trying cases here.” Eric shrugged. “We’re telecommuting until our office manager is ready to return to the office with us. When you won’t come to the office, the office will come to you. We had a meeting last night after you went to bed and worked it all out. That’s part of our new protocols.”

Surely they didn’t need her assistance around the firm that badly. “Guys, I resigned.”

“We didn’t accept your resignation,” Tate replied cheerfully. He held up a stack of papers. “In fact, I had Sequoia fax me your employment contract. It’s for two years, so you should probably pull up a chair and get busy.”

“What?” She thought back, vaguely remembering something about guaranteed work. “That language was in there for my protection, not yours. You couldn’t fire me for any reason other than gross incompetence for two years without penalties. I made you put that in because your last three office managers lasted a total of two weeks. You always found something you didn’t like about them. If I recall, you fired one because he brought you the wrong soda.”

Eric shook his head. “No, baby, we really fired that guy because of his outrageous body odor. Tate’s got a very sensitive nose, and I’m pretty sure that guy thought he was allergic to deodorant.”

“You smell like happiness,” Tate supplied.

She almost laughed at his sappy grin, then she remembered they were trying to screw her over. “You can’t use that contract against me.”

“We totally can,” Tate shot back.

He acted like a five-year-old sometimes—but he was a man with a spectacularly square jaw and amazing pectorals she could see all too well through his tight T-shirt. She turned to Kellan, who would surely be the reasonable one. “Explain to him that it won’t hold up in court. That contract states you three can’t fire me, not that I can’t quit.”

Kellan poured a cup of coffee and handed it to her. “As his lawyer in this matter, I really can’t comment.”

It took all her self-control not to scream. They were closing ranks to show her a united front.

“You can’t hold me with that contract.” She grabbed the document and shook it in her fist.

“We’ll use whatever we have to in order to hold you,” Eric replied solemnly. “Belle, where you go, we go. If you decide to stay in New Orleans, we’ll just take the Louisiana bar.”

“I’m excellent at taking tests,” Tate said. “I’ll look forward to it. I might even enter into criminal law down here since the cases are so interesting. I’ve been watching this madam murder case all morning.”

Of all the conversations she’d imagined having with them now, this possibility had never crossed her mind. They had rejected her, so why had they come here and insisted on staying? God knew it shouldn’t be that hard to hire another competent assistant. But Eric and Tate didn’t act as if their interest was purely professional. Kell…she wasn’t sure where he was coming from and she was too afraid to ask.

Belle set the coffee mug down and walked through the house, then let herself outside, determined to get some fresh air and figure out what the hell was going on.

The courtyard was blissfully quiet with the single exception of Sir yipping as he chased an insect and the gently trickling fountain. One of the men had let him out and turned on the peaceful water feature. Their thoughtfulness did strange things to her heart. They were so concentrated when they worked. They got involved in a case and rarely did anything penetrate their cone of concentration, but one of them had stopped to let her dog out and make her world a little more tranquil.

What was she doing out here? There were three amazingly hot men inside her kitchen with varying degrees of interest in her, and she stood alone, mooning. Had they overreacted to that night in the suite? Had she? God, she wasn’t sure what to think, what to do. All Belle knew for sure was that she could still feel their hands on her, their mouths seizing her own, claiming her down to her soul. After they’d arrived last night, she hadn’t dreamed of dead girls hanging from the rafters, but of sharing a bed with them. Obviously, she’d felt safe with them in the house, so her mind had wandered—right back into their arms.

In her dreams, they’d surrounded her. Their arms had been the sweetest cocoon. Not only had they protected her, but they’d held her, pleasured her, loved her. She’d opened herself to all of them in turn, consuming the sustenance she needed from each: Tate’s goodness. Eric’s strength. Kellan’s dominance. She’d surrendered, giving over her problems in favor of their affection.

The trouble was, in her dream, they had worked in tandem to complete her, body and soul. No one had thrown a damn punch.

“Hey.” A dark voice skated over her skin, and Belle turned.

Kellan stood in the doorway. Instantly, she knew from the tight set of his lips that he had something on his mind. He wasn’t going to just leave her in peace.

Belle steeled herself because it looked like the fight had just found her.

* * * *

Kellan looked at Annabelle and tried like hell to keep the longing off his face. In the early morning, her skin glowed a warm, golden brown that had always fascinated him. Her hesitant expression and wounded chocolate eyes made him wish so badly that he was a better man. Why couldn’t he have met her before his marriage and the resulting disaster of his divorce? If he’d known her when he’d been a dumbass kid who thought the world was fair and wanted to make sure it stayed that way, he would have claimed Belle and never let her go. The cynic standing before her today wanted more than anything to believe in love and faithfulness, until death-do-us-part. But now, he couldn’t just forget the lessons from his trip down the aisle with Lila. How would his life have changed if Belle had been the woman on his arm that day so long ago?

“Kellan.” She put a hand on her chest as though catching her breath. “You scared me.”

Oh, likely she wasn’t scared enough of him. He intended to make her understand just how scared she should be, but first he had a case to plead. “Sorry. I just want to talk to you.”

Those gorgeous lips of hers thinned to a stubborn line. “There’s not much to say. You made yourself clear in Dallas. Message received. But now that I’m trying to leave, you’re using that employment contract to force me to stay? It wasn’t intended to force me to work for you.”

She was certainly smart enough to know the contract was a Hail Mary play, but they were very good lawyers. Still, he understood the way the court system worked and how the game was played. “It could take a while to convince a judge of that, and the case would have to be heard in Chicago. Do you need the name of a good attorney?”

“I shouldn’t need a lawyer.”

Probably not, Kell conceded. But he couldn’t let her ask Tate. The big genius would agree to represent her, then likely argue against himself in court.

“You’re being an ass, and I don’t understand why,” she went on. “You’re the one who wanted to be rid of me. So I left. Why does anything I do matter to you anymore?”

“Because they’re desperate, Belle. Could you just hear me out? We might be able to avoid a crappy, embarrassing court case we’re sure to lose.”

“At least you admit I’m right.” Arms crossed, she frowned and turned away from him, watching her dog-thing run around the tiny yard.

“It’s a stall tactic, and you know it. You’ve watched us work enough to know that sometimes we wait out the opposition long enough to make them rethink their position.” He sighed. “Listen, they can’t walk away. They won’t.”

“They?”

This was the hard part. He had to be honest with her. “We. I should probably go, but I don’t want to either, Belle. I need to talk to you before we make any decisions about the situation. But first, think about what Eric and Tate are offering you.”

She turned to him, her eyes wary under the delicate arch of her brows. Even in a cartoonish nightshirt, she was so beautiful it hurt. “I’ve already had a dose of what they’re offering me. I think I should keep waiting.”

“You’re not being fair, Belle. You are the singular most forgiving person I know, so why are you punishing them for my stance? You dropped a bomb on us that night.”

“It wasn’t a bomb, just the honest truth.”

“Maybe, but the news hit me like a ton of bricks.” He sighed because she was being naïve. “The honest truth is telling Eric that you liked the way he kissed or Tate that you swooned at the sight of him without a shirt, or even admitting that you enjoyed the spanking I gave you. Springing your virginity on us? That was a megaton bomb that blew up in my face. I admit that I didn’t handle it well. Don’t punish Eric and Tate for my behavior.”

She sat on one of the white patio chairs in the shady courtyard and hugged herself in the morning breeze. She seemed almost frail in that moment, though it was an illusion. Belle was strong. Kell had no doubt she’d easily survive his stupidity.

As much as he hated to admit it, he was the fucking fragile one. He pulled out the chair beside her, legs scraping the flagstone gently, then sank down. He ached to hold her close, but he’d lost that right. Hell, he’d never had it in the first place, and it was time to let her know why. “You know I was married, right?”

Belle shook her head, her long black hair caressing her shoulders softly. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

“Maybe I don’t have to, but I should.” Otherwise, nothing between them would work. She’d keep hoping for more from him because she always expected the best in others. And he’d just keep hurting her because he wasn’t strong enough to walk away again on his own accord. “Belle, I’m trying to salvage any sort of relationship between us because I really do care about you. I don’t even want to think about a world where I don’t see you, but you need to understand why I can’t do the hearts and flowers thing. Do you hate me so much that you won’t even listen?”

Somehow he hadn’t expected that of her. He should know better than anyone that a single moment could change a person for life. He should know that one betrayal could make an idealist bitter. He stood, sick to his stomach that he’d been the one to do it to her. Damn it to hell, he was going to have to find the strength to walk away from all of them because he was toxic if he could ruin someone as sweet as Belle with a few careless words. Destroying her would kill his best friends, too.

He just fucked everything up wherever he went.

“Never mind. I won’t force you to hear this.” He curled his fingers into a fist to stop himself from touching her. “I’m sorry.”

Belle touched him, a hesitant caress of her fingertips on the back of his hand, so soft he almost didn’t feel it. “Stop. You think I hate you, Kellan, and I don’t.”

When he looked down he saw that gorgeous face he knew so well, the one he saw every day while he worked and dreamed of every night when he slept. It tore at his heart. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

She shook her head. “I know you were married. Since you’re not anymore, I assume it didn’t end well.”

He eased back into the chair beside her, so close now their knees nearly touched. The intimacy of their closeness in the early morning light made it easier to confess his past.

“It was more than the end. Way more.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, trying to ease away the tension. “I met Lila in law school. We were the golden couple of our class.”

The slightest smile tugged her lips up. “I can see that.”

His head sometimes hurt just thinking about his ex-wife and her machinations. “My father is a judge.”

“In DC, right?”

“Yes, he’s a federal court judge, but before that he was a lawyer for years. Kent and Associates was a powerhouse firm. We made millions. When the president appointed dear old dad, I took over the firm. Well, Lila and I took it over. We hadn’t been married long.” He shook his head, thinking about all his stupid hopes and foolish dreams back then.

Belle tucked her hand in his. A stronger man would push her away, but damn, the world seemed like a better place when she touched him.

“Obviously, the divorce had a profound effect on you, Kell. You must have loved her very much.” A well of sympathy filled her voice.

He winced. That had been part of the problem. Perhaps he could have forgiven himself if he’d been blinded by love. “I thought I did, but I’m pretty sure now that I chose Lila because she fit the bill, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

That didn’t surprise him. Belle wouldn’t marry for any reason but pure, abiding love. “I was ready to start my life and getting married was the next step. I had a plan, you see.”

“Not surprising. You always have a plan.”

He was a list maker, a man who usually thought out his next twelve steps before taking one. He’d never been a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants thinker the way Eric could be. He’d never had impulsive moments like Tate. Nope, he thought through every pro and con, then made decisions based on his sometimes laborious risk assessment.

Loving Belle was too much of a danger. He’d decided that long ago.

“I wanted to go into politics. It probably sounds stupid, but I decided to seek office when I was a kid. I’m sure it had something to do with pleasing my parents. My mom was a wonderful woman. From the time I was little, she always said I should be president. We’ve had a few senators in our family, but Mom thought I deserved to be the first Kent to achieve the nation’s highest office. She put it just like that, too. I was convinced I wanted to help people. So corny.”

“Not at all. I think it’s admirable.”

Belle could be so naïve. “Did I really want to help people? Or was I just an ambitious fuck who had too much money and always wanted the best of everything? Being president looked like the best job, so I’d made up my mind to surround myself with the appropriate trappings and go for it. Lila was pretty and so smart it hurt. Hell, she was smarter than I was. Tate was top of our class, but she was right behind him. I trailed her academically, but she backed my dreams. So we became a pair. About the time I graduated, my mom died of cancer. Her last wish was that I pursue my dreams. She’d given birth to me and when she lay dying, I couldn’t do anything but promise I would.”

“Kellan, at the risk of sounding like Tate, it’s almost statistically impossible to become president. Your mother wouldn’t hold you to a deathbed vow, especially if chasing the goal was making you miserable.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t know my mother. She would be disappointed in me today. But at the time, I was determined to keep my promise. So I proposed to Lila, and we went to work for my dad’s firm. After a year, we started planning my first campaign. State senator. We began fund-raising, and for a while we were really a team. I thought we were happy. I wanted to have kids, but she put me off at first. She agreed it would be great publicity for me to campaign with a pregnant wife, but she wasn’t ready.”

Belle’s little gasp said it all.

“I wanted kids. Having them wasn’t just about the campaign for me. Please understand that. I wasn’t some party guy. I worked eighty hours a week and I was married. I wanted a family to come home to. For months after the wedding, Lila resisted even discussing trying to conceive. She didn’t want to lose her figure in her twenties. She wanted to establish her career. She wanted time with me. That last one was a lie because she was always working. But she had every excuse to avoid becoming a mother. Then suddenly she was ready to throw away her birth control pills. I should have known something was going on, but I chalked it up to her simply coming around to my way of thinking.” He snorted. “And I was a bit behind in the poll numbers.”

Her brows came together in a puzzled frown. “What do you mean ‘going on’? You two were practicing together at the same firm. Didn’t you practically trip over one another all the time?”

He could see where she would have a few misconceptions about their careers. “You’ve only worked in a very small office. You don’t know how easy it is to get lost in a big, corporate firm. We didn’t work in the same division. We were both heading large portions of the busy practice and we were starting to campaign locally, each with different responsibilities. It’s a lot of work. There are a ton of distractions, and one day I looked up and realized we didn’t spend time together anymore. And I hadn’t missed her as much as I should have. One Sunday, I sat her down and told her that she felt too much like a stranger to me and that we needed to make time to be together. She started crying and said she really wanted to have a baby.”

“Some people think having a baby will save a marriage. It rarely does, but…” Belle sounded as if she was making excuses for Lila’s behavior because she knew something bad was coming. “Maybe she didn’t know?”

“I wish she would have told me how she felt about us before I started the campaign, but I think she was hedging her bets. Turns out, she’d been having an affair for the past year. She’d gotten pregnant.”

Belle’s mouth gaped open. Shocked didn’t begin to describe her expression. “And she wanted to pass the baby off as yours?”

Kellan gave a resigned shrug. Spilling all this to Belle actually felt odd because his gut wasn’t churning the way it normally did when he thought of Lila. The guilt and self-loathing still felt toxic in his veins, but the mad rage was muted by Belle’s soothing presence, by her hand in his.

“It would have likely been easy to do. I was just happy to have everything falling into place. I would have smiled and never questioned it. I like to think I would have been a good dad, but mine was pretty awful, so I have no idea.”

“When did you discover the truth?”

“Three weeks before the election. That was when a staffer came to me and showed me the proof that my pregnant wife was having an affair.” He rubbed at the back of his neck again. “With my father.”

That day was still vivid in his memory. He could see the photos of his wife and father making love in the swimming pool where he’d played as a kid, where his mother had taught him how to swim. They’d had barbecues and family gatherings in that backyard, filling the expansive space with their big personalities. All of those memories had been burned away by a handful of photographs featuring his dear old dad happily plowing his beautiful bride.

“Oh my god, Kellan. That’s terrible.” Belle clapped her hand over her mouth and looked at him with an expression somewhere between horror and pity.

Once, he would have pushed her away, but now he realized this was as close as he could allow himself to be with her emotionally. Sex… Now that was different. He could have sex with her all fucking day and night, but taking her comfort pushed at his very firm barriers. Allowing her soft empathy meant she could sneak behind his walls, and he couldn’t allow anyone to do that again. He couldn’t give her what she deserved, and letting her indulge in the fantasy that he was a whole man would just hurt them both.

Still, he gave himself one moment—just this one—to sink against her and feel her gentle caring.

“My pride was shredded, but worse than that, my campaign was over and not for the reason you’d think.”

“Did someone leak the pictures?”

He huffed out a bitter laugh. “No, my father bought them. Then he sat me down and told me I was a disappointment, but he’d long known I would be. I hadn’t been man enough for my dad and I’d proved it by not being able to take care of my wife.”

Hell, son, I even had to get her pregnant for you. Maybe this kid will have some guts.

“Oh, Kellan, he was wrong.” Belle put an arm around him and looked into his eyes as if willing him to believe her. “You have to know that.”

Fuck if he didn’t want to wrap himself up in her warmth. But all he could allow himself was to let her touch him—and steel himself so that her comfort didn’t sway him. She really didn’t know the whole truth, and Kellan decided to skip over the part where he’d nearly killed his father that night. After his dad had goaded him and told him how pathetic he was, he’d finally seen red and showed the old man that he could, in fact, fight.

“That Monday, Lila filed for divorce. The ink had barely dried on the decree when she married my dad. She runs Kent and Associates to this day. Dad is still a judge, and they have a son they’ll ship off to boarding school about the time he turns four. He’ll be given the best of everything with the singular exception of any kind of affection because Lila isn’t my mom.”

When he looked back on his childhood, his mother had been his only nurturer. He’d been shipped off to the same boarding schools his half-brother would one day attend because Kents always had prestigious educations, but at least he’d been able to come home for summers and make some awesome memories with his mom.

“I feel for the kid,” Belle said, an ache in her voice. “And you, Kellan. You were the wronged party. Why did you have to leave everything behind? You could have exposed the truth and ruined them.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand how politics work. My father had been playing this game a long, long time. He was appointed to the bench by the president. He has power and influence. Once Lila filed for divorce and Dad put an engagement ring on her finger, it made me look weak. The party forced me to drop out of the race in favor of someone who could win. Everyone loves a winner, you know.” That humiliation still stung just under his skin. “I lost everything, including my ability to make a living. No one wanted to hire me, and if I had started my own firm, I would have been utterly without clients. I was done in DC.”

“So you came to Chicago?”

“Yeah.” He let out a long sigh. “I didn’t know where else to go. Eric and Tate had been my friends in law school until Lila decided they weren’t the type of friends ‘we’ needed. It wasn’t like I dumped them. Lila just made it harder and harder to see them. When we graduated, we drifted apart. Eventually, I let their calls go to voice mail because I wasn’t sure what to say. They moved to Chicago, and I settled into DC…and life went on.”

Belle eased her arms from around his body, but remained close. “You know, I’ve always thought you three were an odd mix, but somehow you work.”

“You have no idea. At first I thought they were freaks. Then I wished I had someone like them in my life. They’re weird halves of a whole, but sometimes I think I’m just hollow on the inside, so it would be better to be like them. They know who they are and what they want. They make no apologies for it.”

Kell could hear the envy in his own voice.

“Eric called me after he heard what happened,” Kell went on. “All those years I ignored them, but when I needed a friend, he reached out to me.”

And changed his life forever. Kell might have helped their firm fiscally, but they had given him something he’d never had before: true, stable friendships.

“I can’t repay their loyalty by ruining the one bond they desperately want. Belle, please don’t blame them for my inability to be the man you need.”

Tears shone in her eyes. “You don’t think you’ll ever trust another woman, do you?”

“I know my limitations. You’ve seen them. I’m damaged beyond any kind of repair. But I fully admit that I want you. That’s probably not fair to you, but it’s honest. I want to be your lover and your Dom, but you should understand my hard limits now. Do you see why a D/s relationship is all I can handle?”

“I understand why you believe that,” she said carefully. “But I wasn’t asking you for a ring.”

“You deserve one. Hell, you deserve three. I just can’t do it. If you want me to leave, I will. I can reinvent myself again. I’ll go west, maybe California.”

He hated the thought of moving, couldn’t even imagine not seeing Belle every day. This was why he’d really put off Tate’s plea to pursue her for so long. He’d been trying to delay this inevitable moment where he asked Belle to accept him strictly in her bed and she turned him down, forever changing both his relationship with her and his friends.

To his surprise, she didn’t slap him across the face. “Why would you leave?”

“Because I think you’ll forgive that horrible night in the suite eventually, but I don’t expect you to forgive me. If leaving means you’ll give them a chance, then I’ll go. I owe them that.”

She sighed and suddenly his arms were full of Belle, his whole world narrowing to the feel of her as she eased herself onto his lap and wrapped herself around him. Just like that, his cock sprang to full attention and he had to shift so he wouldn’t grind himself against her. Instead, he wrapped her tight in his arms. Just a minute. He would let go in just one minute.

“I won’t say I wasn’t mad and hurt, but…” she sighed against him. “I don’t want you to go.”

Her whisper slid warm and tantalizing across his skin. She turned her face up to his, and god help him, Kell couldn’t stop himself. She was right there, so close, her lips just over his. The world slipped away, and nothing mattered except the woman he held close.

He kissed her, his lips on hers, taking hers. The night in the suite had been incendiary, but this was softer, more intimate. So potent and wonderful…and dangerous.

She gasped as he claimed her mouth, but then she opened to him. She followed the rhythm and depth of his kiss with ease, as though they’d shared a thousand such kisses, danced the long slow grind of Dominance and submission together until they were in perfect harmony.

His whole body—not just his cock—reacted to her, tensing, shuddering, hardening. She made his heart pound, his brain haze over. Even breathing felt different when he had Belle in his arms. She made him feel more alive.

He was going to lose himself here if he wasn’t careful.

Abruptly, Kell ended the kiss. He needed to maintain distance between them however he could.

As their eyes met, hers went wide with stunned hurt. “You can’t even kiss me?”

He ached with the need to pull her close again, but the pain hovered just under the surface and he never wanted her to feel the agony he’d endured. “Not like this. This isn’t sex, Belle. This is more. These are feelings, and I can’t do those. I want you so badly, but I can’t have you in any way but sexually. I can’t share more than passion and bodies. So it would be better if I left. You could be happy with them. They really love you, Belle.”

With a long sigh, she let him go and shrank back to her seat, her eyes on the puppy again. He was now in a stare-off with an orange tabby cat dancing on the fence and taunting him. “I don’t know if it will work, Kellan. I think you’re more important to them than you think. From what I can tell, they were drifting before you came to Chicago. I worry they’ll drift again if you leave. I’ve watched you guys for a year now. Your friendship is a delicate balance. You work as a team in every aspect of your lives. I really think it will be the same in a romantic relationship. I think it’s why they’ve been so insistent about sharing.”

He hadn’t thought about it that way. Before they’d met Belle, the three of them hadn’t tried anything beyond a one-night stand because Kellan had refused to try a long-term relationship. But before he’d come along, Tate and Eric had attempted to date women. Nothing had stuck.

What would it be like if Kell dropped out of the picture and his friends made Belle their woman? Tate was too soft around Belle. He just let her walk all over him. Eric didn’t think about things like schedules. Belle would end up managing everything and that might become a burden. Kell recognized that he and Belle worked well together to juggle the details in their daily work lives. He enjoyed sharing that little bond with her. He’d never had a partner either professionally or romantically like Belle. Could he truly leave her and not be gutted?

Through the open door, he heard Tate and Eric start to argue about some case. It had to be getting heated because their voices could be heard over the ugly puppy’s whining. Apparently, furball had lost the staring contest with the cat and now seemed determined to prove he was louder, bigger, and badder. For her part, the cat just stared at some spot beyond the agitated dog. He could practically see the tabby rolling her eyes.

He was the referee, Kellan understood in that moment. He had been since he’d joined the firm. Who would arbitrate Eric and Tate’s often lengthy “debates” if he was gone? They could lose hours of productive time because they’d bicker over tiny interpretations in the language of a contract. Hell, they could waste hours arguing over the latest episode of Game of Thrones.

“Could you at least think about staying for a while?” Belle asked, leaning against him again. “I’m not asking for anything except a little time so we can all figure this thing out. I’m not sure this can work, but I’m willing to think about it.”

And that was all he could really ask. Time. He had a little more of it with her, and that filled him with a disturbing amount of relief. “Yes, I’ll stay. For now.”

He let his arm drift back around her shoulders and promised himself he would get up and deal with his partners.

In just a minute.