One More Kiss (Forsaken Sons Book 1) by Elizabeth Lennox (good summer reads .TXT) 📕

And every time he saw her do it, he wondered what other ways she let herself go.

By the time lunch rolled around, he was more than ready to stop working and just spend some time with her.  He grabbed the meal he’d prepared and waited. Sure enough, Kinsley poked her head around the door, looking for him.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Yes!” she beamed and stepped fully into the room.

“Let’s eat,” he led the way through the side door to their pergola.  It still boggled him that he’d spent an entire weekend building it.  But the smile on her face had been worth the effort.  He’d loved the way she’d walked around, noticing all of the small details.  And when she’d stopped on the far side and stared at the view of the mountains, Lincoln knew that he’d built the damn thing just for her.

Yep!  He’d built a pergola for a woman who was engaged to be engaged to another man.  He was a complete idiot!

“Here,” he grumbled, handing her a sandwich.  He’d made a special kind of pesto for today’s lunch and he waited for her to take a bite, putting out the other food he’d brought.

“Oh, this is good!” she sighed, savoring the bite.  “Amazing!  Is this brie?”

Lincoln nodded, putting out a fruit salad.  Not because he liked fruit salad, but he’d made it after figuring out that Kinsley loved fruit and wasn’t a huge fan of vegetables.

“I’m going to get fat if I keep eating like this,” she laughed.

His eyes moved over her figure.  “No, you’re not,” he replied, thinking that she could stand to gain a few pounds.  “Eat,” he urged, pouring her some iced tea.

She nibbled on her sandwich and he picked up his own, but he sensed there was something on her mind.  Lincoln waited, wondering when she’d brave it out and just ask.

“You’ve mentioned your mother several times over the past few weeks.  I know that you have a good relationship with her.  But what about your father?  What do you know about him?”

Bad subject, he thought.  “Only that he was a complete bastard who abandoned my mother as soon as she discovered that she was pregnant.”

Kinsley’s face fell with those words.  She nibbled on her sandwich thoughtfully.  “Oh.  That doesn’t…he doesn’t sound like a nice man.”

“He isn’t.”

She lifted hopeful, blue eyes up to his.  “Maybe there’s something more to the story,” she postulated.  “Perhaps he was…?”

Lincoln lifted a hand at that.  “Before you go down that road, how about if we make a deal?”

Her eyes widened.  “What sort of a deal?”

He considered his next move, wondering if it was wise.  Probably not, he accepted.  But he was going to do it anyway.  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know about my father.  But only after you bring Kurt over for dinner one night this week.”

“Carl?  You want to have dinner with Carl and me?” she asked, blinking at him.  “Why would you want to meet Carl?” she asked, correcting her boyfriends’ name.

He shrugged and loaded her plate with more fruit salad.  “I just want to meet this paragon of perfection that you talk about so often.”

She laughed, waving that comment aside.  “Oh, Carl isn’t perfect.  Not by a long shot.”

“What are his weaknesses?” he prompted, wanting to hear them so that he could savor each one.

She paused for a moment, tilting her head to think about the question.  “Well, he’s…” she hesitated and Lincoln knew that she didn’t want to say anything bad about her boyfriend.  Kudos to her, but he wasn’t relenting.  “Well, no one is perfect.”

Lincoln shrugged.  “Okay, so tell me his strengths.  What do you like about him?”

She smiled gently and he hated that expression.  “He’s just a nice guy,” she told him. “We like the same restaurants, the same foods.  He likes to garden.  He dresses nicely.  Carl takes a lot of pride in his clothes.”  She laughed slightly and looked down at her food.  “He dry cleans his jeans,” she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper, as if she’d admitted to something completely naughty.

Lincoln snorted with disgust.  “That’s…” he was going to say something derogatory but held back.  “Interesting,” he finally finished.

“It’s weird,” she asserted with a nod.  “I mean, isn’t the whole point of wearing jeans to be comfortable?”  She glanced briefly at Lincoln’s well-worn jeans.  “Why would you dry clean jeans so that they are stiff with starch?  He also likes it when there’s a crease on the legs.”  She shook her head, and realized that she was being negative.  “But that’s just his way. He likes his jeans pressed nicely and I shouldn’t judge.  I mean, I like things organized to a crazy degree.”

“What else?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess he’s very ambitious.”

“How so?”

“Well, he’s working many hours lately in order to impress his supervisor.  He’s trying for a promotion at work.”

Lincoln couldn’t say anything negative about someone being ambitious.  Most people might think that he was ambitious.  But in reality, he just liked tinkering with things and had lucked out by creating several inventions that people needed.  His ability to see solutions to problems had made him a very wealthy man.  He wasn’t ambitious though.  He wouldn’t care if he never released another invention into the world.  He had enough money in the bank and invested that he could easily live off the interest for the rest of his life.

Lately, every time he pictured that life, Kinsley was by his side.

“So, is it a deal?” he asked.

“Sure,” Kinsley agreed, stabbing a grape with her fork.  “What time?  And what should I bring?”

“Tomorrow night.  Six o’clock.  Don’t bring anything except Cody.”

“Carl,” she emphasized with a twinkle in her eye.  “If we’re having dinner together, then you’re going to have to use the right name.  I know