It’s In His Kiss

CHAPTER TWO

Seraphina King had put sex and nakedness and ‘I Want You’ into spoken-out-loud sentences and quite frankly, even days later and watching Daisy for her in an effort to feel less bad about turning her down, Luke was still a little pissed off.

What the hell had she been thinking? Did she really not have any idea how long it took a guy to scour those kinds of words from his mind so that he got to enjoy a platonic friendship with someone like her?

He didn’t care how stressed she was over the launch of her business.

Okay.

He did.

He knew she had been finding it tough ever since her father died. Jeremy King’s reputation in business had to have her stressing over every decision, wondering what he would have thought. Or wondering what her brother, who ran a large property-acquisition company in New York and what her sister, who ran the family King Property Corporation, did think.

Plus, Luke knew her mother going to New York meant Sephy not only had to keep an eye on the estate, she also lost out on guaranteed childcare help, which meant fewer hours to sew and work on the launch.

Even so…

How did she not see that asking him to sex up her ad campaign was crossing a line?

And when he’d said no, like any sane non-professional-model friend would have, she had clucked at him like a chicken.

As if basically calling him a coward was going to help.

‘I now pronounce you husband and wife.’

Luke looked over the top of his laptop screen to where a half-pint Darth Vader was busy playing marriage celebrant to Princess Belle and a slightly dazed-looking Woody from Toy Story.

His smile reflex kicked in as Darth Vader, aka five-year-old Daisy King, decided the only obvious way to mark the end of the ceremony was to knight her newly married toys with her lightsaber.

Not quite what it had been designed for, but she definitely got points for imagination.

Bringing his gaze back to his laptop screen, Luke settled back against the sofa cushions and stared at his new computer-game project brief he’d helpfully titled: What Happens After All The Zombies Are Slain???

Two seconds into staring at it and his concentration wandered.

Helping out with Daisy was the kind of thing friends did for friends.

Helping out with that other thing? Insanity.

Thanks to Lily and Steve Jackson, Luke might not be the same shadow of a kid he had been under his biological mother’s roof, or all the other foster homes he had been placed in, but that didn’t mean he was happy being put on display.

He really had nothing to feel guilty about.

Daisy picked up Woody and Princess Belle and started walking them down the makeshift aisle she had created out of flowers pulled from the garden behind the row of garages that formed the ground floor of the apartment she and Sephy lived in on the King estate.

What he wouldn’t give right now for a dose of Daisy’s unfiltered imagination so that he could crack on with some work.

Actually, scratch that.

He had enough unfiltered, left-field, downright distracting imagination coming from her mother.

Luke stared at his screen and re-doubled his efforts to think about what types of challenges he wanted the users of his new world-building game to have to overcome, because his latest zombie evolution wasn’t cutting it for him any more. Lately, he’d get so far on development before hitting a brick wall, but he had to keep faith that the online multi-platform role-playing gaming community would love his new game as much as the Zombie Freedom Fighter series he had created.

He didn’t get why he was finding it so hard to create this new game. It wasn’t as if he was in the ‘second album’ slump of despair. He had managed to navigate that scary time by gritting his teeth and being so determined to succeed – to better the success of his first game even, that nothing could have stopped him.

So why the problem? This getting to the edge of a precipice and staring into the void beyond had started even before Sephy had thrown him a curve ball.

He tracked the mouse pad with his finger and clicked on his email inbox. If he couldn’t get into the design groove while Daisy was happy playing with her toys, he could at least deal with a few emails.

‘Traitor,’ he muttered under his breath when the arrow cursor on his screen bypassed the fresh batch of business emails and went straight to the middle of his inbox list.

Luke stared hard at the screen.

So, yeah, he thought he might know what had him so distracted from his work, and it all started and finished with the subject line: Get the cleaner in lad…Lily and I are coming for a visit!

It had to be the first time Steve and Lily Jackson had taken a break from fostering, and how had they chosen to celebrate that break? By visiting each of the brood that had flown the coop over the years, so that they could see them in their own habitats and check for themselves that they were all right.

Luke had taken great care over the years to assure them he was absolutely fine. Right up to the inclusion earlier this year of a little white lie that had put paid to the ever-increasing fretting that he was focusing way too much on work and not nearly enough on a personal life.

His fingers rubbed over his chest to ease the stab of guilt.

Yeah. Totally shouldn’t have lied like that.

Because now, if he didn’t come up with a plan and his lie was exposed, he was going to have to endure the unspoken lecture about how they had taught him differently. But worse than that, he would witness their disappointment morph into worry that they’d somehow failed him, and they deserved so much better than that.

‘Mummy!’ Daisy suddenly observed, at the sound of the front door opening, and Luke was saved from thinking about what he was going to do about the email and white-lie situation.

A couple of seconds later and Sephy King walked into her lounge.

Damn, but it was hard to stay mad at her, Luke thought, aware of his eyelids performing the slow-blink thing that they always did when he saw her.

He let the gesture slide because you couldn’t look at Sephy, register all the siren-like qualities – the oval-shaped face, almond-shaped eyes, bow-shaped lips, long jet-black silky hair, and a body that could, and probably had, made more than one man beg, and not react a little.

He was just lucky he had got it down to that small betraying tick.

Especially after what she’d so recently placed front and centre in his imagination.

‘Hey you,’ he greeted, as she came to a stop behind the sofa.

Swinging from her shoulder was the same huge soft brown leather tote exploding with vibrant-coloured interesting froufrou that had got him into trouble the other day. One of her hands clutched a tablet and large sketchbook and the other was wrapped around a travel mug. From the way she was white-knuckling the coffee receptacle, Luke guessed she was on at least her fifth refill of the day.

Dumping the tablet and sketchbook onto the sofa next to him, she let her shoulder slump so that the heavy bag could slip down to the cushions as well. With a hand now free she took the keys that she’d been gripping in her mouth, tossed them into the bowl on the coffee table and moved to flick her long hair over her shoulder with a grace that had absolutely no business beguiling him.

‘Hey you,’ she said on a long sigh, raising her ever-present drink to her lips to sip, before hesitating and obviously thinking better of it.

Definitely for the best, he thought. The snap and sizzle of energy barely kept in check was tangible from this proximity. Or was that the uneasy undercurrent running between them?

‘Did you find a model?’ he asked, really, really, hoping that she had.

‘That would be a negative,’ she said, glancing over at her daughter and taking in the Darth Vader helmet and cape with a slight shake of her head, before sliding her gaze back to Luke. ‘Was she all right for you?’

‘Yep,’ he replied, thinking they obviously weren’t at the laughing about him saying ‘no’ stage yet, then. ‘We went out for the Sunday papers and then she insisted on watching a DVD with me, before getting out every single one of her toys to perform multiple marriage ceremonies.’

‘God, don’t tell me,’ Sephy moaned, ‘Woody has committed bigamy again?’ There was an accompanying and exasperated shudder that had Luke grinning in spite of the new wariness between them.

‘You’d think Buzz would help a buddy out, but he’s obviously seeking out infinity and beyond,’ he said.

‘Actually he’s in my bag,’ Sephy confessed in a whisper. A smile chased out some of the stress as she looked again at her daughter. ‘I found him earlier when I was looking for my tape measure.

Luke wanted to ask her what the hell she had been measuring, given that she was supposed to be looking for a male model to re-shoot her ad campaign.

‘So,’ Sephy made a circling motion with her hand, as if to encompass Daisy’s Weddings R Us setup. ‘Is it only Woody who’s off to jail as soon as the honeymoon’s over, or did my daughter rope you in for a little bigamy too?’

‘Nope. No bigamy here.’

‘Phew,’ she said, blowing out an oversized breath of relief. ‘Not that I’m looking to get married.’

‘And not that I’m asking,’ he countered.

Sephy looked as if she was going to say something, but in a majestic show of self control, she walked around to the squashy armchair and plonked herself down instead.

‘Mummy,’ Daisy announced, ‘I think Luke will come back tomorrow and then you and he can get married like Belle and Woody.’

An interesting sensation spread under Luke’s chest wall as his gaze whipped to Sephy.

Her expression said it all. Comical horror that said in equal measures: ‘What the hell?’ and ‘We so need to remember my daughter has the hearing of a bat.’

Luke wondered if Sephy even realised her hand was rubbing unconsciously over her sternum, as if to chase away her instinctive recoil at the mere mention of a make-believe marriage.

Disappointment ditched its cloak and streaked naked through his head and Luke needed a couple of seconds to work out that Sephy’s reaction should mean nothing to him personally.

He was no longer a young boy facing rejection after rejection and she wasn’t rejecting him for real or otherwise.

The whole world knew Sephy King was marriage-phobic.

He didn’t know why, and probably never would. They weren’t the kind of friends to focus on their pasts and make that about who they were now. They were the kind of friends who bantered, supported and championed each other – but only with the lightest of touches.

All of which was fine by him.

At least it had been, until Sephy had had to go and break the rule she had put in place the first time they had met.

Luke cast his mind back to seeing Sephy for the first time. She had been sitting alone in their local college canteen one summer evening and instantly caught up in the pull of her, he had ended up performing a move so completely uncool, it was only sheer dumb luck no one had whipped out their phone, filmed it and stuck it up on YouTube.

One moment he had been Mr Jackson, after-school coding-club mentor, giving a little back to the community. The next, in an actual tripping-over-a-chair-leg, tray-flying-up-in-the-air moment, he had managed to recreate every teen-movie pastiche of the geek falling for the popular girl. The fact that he and Sephy were both a good few years past their teen incarnation hadn’t, in any way, made the move look ironic.

She had been so sweet about the coffee splash-landing against her portfolio and he had felt like such a schmuck when he had discovered she was waiting to interview for a place as a mature student on a degree course in fashion design. But as if used to men making an absolute fool of themselves in her vicinity, she had calmly mopped up the mess and offered to buy him a replacement after her interview.

Used to having way better game, Luke had spent the wait working out how to charm her into exchanging coffee for dinner. But when she had met with him thirty-five minutes later she’d had a determined look in her eyes that said she had cast their roles the moment of his initial bungled approach. They were going to be friends, nothing more.

Over that coffee, looking into eyes the colour of dark, good-for-your-heart chocolate, he had learnt that once Sephy King made her mind up about something that was that.

So friendship it was, and a year on neither of them had ever overstepped the terms Sephy had set out. Until she had asked him to be in her lingerie ad and he’d had to tamp down the spike of adrenalin that came with being reminded she had the power to surprise him.

‘Daisy,’ Sephy said mock-sternly and pulling Luke’s focus back to the present. ‘I know you know tomorrow is a school day. Stop fishing for more playtime.’

Daisy giggled.

‘Uh-huh,’ Sephy nodded. ‘Knew it. Besides, I really think I’m going to have to limit you on how many marriage ceremonies you perform a week. Your toys must be exhausted.’

‘No, Mummy, they love it,’ came the confident reply as Daisy promptly started preparing to marry another set of toys.

Luke could tell Sephy was chewing the inside of her cheeks to stop herself laughing and as she turned her attention back to him and he mentally took his cue to put her back into the friend box, he knew that aside from the unconscious sexuality she exuded, what really drew her to him, and had him accepting her boundaries, was simple. Put her daughter anywhere in her sightline and the softness that washed over her expression merged with a sort of defiant warrior-like strength that reminded him of the way Lily and Steve Jackson went about loving their kids.

Even him, which he knew he hadn’t made easy.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sephy said, flicking her gaze apologetically to his laptop, ‘I was much longer than I said I’d be and I know it’s impossible to work with Daisy running around.’

‘Relax. I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t happy to help out,’ and if I didn’t feel guilty as hell for not helping you with the other thing. ‘Besides, it wasn’t Daisy who stopped me working. It was me.’ He glanced down at his laptop and closed the lid. ‘I’ll get there.’ At least he would as soon as he ‘fessed up his white lie to his foster parents and dealt with the fallout.

‘So are you staying for take-out, or is this a date-night for you?’ Sephy asked.

Luke’s gaze was drawn to the silks and satins and frothy laces hanging out of the leather bag next to him on the sofa and he remembered he hadn’t had a date in…quite a while.

Damn.

No wonder he was focusing so much on Sephy and her out-there request.

Maybe he ought to go home, grab a shower and give the woman from the gaming convention he had attended in London last week a call.

Amy, he thought her name was. Or was it Laney? Jamie?

His gaze slid to Sephy, who was looking at where he had been staring. He caught the tinge of pink high on her cheekbones and noticed she wouldn’t quite look at him as she stood back up and went to give Daisy a quick hug before wandering out to the kitchen, where he could hear her filling the kettle.

When he’d picked up the bra that had fallen out of her bag the other night, he hadn’t liked that his first thought – his only thought – had been that she must have been wearing the bra…and then she wasn’t.

Immediately that had expanded into wondering if it was because someone had taken it off her.

Ryan maybe?

Daisy’s father hadn’t been back on the scene for long, but Luke knew the man was busy trying to lay down all sorts of good impressions along with his good intentions.

A dart of jealousy had hit Luke clear between the eyes and he’d had to convince himself that Sephy was perfectly entitled to do whatever she wanted with whomever she wanted.

Except for with Ryan, he had thought, as his gut had tightened painfully.

Ryan would mean it was serious. She wouldn’t go there again, otherwise. She wouldn’t risk Daisy’s happiness if it didn’t work out.

Luke could still remember the feel of the satin between his fingertips, even as he’d scolded himself that he really did not need to be thinking about Sephy and sex.

With anyone.

‘No, no date tonight,’ Luke said now, ignoring the voice in his head telling him he really ought to go home and force himself to put in a few hours’ work. He wandered into the kitchen and added, ‘Take-out would be great.’

Sephy stared at him for a second longer than he was comfortable with and then, with a brisk nod, walked over to the dresser drawer, where she kept all the local take-out menus.

‘What do you feel like having?’ she asked, tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear.

You.

Luke balked and shoved his hands into his jeans back pockets. Crap. He had to nip this in the bud. Now, indeed ever, was not the time to be taking himself off the leash where he and Sephy were concerned. ‘I’m easy,’ he said and then cursed inwardly when she whipped around from the dresser, a teasing note lighting her eyes.

A heartbeat later and it was gone.

Like she too couldn’t get her head around how asking him to model had created this awkwardness between them.

He should have left while he’d had the chance. Now, tonight – later, when he was supposed to be thinking about work, he was going to be thinking about how he hated saying ‘no’ to people he cared about; hated being the bad guy.

Hated that her asking him to help her had made him think about all those times the car had come to pick him up from where he was living and take him to someone else’s home, where he’d been looked at and assessed for fitting in, and found wanting. Or rather…unwanted.

Luke knew his jaw had tightened when he felt the roots of his teeth protest. Deliberately he faked a yawn to try and relax and then tipped his head one way and then the other to try and release some of the built-up tension in his neck.

‘Why don’t I order while you get Daisy ready for bed?’ he asked, taking out his wallet to check what cash he had.

‘I can pay for a take-out, Luke.’

Luke studiously ignored the note of censure in her voice. ‘Does it matter who pays for it?’

There was a moment’s silence and then, ‘I take it you were the one who bought Daisy that Darth Vader outfit?’

Luke caught the catch of chastisement in her voice and wished he could decipher whether it was down to the fact that he’d spent money on Daisy when Sephy was touchy about money, or whether it was because he wasn’t Daisy’s dad.

‘I guess I should have run it past you, first.’ Feeling sheepish, he thought he might as well confess all. ‘I also bought her a lightsaber.’

Sephy reached over with a mug of coffee for him and Luke winced as the chunky porcelain landed extra hard on the large wooden kitchen table. The bee in her bonnet was definitely more about the money, then.

‘In my defence,’ he said lightly, ‘you were only saying the other day that you really hoped she got over her sickly pink phase soon.’

He risked a glance, caught the twitch of her lips and thought a smile might be in the offing.

‘So what you’re saying,’ Sephy said, ‘is that I should be thanking you for helping her transition from Princess to Sith?’

‘You’re welcome,’ he grinned.

Sephy rolled her eyes. ‘And you let her watch Star Wars again, didn’t you?’

Oops. ‘Have some pity. There are really only so many times a guy can watch Frozen.’

Now Sephy’s grin spread across her face as she lowered her mug to the table and said, ‘But Luke – don’t you know? Love is an open-’

‘Argh,’ Luke stuck his fingers in his ears as Sephy started singing a tune from the film. When she saw him cross his eyes in pain, she laughed and sang louder until he was forced to start humming the theme tune to Star Wars to drown her out.

The louder she sang, the louder he hummed, until Daisy walked in, dragged off her helmet and in solidarity with her mum performed her own ear-splittingly loud rendition of ‘Love is an Open Door’.

Luke and Sephy grinned at each other like big kids, near-argument over money and over-stepping the boundaries of friendship totally forgotten in the moment.

‘Right then, Darth Daisy,’ Sephy said once Daisy had completed every verse and chorus, ‘say goodnight to Luke while I get you a quick drink. Then its bath time, followed by bed.’

‘’Night Luke,’ Daisy said, making him proud when she started singing the theme tune to Star Wars.

‘You,’ Sephy said, pointing to him as she ushered Daisy out of the kitchen, drink in hand, ‘order take-out and don’t for one minute think that I’m not paying. If the food comes before I finish putting this one to bed, my purse is in my bag.’

Luke watched them depart the kitchen.

In their wake, the sudden silence reminded him of being in his own place and how he tried to avoid that as often as possible. Ears straining, he could just about make out Sephy and Daisy chatting away about their day. Glad of the background noise but needing more, Luke picked up his coffee and wandered back into the lounge to switch on the TV. He knew to leave at least fifteen minutes before he ordered food or it would be cold by the time Sephy got to it.