Though he shouldn’t mention any plans to Vivian quite yet. First of all, Jacob wasn’t certain what, exactly, he could pull off. Nor did he want her to think he was being benevolent in order to curry favor with her, or to make her feel beholden to him in any way. He’d rather be anonymous and know deep inside his heart that he’d done everything he could to help her achieve her dreams.
But that was a project for later. Right now, the only thing he wanted from life was to keep kissing the clever, talented woman here in his arms.
20
Viv was breaking her most sacred rule:
No romantic entanglementsuntil a successful playwright career is well established.
After years of being certain she didn’t evenlikeWynchesters, she couldn’t quite fathom how she’d wound up in this one’s embrace.
Except for the part where she’d wrapped her arms about his neck and pulled him close.
Their entanglement wasn’t aromance, Viv assured herself. This was just a kiss. Men dished out kisses all the time without it meaning any particular commitment. Surely, she could be just as nonchalant.
But Jacob was a maddeningly good kisser, damn him. His lips were warm and inviting, his taste sweet and forbidden. He emanated heat like a fire on a winter’s day: comforting, yet dangerous to touch.
Here she was, doing plenty of touching. Not merely approaching the fire but stoking the flames. Pressing her entire body against him, from bosom to hips. Not that he was complaining. All physical signs indicated he would be happy to lean her back across this sideboard and take her right here, with the scattered piles of her failed plays as a mattress. At least the pages would be used for something.
But Viv was now the playwright of her own life. The architect ofher own success or ruin. She could stop this kiss before it went too far. She could exit this embrace any time she pleased.
The surprise twist was that she didn’t want to stop. She not only liked Jacob’s kisses, she likedhimfar more than she wished to admit.
His soulful eyes and slow smile and strong body—those elements were why every woman he passed took a second glance. Viv had seen beyond that.
She had been in his home. In his barn. In his arms. She knew how kindhearted he was, how insightful, how stubborn and clever.
He’d never voiced it, but she also understood deep in her marrow how it felt to be good at something, to have drive and tenacity, to have a calling, only to be overlooked or dismissed out of hand because of the prejudices of those in power.
She wouldratherhave in common that they were the two most famous writers in England—or the world!
Which unfortunately reminded her that in order to earn that someday, she needed to stop kissing this delicious man and return to real life. With far more regret than she dared to show, Viv untangled her hands from behind Jacob’s neck and lowered her lips from his.
“I…” she began, flustered to have momentarily forgotten all of her best objections.
He nodded. “Me, too.”
Had he read her mind? Or did he think she meant something else entirely?
Jacob dropped to a crouch, swiftly gathering all of the fallen papers before she had a chance to clean up her own mess.
“Set them anywhere,” she said. “They’ll take hours to put in order, and there’s no sense bothering. No one wants to read them.”
“I do,” he answered. “I’ll put them in order for you.”
“You don’t have to,” she said quickly.
His brown eyes were gentle.
“I want to,” he said simply, his voice soft and warm. “Let me do something for you, just this once. You can tell yourself it’s a blatant selfish bid for free reading material at any cost.”
She snorted, despite herself. “That doesn’t even make sense. Besides, you and your entire family are already doing things for me. Finding Quentin is far more important than reading my plays or… anything else we might have been doing.”
He arched his brows. “What else might we do?”
Her neck heated. His kiss wasn’t one she would be forgetting soon—or ever. A kiss like that would turn up in her next ten plays, right along with the happy endings she couldn’t manage to write for herself in the real world. A kiss like that deserved footlights and fireworks and a standing ovation. She’d be replaying it in her dreams for the rest of her life.
“I’ve forgotten the entire incident,” she assured him. “As though it never happened. Two strangers, staying strange. I mean celibate. I mean separate.” Good God, what was this jumble of word soup flowing from her mouth? “I’m busy, you’re busy,” she babbled. “Don’t let me keep you from your tasks.”
