Free The Scandal and Carter O'Neill by Molly O'Keefe

Of your child, of that relationship. It says a lot about you.”
    “That I’m crazy.”
    “Oh, you’re crazy,” he said with a laugh, and somehow it didn’t seem like such a bad thing when he said it that way. “But not for this.”
    Her body buzzed. Her hormones did a long slow rumba through her veins.
    “No one has said that,” she murmured.
    And she wished, so badly, that they would. And now, here was this man she didn’t want to like—reaching into her head.
    This dating business wasn’t going the way she thought it would. She thought a fake date would be business-like, that they’d talk about the weather or professional sports. Good God, she didn’t want to bond with the man.
    “Tell me something,” she said.
    “Oh, boy.”
    “That blond woman?” she said, “who paid me all that money?” She pushed past the tension in his face, the chill in his eyes. “Who is she?”
    “She’s no one,” he said. “Absolutely no one.”
    “Porterhouses?” Their waiter arrived from nowhere and started to unload a giant tray of food.
    “Holy…is this all ours?” Carter asked as the baked and scalloped potatoes hit the table.
    “Welcome to my world,” she said.
    And dug in.
    CARTER WALKED ZOE UP to her door, his hand cupping her elbow like he was holding a little fire in his palm.
    “You know if teaching dance stops working for you, I think you could go cross-country and enter eating contests. You like pie, right? Hot dogs?”
    She tried to look offended but he just laughed.
    “I have never in my life seen someone eat like you just did.”
    “I am going to choose to take that as a compliment,” she said, sticking her little nose in the air. It was cute. She was cute.
    She was funny and opinionated and elegant and goofy.
    A combination he hadn’t seen in a woman in years. This fake date, this task he’d had to take on, had begun to feel good. And his irritation with the elf had turned into something else entirely.
    Maybe it was watching her put away all that steak.
    He liked her. Was intrigued by her.
    “Where are all the reporters?” she asked as they climbed the steps to her apartment building unbothered. “Maybe we’re already old news.”
    “Don’t be too sure,” Carter said. “They might be lurking in the bushes.”
    “I doubt it,” she said, pausing in front of the glass security door. “I think in terms of scandals we’re pretty tame these days.”
    “Maybe you’re right,” he said, turning to face her.
    The moonlight slashed through the courtyard, cutting ribbons of white out of the darkness and her eyes glimmered in the half-light.
    She licked her lips, leaving them damp, and the moment melted into steam and heat.
    “I didn’t tell you how beautiful you look,” he whispered.
    “No,” she said. “You didn’t.”
    “I should have.”
    Her mouth opened. Closed. The sounds of crickets deafening in the sudden silence. Her hands smoothed over her belly. God, his need to touch her. To grab her even—it was nuts. He’d never in his life felt this way. Compelled.
    Like he wanted to open his mouth and inhale her.
    And before he knew it, before he could stop it, he was leaning down to kiss her. His fingers slid from her elbow to the fine skin of her neck.
    Velvet. Every inch of her was velvet.
    “Carter,” she whispered, her lips inches from his.
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t usually do this.”
    “Me neither.”
    “It’s the hormones,” she said. “The pregnancy. They’re making me crazy.”
    He laughed and, oddly, it didn’t ruin the mood. “Okay.”
    “And your suit. I love a man in a suit.”
    “I have lots.”
    “And the steak—”
    “Zoe?”
    “Yes?”
    “Can I please kiss you?”
    Her smile illuminated the darkness, a neon sign in the midnight sky. “Yes,” she sighed.
    He’d never kissed a woman while smiling and it was a hot sweetness. Honey on his lips, fire on his tongue.
    And then the night exploded in flashbulbs. The whirr and click of cameras. Zoe