Free Grounded By You by Ivy Sinclair Page B

counter. Sam followed her gaze and saw that her phone rested there.
    “That’s the ring tone I gave my dad’s number,” she said. She sounded out of breath, and Sam noted with slight satisfaction that her lips were swollen. He was eager to claim them again.
    She laughed and slid out of his grasp. “Down, boy,” she quipped. “Give me a minute.”
    Sam’s heart raced at the sultry look she gave him. His fingers twitched to touch her in all the places that he had only imagined in his mind. She brought her fingers up and gave him the “ Shhh” signal as she grabbed the phone.
    “Hello,” she said. He chuckled at the mock officialness of her tone. “Oh, yes.”
    He watched the light in her eyes falter before it died out completely. “Right now? I’m a little… No. Of course, I don’t expect you to rearrange your schedule. Twenty minutes. Okay, I’ll see you then.” She put the phone down, and he saw that she was biting her lower lip again. The moment was clearly over.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “My dad’s on his way over. He wants to talk about when I’m going to be starting my new job.”
    “You haven’t told him yet?” Sam’s eyebrows rose.
    Millie sighed. “It’s complicated, Sam. It’s a delicate thing to tell a man like my father that I don’t want to take over the company that he spent his entire life building.”
    There were so many questions that Sam had for her, but he knew that it wasn’t the time to ask. Instead, he moved in front of her and then gently kissed her lips again. It was amazing to him that not only didn’t she push him away, but she seemed almost as eager as he was for the contact. Then he pushed her hair away from her face and cupped her chin again. “You can explain it to me later. I’ll help you put these canvases up and then I’ll get out of your hair before he gets here.”
    The look of gratitude on her face almost made up for the fact that he was going to have to leave her. He looked around the room again at all of the vibrant canvases. They were Millie to a tee. Then he pointed at three of them, the two he had already mentioned and then a third that showed a sunset over an old wooden bridge. He had no idea how she had captured the scene so perfectly, but he knew the spot like he knew the back of his hand.
    “Those three. And I’m sure if you can’t get the gallery owner to give you a show, the city of Bleckerville would buy that painting in a second. I’d be able to recognize Knollwood Bridge anywhere. There is a lot of joy in that picture, and it reminds me of last summer.”
    “Me too,” Millie said quietly.
    Sam helped her move the canvases into a closet in the back of the apartment. As she closed the door and hid them from view, she leaned against the door with a frown. “I hate hiding this part of me.”
    Placing a hand on her shoulder, he squeezed gently. “Hopefully you won’t have to do that much longer.” He wanted to ask her if she was going to try to hide what had just happened between them too, but he realized that it wasn’t the right time for that conversation.
    Millie glanced at her watch. “I hate to do this, but he’s going to be here any minute.”
    “You don’t want to be discovered cavorting with the movie star?” Although Sam was joking, there was a tiny undercurrent there that he realized he wasn’t entirely joking. He understood that Millie had things to talk about with her father, but he couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t another reason that Millie didn’t want them in the same room together.
    Millie told him quite a bit about James St. John during their summer together. In fact, one reason that she decided to spend the summer at the Willoughby was to avoid her father’s latest choice in a string of men that he routinely put in front of her like some kind of twisted love parade. When she described them, Sam couldn’t help but hear the distinct differences between those guys and himself.
    Ivy-leagued educated.