Free Storybook Dad (Harlequin American Romance) by Laura Bradford Page A

lips, marveling at the sensation of
their mingling tongues and feeling the heat of his growing excitement against
her body. She disengaged herself far slower than circumstances called for,
resulting in some rubbernecking from the teenage occupants inside.
    She stepped back, swiping at her lips in an unexpected burst of
shyness that brought a crinkling to the skin around Mark’s eyes. “I—I…wow. I
don’t know what to say,” she confessed, once the car had passed.
    “Say you don’t want to call it quits for the night yet. Say we
can hang out a little longer. Say I don’t have to stop kissing you for at least
another couple of hours.”
    Lifting her wrist into the glow of the streetlamp, she took
note of the time, her heart sinking at the late hour. “But it’s already eleven
o’clock and—”
    “It’s a Friday, remember?”
    She paused. Mark was right. There was no pressing need to get
home, other than to take her medication. And that could wait another couple of
hours if necessary. In fact, the notion of not allowing her condition to impact
her evening in any way was very appealing.
    “So what do you suggest?” she finally asked, the resulting
smile on his face warming her from head to toe.
    “I don’t know. But I’ll think of something.”
    She savored the feel of his hands on her hips as he leaned
against the car and pulled her close, the look in his eyes as he stroked her
cheek threatening to render her speechless if she didn’t think fast. “What about
a little preview of what you missed the other morning?”
    “What I missed?” he asked absentmindedly, as his hand moved to
her hair and then her neck.
    “The back entrance to my office opens to a room two stories
tall. The climbing walls I have in there aren’t quite the same as scaling the
side of a mountain, but they’re perfect for someone wanting to learn. If you’re
interested, that is.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “Sure. It’ll be fun.” She disengaged herself from his arms and
pointed her key at the car, the quick chirp-chirp of the locks accompanied by a
flash of the headlights. “I’ve got a pair of shorts and a T-shirt I can change
into at my office. Then we’re good to go.”
    He stopped en route to the passenger side and made a T with his
hands. “Whoa. But I like the outfit you’re wearing now.”
    “I can’t rock climb in a skirt, Mark.”
    “Darn.”
    She laughed. “I can put it back on when we’re done. Though why
it’ll matter at midnight or later is beyond me.”
    “Because you look spectacular, that’s why.”
    She slid behind the steering wheel and put the key in the
ignition, the purr of the engine, coupled with the intensity in Mark’s eyes,
making her more than a little nervous. She’d gone rock climbing hundreds of
times. She’d taught men of all shapes and sizes how to do the same on the very
wall they’d be scaling in under twenty minutes. Yet in that moment, she would
have second-guessed her ability to teach someone their ABC’s, let alone how to
climb a two-story wall, with her heart thudding in her chest the way it was.
    And she knew why.
    For as much as she bemoaned Kate’s life plan, Emily wasn’t much
different herself. She might not have made an actual bullet-point list designed
to take her from college to her death bed, with a nod to every major milestone
in between, but she did like to be prepared.
    It was why, she always suspected, she liked the kind of
activities she’d built her life around. To kayak, she needed to be prepared—with
a paddle and a life jacket. To take a survival trip through the woods, she
needed to be prepared—with things like flint and a knife. To rock climb, she
needed to be prepared—with rope, a harness and connectors. To scuba dive, she
needed to be prepared—with a diving helmet and suit, weights, a regulator and a
tank.
    And when the doctor had walked into her hospital room six
months earlier and uttered the words multiple
sclerosis, she’d begun the