Free Kiss Me Kate (The English Brothers Book 6) by Katy Regnery Page A

wasn’t smirky at all. It was simple and sweet, and maybe even a little sheepish—just a teenage boy grinning at a teenage girl who’d inadvertently managed to make him slip up in his game of “too cool for you.”
    When she was little, Kate had a pair of blue and red lensed glasses, and when she wore them to read a specially-encoded book, she could see messages that were invisible without the glasses. As she smiled back at Étienne Rousseau, Kate felt like she’d just slipped on those glasses. Suddenly she could see him: the hope in his expression, the hint of vulnerability, the whisper of longing. He was just as young as she, likely as nervous, possibly even as interested. She knew what she was looking at, because her heart was certain it was a perfect mirror of the way she was looking at him, and it gave her the courage to respond.
    “You’re right. I was looking for you.”
    He chuckled softly—happily—as he reached for her free hand, lacing his fingers through hers and sending a swift shot of something awesome straight to her heart.
    “Now that you’ve found me, Kate English, whatever will you do with me?”

 
     
     
Chapter 4
     
    After such a disastrous reunion , er, meeting, Kate knew she needed to clear her head. The best option now that it had stopped raining was to walk the thirty minutes back to her office. Barrett tried to convince Kate to share a cab, but she handed him her briefcase and insisted on walking.
    What the hell had just happened between her and Étienne? And how was she going to be professional when they traveled to New Orleans together? They could barely remain civil in the same room for fifteen minutes. And she’d missed a crucial pitfall of the merger, which made her hunch her shoulders in shame. Still, the worst of it was that they’d had to schedule another face-to-face meeting to discuss how to unload the oil rig portion of the company, and while she was grateful for the home-court advantage of having the next meeting at her office, it meant that they wouldn’t be able to confine their communication to e-mail only.
    Kate needed to figure out a way to handle herself before Wednesday, but she was at a total loss. There was only one solution. Fishing her phone from her purse, she speed dialed her best friend, Libitz.
    “KK! ‘Sup?”
    Kate smiled instantly, picturing Libitz like she was standing right there on the wet sidewalk beside her: dyed black hair in a super-short Twiggy cut to match her super-skinny Twiggy body. Super-big, dark brown eyes dominating her elfin face, and some super-chic, barely there lip gloss shipped from Paris, because New York had nothing that would “do.” In short—no pun intended, although Libitz was also super-short—Libitz was, well, super .
    “Lib, it is so good to hear your voice.”
    “I’d say the same, but I know that voice. Tired, upset, and…yep. Tears. I hear ‘em. Who needs a good pounding?”
    Kate’s eyes watered as she burst into a giggle. Libitz weighed in at a cool one hundred and five pounds, which meant that she couldn’t “pound” anything more than a house fly. Lib looked so cosmopolitan and cool on the outside, her deep, protective streak always surprised people who didn’t know her, but Kate knew from experience: Lib was fierce when it came to the people she loved, and Kate ranked high on that list.
    “Étienne Rousseau,” she said, shaking her head at her own stupidity.
    “Wait!” exclaimed Lib. “Who?”
    “Étienne…um, I don’t know if you remember, but —”
    “ If I remember? Spring Break ‘03. Believe me, KK, I remember. I was there for the months upon months of tears.” Lib paused for a second. “What I don’t understand is why I’m hearing his name now.”
    “My company’s doing a deal with his, and I just…saw him.”
    “Oh my God. That’s huge!”
    “I know. Hugely awful.”
    “How does he look? Horns sprouted yet?”
    Kate chuckled again, swiping away the one tear that had gotten