Filed To Story: Falling for My Ex's Mafia Dad Novel Free PDF (Fay Alden & Kent Lippert)
Ivan doesn’t flinch at that. Just holds my eye contact, his face steady. “Honestly, Fay?” he says, his voice as serious as mine now. “It started that way. But you are a surprise. Every extra minute with you,” he says, his eyes drifting down to my mouth, “has made me want to do this more and more.”
And then, slowly, he lifts his hand to the back of my neck, tangling his fingers in my hair, pulling me closer.
I exhale, my stomach turning over with anticipation, and close my eyes.
But.
The kiss never comes.
Instead, I feel Ivan’s grip loosen, and see the color change on the inside of my closed eyelids from purple to orange. I blink my eyes open, looking towards the now-open door leaking sunlight into the room as Ivan straightens on his stool next to me.
“Well, Fay,” he murmurs, looking at the six guys in suits who walk into the bar, their eyes on us. “Looks like you have a decision to make.”
They see us, then, and steadily walk over, their faces deadly.
“Fay,” the one at the front says. It’s a guy I’ve seen a hundred times in Kent’s kitchen having breakfast, but I don’t know his name yet. “It’s time to go home now.”
I don’t say anything, just quickly shoot back my shot, flinching and wiping my mouth with my arm.
Ivan smirks at Kent’s guys, placing his still-full drink back onto the bar. “Nice afternoon we’re having, isn’t it?” he says, cheeky.
The men ignore him, their eyes fixed on me.
I grimace and turn to Ivan. “I’d better go,” I say, sad to see it end.
“I get it,” Ivan says, hopping up from his seat and putting a hand out to help me down, which I accept. “If he’d sent one, I could take ’em,” he says, “but six?”
I laugh a little, nodding in agreement, my eyes fixed on his face as I hop down from my stool.
“A pleasure, Fay,” he says, surprising me then by raising my hand, still in his, to his mouth and pressing a kiss to my knuckles, his eyes on mine the entire time.
“Thank you,” I say, fascinated by him, my words hardly more than a whisper. “It was…I’ll never forget today.”
“Hopefully you won’t have to,” he murmurs, letting my hand go and putting his in his pocket. “I hope that we have lots more afternoons, just like this.”
I smile at him, then, even as Kent’s guy gently takes my arm and guides me out of the bar.
Ivan’s face is the last thing I see before the door closes and I turn towards the street, blinking in the sunlight.
“Come on, miss,” the guy says, leading me over to a black SUV idling in the road next to Ivan’s car. “He’s not happy.”
“He never is,” I murmur, looking out the window at the bar as we drive away.
The trip passes quickly, lost in my thoughts as I am. I barely notice the city passing by as we drive through it. When we get back to the house, though, I do notice when the driver turns to pull in front of the house, instead of to the garages around the side and back.
I’m about to open my mouth to ask about the change when the car comes to a stop, Kent’s guy next to me opening the door and getting out.
And then, as soon as he moves so that I can see the front of the house, I know why.
He’s standing there, at the top of the steps in front of his front door, his arms crossed across his chest as they always are when he’s pissed at. He glares at me as I guiltily climb out of the car, meeting his eye.
“Good luck,” Kent’s guy murmurs, closing the car door behind me and walking around to the other side. “You’re going to need it.”
And as I stare at Kent up there, at the top of the stairs?
I know he’s right.
“Fay,” Kent calls, from the top of the stairs. “Inside. Now.”
Kent doesn’t wait for me to climb the steps up to the house. Instead, he goes in ahead of me, leaving me to follow dutifully behind.
I feel my stomach turn over for the second time today, though this time for totally different reasons. I would feel better, frankly understand it more if Kent were freaking out at me. Yelling at me, losing his temper, giving me commands.
But this Kent? The quiet, controlled, considered Kent?
He’s the one I’m afraid of.
I look down at my feet as I climb the steps, feeling every bit the naughty schoolgirl about to get yelled at for breaking the rules. The pleasant buzz that the tequila built in my mind gets wiped away by my anxiety, my adrenaline. It’s as if my body knows that I have to be focused right now to face him.
When I walk into the house I see that his office door is open, a silent demand for me to enter. I take a deep breath, steeling myself, obeying that command and then walking into the office, stopping just as I cross the threshold.
“Close the door,” Kent demands, his back to me as he leans his arm against the mantle of the fireplace, staring down into the fire. I don’t do anything for a moment, staring at the fire myself. Why did he light it? It’s warm out a fire, so late in the season
“Fay,” Kent snaps, turning to glare at me. “The door.”
“Oh!” I gasp, scurrying into action and pushing the door shut behind me. Then, not knowing what else to do, I lean back against it, staring at him, waiting for him to deliver his judgement.
Kent just stares at me for a long moment. Then, he begins. “What the hell,” he demands, “did you think you were doing today?”
I shrug one shoulder, not really knowing what to say. Honestly, I should have spent the time in the car planning my response to this very question. And because I don’t have a practiced answer, I just tell him the truth.
“I…acted on instinct,” I say, my voice a whisper. “Ivan was there, all of a sudden, his car across the road and I got out because Jerome was going shoot at him and get himself killed. So I went to tell Ivan not to come any further, and he said he wouldn’t if I went out with him for the day and…”
I run out of words, out of ideas, out of breath under the force of Kent’s furious glare. But it doesn’t matter. Kent knows how it ends.
“A date, Fay?” Kent asks condescendingly, putting his hands in his pockets and slowly walking over to my place by the door. “You thought that a great response to my enemy blocking your path to the stables was to go on a date with him?”
I blush as he comes to stand before me, his feet spread wide in a powerful stance.
“It wasn’t a date,” I murmur, looking down at my feet, feeling the redness on my cheeks deepen. “It was just…”
He laughs at me then, a low, disdainful thing.
“Drinking all day at a bar, laughing, kissing,” he chides, leaning forward towards me. “It sounds like a date to me, girl.”
I whip up my head at that, glaring at him. “We didn’t kiss,” I blurt out, defiant. Then, I blush harder when he laughs at me again.
“Does it matter if you kissed, Fay?” Kent asks, leaning back and shaking his head. “The damage is done. You were seen today, did you know that? That place he took you it’s a gathering place. Neutral territory. So, it wasn’t just you and him there in that darkness no. Men from all the families saw you there. Your father’s men saw you there. Alden was the one who called me, in fact, to tell me where you were.”
I go pale at this realization. Kent was right I had assumed that Ivan took me to someplace personal and private, to a place where we precisely wouldn’t be seen. I hang my head, realizing that the damage is just as bad as Kent says it is.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.