Lost and Found by Bernadette Marie

do we do?”
    Ed lifted his hand to her cheek again
and brushed it with his thumb. “I’m going to kiss you one more time
and then I’m going to leave.”
    “ Oh,” the word choked out
of her throat.
    “ I’m a gentleman above
anything else. I stood you up, and I came to apologize.”
    “ Yes, you did.”
    “ So now I’m going to take
my overheated body home and jump into a cold shower. Then I’m going
to meet you Monday morning at the office, and everything will be
normal.”
    Darcy was feeling the pang of
rejection shoot through her. “Okay, but I have to wait until Monday
to see you again?”
    Ed shrugged. “I have this meeting in
Memphis tomorrow. It’ll take most the day.”
    “ That’s right. I scheduled
that.”
    “ Yes, you did.” He smiled.
“Valerie will be glad to hear about us. She had way too many
questions about you the other day.”
    Darcy wasn’t sure how to take that,
but she understood they were friends, and from what she’d learned
about Valerie, she had no cause for worry.
    Ed kissed her cheek. “I think I
remember your coffee of choice. It’ll be on your desk.” He gave her
nose a tweak with his finger.
    She was feeling like a child herself
now, and she wasn’t sure what had transpired.
    Ed leaned in and kissed her softly
again, just as he said he was going to do. “And about that job. You
have a perfectly good job with me. In one week, you’ve done more
than a hundred temps have ever done. And Mary Ellen is very fond of
you. That means a lot in the company.”
    Darcy hoped he didn’t see her jaw
clench.
    He turned for the door. “There isn’t
any reason we can’t work together.”
    “ But your uncle fired your
aunt.”
    “ Circumstances were much
different.”
    “ How so?”
    Ed only smiled. “They have their
secrets.” He nipped her forehead with a kiss. “By the way, I don’t
intend on keeping us a secret. I’m heading upstairs to tell my
brother to stay dressed when you’re around and to keep his hands
off of you.”
    “ He’s never had his hands
on me,” she growled out.
    “ That’s very
reassuring.”
    Darcy was having second thoughts about
this. He made her sound like a paid girlfriend—a kept woman
perhaps. That wasn’t what she was thinking when she’d said, so
childishly, that she’d be his girlfriend.
    “ Goodnight.” Ed turned and
raced up the stairs.
    Darcy shut and locked the door. She
walked back to the couch and dropped down onto it.
    Ed Keller was an interesting man, to
say the least.
    She buried her face in her hands. What
was she doing? She liked him. She really did. And she was going to
need a cold shower too, but getting involved with Ed was going to
cost her everything. He held her job in his hands. Her house was
under his control, too. Even her neighbor was part of this
intertwined life. Now if something went wrong she’d lose her man,
her job, her house, and a family she was falling in love with as
much as she was with Ed.
    What if she had stumbled upon the
truth of her birth parents? Would that eventually mean the end of
everything? And what kind of secrets did Zach and Regan have that
caused him to fire her? Had Regan found out about him and Mary
Ellen?
     

Chapter Nine
     
    There was a different zip in Ed’s step
when he walked into the office with a bouquet of flowers and
Darcy’s coffee in his hand. It had been freeing to tell her how he
felt and to kiss her on Saturday night.
    Things were going to work out. He’d be
damned if they didn’t.
    But, because he was a man who liked to
thoroughly think things out and this thing with Darcy was the most
spontaneous thing he’d ever done, he decided that if they didn’t
work out he’d relocate her in the company and they’d keep her
rental agreement intact. That would ensure that she wouldn’t have
to run home to Kentucky just because he was an ass—because there
was a great chance that just might prove to be his
downfall.
    He sat at his desk and started sifting
through the