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  “What?” Bella was even more confused.

  “I— You know what? Forget about it. Forget I said anything. I should have known better than to come here. You don’t like visitors, you live out in the middle of nowhere, it should have given me a clue.” He pulled his white t-shirt roughly over his head and snatched his button-down from the floor. Running a frustrated hand through his hair, he bent to search for the khaki pants Bella could see had made their way under the bed.

  Way way under the bed. She was about to tell him where to find them when her curiosity got the better of her.

  “A clue about what?”

  “That you’re crazy,” he said, not looking her direction.

  “You’re the one who treated me like a hooker,” Bella said with forced calm. “Why am I crazy to tell you to get out my house?”

  “I didn’t treat you like a hooker. I wouldn’t even know how to treat a hooker. I’ve never had to pay for sex.”

  “Well, I’ve never been paid for sex, but that’s how it felt. You were disrespectful and you know it.”

  He stopped searching for his pants and looked at her. For a second it seemed he was going to argue, but then he took a deep breath and dropped his eyes to the floor.

  When he spoke this time, his voice was softer. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean it. My feelings were hurt and I reacted without thinking. That’s what I do. I react. I’m reactive. Maybe not the best trait, but—”

  “Your feelings were hurt? How in the world did I hurt your feelings?” Bella asked, truly dumbfounded.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled after a moment, once again searching the floor for his pants in all the wrong places.

  “No please, tell me. I’d like to know.”

  “You called me Mr. Miller,” he said in a stiff voice. “And it hurt my feelings because I thought we were having a good time and you were warming up to me and I was more than warmed up to you so…”

  His feelings were hurt because he thought she didn’t think what they’d done was special?

  She didn’t know much about men, but this didn’t seem to be a typical male reaction and she liked that. She liked it a lot.

  “I’m sorry.” Bella smiled tentatively as she let the door swing shut behind her.

  “You don’t have to be sorry, I can take it. I promise not to be a jerk about it again. I don’t hold grudges. I’m not a grudge-holder.” He crossed his muscled arms across his chest in what Bella assumed was an effort to appear tough and businesslike.

  It was absolutely adorable, and something inside her softened.

  “No, I really enjoyed the…everything.” Bella shyly crossed the room to stand in front of him. “It was special to me and I’m glad it was to you too.”

  “Well, yeah. It was.” It looked like he was blushing, but Bella couldn’t be sure. “But can we talk about business now? I’m feeling unmanly talking about all the feelings.”

  “Feelings aren’t unmanly.” Bella wanted to kiss him even more than she had before.

  “Yes they are. Besides, if you want me out of your hair before morning we’d better get to it. The last train leaves at midnight and it took me an hour to get here from the station. I know you like to keep it rustic out here in Deepweeds but the no cars thing is really weird.”

  “Oh no, I didn’t even think.” Bella bit her lip.

  It was getting late…

  Did she want him to stay? Did she want to take what they’d started even further? What would it feel like to be naked with him again, knowing this time that there was nothing to stop him from—

  “Bella, could you put some clothes on?” He interrupted her thoughts with a tight laugh.

  She looked up to see his brow furrowed, as if he were fighting a headache, before her gaze slid down to see his cock straining the front of his boxer shorts all over again. “Oh. Right.”

  “I mean, it would be better,” he said. “If we’re going to talk business, which I think we should. Don’t you?”

  “Right, we should.” She gave a solemn nod, despite the fact that her whole body hummed with excitement.

  She was capable of making him want her without even trying!

  Maybe this vixen business wasn’t as beyond her as she’d thought.

  Enjoying the feel of his eyes on her as she moved, she retrieved her skirt and camisole. Once she was a bit more decent, she wiggled under the bed to fish out his khakis, grateful for the uncomfortable feeling of her knees on the hardwood floor. Anything to keep her mind off other kinds of wiggling she’d like to be doing.

  Heath was right—business first and maybe business-only for tonight. She’d already flirted with disaster and emerged safe and intact, did she really want to risk it again? Why waste all her years of sacrifice now that she was so close? The curse could be broken. She believed that. If she could hold on for another month, she’d reach her thirty-first birthday and be free.

  Then maybe she and Heath could pick up where they’d left off…

  After all, she didn’t want to be a single mother or raise her child without a father figure around to teach her what it felt like to be loved by a member of the opposite sex. She believed it was important for a little girl to know that she could trust a man with her heart, and that her daddy would always be there for her.

  Bella knew firsthand what it felt like to be raised by a single mother who was the daughter of a single mother who was the daughter of a single mother and so on into infinity—or at least the last three hundred years. No matter how much she’d loved her mom and Grams, it wasn’t what she wanted for her own daughter. She wanted her to have two parents from the beginning, and hopefully for the rest of her childhood.

  “Here’s your sweater,” Heath said, pulling her back to the present.

  “Thanks.” Bella tugged the heavy green cotton over her head. It was getting cold in the cottage now that the sun had gone down, and from the look in Heath’s eyes every time he glanced at her chest, she was too naked with only her camisole on for him to keep his mind on business.

  The knowledge made her grin.

  “You really do have the most beautiful tits in the world.” He watched with heat in his eyes as she finished arranging her sweater.

  She lifted a critical brow. “Tits?”

  “Breasts, I mean breasts, beautiful bouncy breasts.” He smiled and plopped into a chair at the kitchen table.

  Bella laughed, surprised at how at ease she felt with this man—when he wasn’t driving her half out of her mind with lust, of course.

  “Hungry?” she asked as she pulled down bread and homemade peanut butter and jelly from the cabinet. Not the fanciest of meals, but they wouldn’t starve. Besides, she had a feeling he wouldn’t care.

  “Ravenous,” he answered.

  Thirty minutes and two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches later, they still hadn’t started talking business, both of them seeming to want to draw out their time together as much as possible.

  “Heath,” Bella finally said, wiping crumbs from the table onto her plate. “I feel bad about keeping you here any longer without telling you that I haven’t changed my mind.”

  “I know you haven’t, but I think you will,” he said with a smile. “I can be very persuasive.”

  “I know you can.” Bella blushed as a mental image of him kneeling between her legs flashed through her mind’s eye. “But I don’t think any more of that is a good—”

  “I don’t mean that way,” he said, sparing her. “I can talk a good game, too, if you’ll let me. Bella, you experienced firsthand what it was like to add a little something extra to what was already a great time. Didn’t you enjoy yourself?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “And would you have enjoyed yourself as much if that batch of peppermint fudge had been made by a company with more experience making latex?” he asked, shuddering at the thought. “Bella, the flavors these guys keep coming up with, I wish you could taste them. Then you’d know that you have to hel
p me. They’re awful, and half of them contain watermelon, despite the fact that I’ve told them a billion times that I hate watermelon.”

  “Watermelon flavoring or the taste of actual watermelon?” Bella asked, trying not to laugh at how worked up he was getting.

  Surely he couldn’t take sex toys this seriously?

  “Are you okay?” she asked a few seconds later. She was worried he might have ruptured something during his previous tirade. He had fallen completely silent, and was staring at her with the strangest look on his face.

  “I think I’m falling in love with you,” he said, not a trace of humor in his tone.

  “I’m sure it will pass,” Bella said in a light voice. She couldn’t let herself take Heath too seriously. He was fun and sweet, but she barely knew him.

  “Right.” Heath laughed, then took a sip of the milk she’d poured for him. “Did you ever notice how water tastes like milk if you drink it with peanut butter?”

  “I have.” Bella laughed, grateful for the opportunity to put the awkward moment behind them.

  “Of course you have, because you’re a taste genius. So will you help me?”

  “Haven’t you asked other candy makers?” Bella asked, wishing she didn’t have to tell him no again. “There are at least ten other experienced people working in the Kingdom. I know they must have someone on staff who would be willing to help you. I’m flattered that—”

  “I don’t want anyone else. I want the best. I want you,” he said, a fire in his eyes that made her feel flushed all over. “My marketing department wants you too, to be honest, but I’d be willing to do a secret consultation thing if you wanted. I don’t want to exploit you. Unless you wanted to be exploited, and in that case you’d get a lot more money.”

  “I told you—”

  “I know, you’re not about the money,” he said, waving a hand in the air as if to erase his previous comment. “I’m not about money either, in case you couldn’t tell. I’m about being a perfectionist, the best I can be and all that.”

  “Your marketing department actually wants me?” Bella asked, brows drawing together. “Don’t they understand what a monster I’ve been made out to be?”

  She was a monster in the minds of most people, an aberration who had done the worst possible thing a person could do—hurt a child. It didn’t matter that she’d been cleared of all charges; she was still guilty in the minds of the public.

  The plummeting profits of the Quinn Candy Company spoke for themselves.

  “They think that your new ‘bad girl’ image will help sales. I don’t agree, just so you know. And I don’t need to help sales. I’ve already doubled my investment and am selling out of cherry-flavored condoms faster than I can make them.” He reached out and took her hand, not saying the words, but letting her know with that simple touch that he believed she was innocent.

  “I’m not a bad girl, Heath.” Bella pulled her hand away and took a death grip on her cold glass of milk. His sympathy made her emotional, and the last thing she wanted to do was break down. She’d had enough tears in the past year to last a lifetime. “A bad girl stays out late and parties and snorts pixie dust off the top of a toilet in a dirty public bathroom. She isn’t accused of trying to boil two children to death in a vat of peanut brittle.”

  “Bella—”

  “And if you’re selling out of cotton candy condoms—”

  “Cherry, but I love where your mind’s going with that.”

  “If you’re selling out of them, why do you need my help?” she asked. “People obviously don’t mind how they taste.”

  “But I mind. I care. I really, really care,” he said, emphasizing each word with a thumb jabbed at his chest. “It’s not even because I want to have the best for myself. I mean, I do want the best. I actually have a bit of a fetish, I think, but I don’t beat myself up about it. It’s not as bad as a shoe fetish and it’s not like King Frederick with the whips and the chains and the ladies in leather corsets. Though I bet you’d look amazing in a leather corset.”

  “Heath, what are you saying?” Bella asked, starting to feel swept away in a verbal tornado.

  “I’m sorry, I get a little crazy when I’m excited. I usually stand on my head for a little while and it goes away.”

  “Then feel free to stand on your head.” Bella stood to clear their dishes.

  His brows flew up. “Really?”

  “Really. Just don’t throw up your peanut butter sandwich.”

  “I never throw up. Rock-solid digestion. A little off-kilter upstairs, but rock-solid below the neck,” he teased as he flipped into a headstand and proceeded to balance there with ease.

  Amazingly, it did seem to calm him down almost immediately.

  “So what I’m saying, Bella,” he continued, “is that I don’t want to make ‘okay’ products that sell well. I want to make amazing products that sell fantastically and enhance people’s lives.”

  “Do you really think a flavored condom or edible underwear can change someone’s life?” Bella asked. “I’m not trying to be mean, I promise, but—”

  “How many of your lovers have made love to your pussy with their mouth like I did today on a regular basis?”

  “Um, well…you’re the first.” Bella knew she was blushing like mad.

  “See! A lot of men don’t like the taste, or are too lazy or something. I don’t know what the problem is, but I think it is a problem. The studies I’ve conducted show that women are more likely to report being dissatisfied with the quality of the sex in their marriage than men. Men bitch about the quantity, but women want quality. They want to come and come often, and I think they deserve to. I’m telling you, I know that a truly delicious edible lube, something that made a man’s mouth water, could really make a difference.”

  His passion was contagious, even if she still wasn’t sold on the idea that sex toys could save the world, or even a marriage.

  “You could also try experimenting with natural circulation enhancers,” Bella said. “Like the peppermint oil in the fudge today, there are other ingredients that would increase blood flow to the um…desired areas.”

  “That’s brilliant! I knew you were brilliant. Can I write that down?”

  “I’ll write it down for you.” Bella fetched a pen and paper from her desk near the bed where the covers still looked deliciously rumpled.

  Could he be right? Could something so silly, so ridiculous, really make a difference in people’s lives? She’d certainly enjoyed herself today, but she hadn’t needed anything but Heath. The peppermint fudge was fun, but unnecessary.

  But maybe he was right, maybe other people were different, maybe they needed a little help learning how amazing it could be to intimately taste the people they loved.

  “If I agreed to work with you…” Bella trailed off as her eyes settled once more on the bed, images of Heath naked and propped up on her pillows flashing through her mind.

  “Yes?” Heath flipped right side up and crossed to where she stood, his hand smoothing down her arm as his face lit up like he was getting his Christmas presents a day early.

  “If I did, and I mean if, could you guarantee that no one would know?”

  “Absolutely,” he said without a second’s hesitation.

  “We’d have a nondisclosure agreement, or something?”

  “Whatever you need, I’ll pay your lawyer fees.”

  “Because I meant what I said before,” she said, setting the pen and paper on the bedside table. “I know that sex isn’t ‘dirty’ per se, but making sex toys and making candy for kids aren’t things that go together, at least in my mind. And some day, I hope to be able to go back to my real work.”

  “Of course.” He took her hands in his, squeezing her fingers with excitement.

  “Because I really love it, Heath,” she said, gazing up into his flashing eyes. “I love making kids happy and those days when I visited our candy stores around the Kingdom were the best days of my life. I know it’s sill
y, but I felt like I was Santa Claus or the Easter bunny. Something bigger and better and sweeter than myself.”

  “I don’t think there could be anything sweeter than you.” Heath looked like a man who believed every word he’d just said, making the corny line completely touching.

  “You’re biased.” Bella laughed, uncomfortable under his intense gaze but refusing to drop her eyes. “You have a candy fetish, for goodness’ sake. I’m like a dealer to you.”

  “I don’t have a candy fetish, I just like licking things off women’s bodies. Is that so wrong?” Heath asked, moving his hand to the back of her neck where his fingers started to tangle in her hair, pulling her closer.

  “Just so you know, the fudge is as hard as a rock now.” Bella leaned into his warmth, melting.

  “Fuck the fudge.” He lowered his mouth to hers, sending a shock wave of bittersweet excitement through her body.

  Excitement because his tongue was already slipping into her mouth, stroking her into a state of arousal. Bittersweet because she knew that they had to stop. Not simply because of the curse, but because of the knock on her door that sounded just as his other hand slipped up the front of her sweater.

  “Tell them to go away,” Heath mumbled against her mouth.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Heath asked as the knock came again.

  “I think it’s… You’ll see.” Bella took a deep breath, anxiety spiking through her as she moved toward the door.

  Still, she was grateful that they were here. After all they’d been through, she had been afraid she would never see them again. At least now she could have one last hug and a formal goodbye, if that was their only option.

  Secretly, however, she prayed there might still be some way to save them.

  Even if she couldn’t save herself.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Heath

  A few hours later, as Heath sat watching Bella with the kids, he had to admit the truth—he was falling for her.