Undeniable (A Country Roads Novel) by Shannon Richard Read Free Book Online Page A

tie in her hair so that he could run his fingers through it. She grabbed on to his side, and her hands slid around and lowered until they were on his butt. She squeezed and he thought he was going to go off, right then and there.
    He pulled away from her mouth, letting his lips travel down the slope of her neck. How many times had he fantasized about this? About feeling her soft skin underneath his lips? God he loved her neck, the soft delicate space at the hollow of her throat.
    “Jax.” She said his name with so much need that he abandoned his exploration of her neck.
    He palmed the back of her head in one of his hands as he slanted his mouth over hers. Grace moaned when their tongues found each other again. The sound of it rumbled in Jax’s chest and settled low in his abdomen.
     Jax wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, wrapped around each other in more ways than one, before a crackling noise filled the kitchen. Mary Landers’s voice squawked through the speaker attached to Jax’s shirt.
    “Seventeen, what’s your location?”
    Jax pulled back from Grace, both of them breathing hard. Grace’s hair was everywhere, courtesy of his hands. She opened her eyes slowly, as if she was delaying coming back to reality, but Jax slammed into it hard.
    What the hell had he just done?
    *  *  *
    Grace was having an out of body experience. Or at least that was what it felt like.
    Jax had kissed her.
    God, his mouth had been on hers, his hands everywhere, her hands everywhere. Grace’s hands had been on Jaxson Anderson’s ass. And it was just as spectacular as she’d imagined.
    But as Grace brought herself back down to earth, she registered the look on Jax’s face and her eyes snapped open as everything inside of her crashed.
    He did not look happy.
    “Jax?” Grace asked, searching his face for something, anything besides the regret that shone plan as day in his eyes.
    He didn’t answer, just disentangled himself from her as he took a step back. There was no warmth in his eyes as he pushed the button on the microphone on his shoulder. “Seventeen, on Sandy Beach Drive.”
    “Seventeen, shoplifter at Forty-Nine Brooks Avenue. Deputy needed on location.”
    “Ten-four.”
    “Jax,” Grace said, sliding off the counter and taking a step toward him.
    “I have to go,” he said, taking another step back from her.
    “You’re not even going to say anything about what just happened?” she asked, trying to keep calm.
    His mouth tightened before he shook his head. “It was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened.”
    Grace inhaled sharply, pulling back from him like he’d just hit her. And really he had, because those words were a slap in the face.
    I’m not going to cry. Not in front of him.
    So Grace did the only thing she could do, she walked away from him.
    She stepped around him and pushed through the door out into the café. She closed her eyes as she leaned against the wall and tried to breathe past the tightness in her chest.
    It was a mistake.
    She reached up and grabbed her throat. The wall behind Grace shuddered slightly as the side door in the kitchen closed. He was gone and he didn’t want her. She slid down the wall and pressed her face into her bent knees.
    It shouldn’t have happened .
    God it hurt. It hurt so damn much.
    Grace gave up trying to fight it and let the pain wash through her. She wasn’t sure how long she sat on the floor hugging her bent knees. She kept reliving what had happened in the kitchen.
    He’d grabbed her. He’d kissed her. Not the other way around. But he’d also decided that it had been a mistake.
    Grace was done. She was done waiting for a man who didn’t want her. She was done living with this constant ache. She refused to let him break her. She wasn’t going to let that man affect her anymore.
    Grace wiped the remaining tears from under her eyes and pulled herself up onto her feet. She took a deep breath before she pushed through the door and walked back into