What Love Sounds Like by Alissa Callen Read Free Book Online

was legendary. Anyone who was anybody hung around him hoping just by association their position on the corporate conveyer belt would be advanced. Mia’s life as his only child would have been a privileged one. Why then had she come to the outback, a place as far removed from her old life as she could get? What had happened between her and Langford?
    Lost in thought he realised too late that she frowned at him. So much for her gentleness and compassion, in that moment she was truly her father’s daughter.
    ‘If you don’t mind I’d like to get to work,’ she said, voice crisp. ‘As you pointed out in our first appointment, time is money.’
    He blinked. Never in his life had someone needed to remind him to get back on task.
    It took all of Mia’s willpower to stay seated and not flee into the safety of the vast homestead. Despite the day’s heat, she shivered. On the outside she knew she appeared all cool efficiency but on the inside she was as unsteady as an earth tremor.
    Kade had done it again. He’d flung her out of her comfort zone. Instead of the usual awe that greeted the news Langford was her father, sympathy had softened Kade’s eyes and relaxed the stiff landscape of his face. This time there was no oven-hot office or morning of disasters to blame her delusions upon. She knew what she’d seen, genuine emotion. Kade
was
capable of feeling.
    Her pulses slowed and composure returned as she studied him from under her lashes. While he might physically sit next to Tilly, his rigid body was angled as far away from her as possible. It didn’t matter if a heart could possibly beat within his chest, until he treated Tilly with any warmth she wasn’t about to amend her first impression that he wasn’t anything but a mirror image of her father. In the meantime she had a job to do before workaholic Kade remembered he had a phone call to make.
    ‘Tilly can you please pass your uncle a loop. Any colour will do.’
    Tilly’s small fingers plucked a loop from the bowl and she placed it on Kade’s palm.
    ‘No surprise it’s pink.’ He examined the small circle as through she’d just handed him a hand grenade. ‘I’m guessing this is more back of the throat stuff?’
    ‘You’re learning, Kade, and learning through play, I might add.’
    He grimaced. ‘Let’s get this over with. What do I do now?’
    ‘We’re going to work on where your tongue needs to be to produce the ‘k’ sound. Put the loop behind your bottom front teeth, place the tip of your tongue in the hole to hold the cereal in place, and say ‘k’.’
    ‘This isn’t one of those things that Tilly’s science show always advises to not try at home?’
    ‘No, you’re perfectly safe. Besides I know the Heimlich manoeuvre. If you choke you’re in good hands.’
    Kade’s only reply was a dubious quirk of a brow as he raised the loop to his mouth. Every alarm on her internal warning system tripped. How many times had she demonstrated speech exercises to a father to work on with their child? But never had she noticed how the smoothness of masculine lips could contrast with the faint stubble of a cleft chin, how a man’s mouth could be so…
    She spoke to cover her confusion. ‘Tilly, how about you choose what colour cereal you like so you can have a go next?’
    She picked up her own piece of cereal to roll between her fingers and risked another look at Kade. Slowly his lips moved and as if from a long distance away she heard the ‘k’ sound. He really did have the most gorgeous mouth…The cereal between her fingers crumbled, scattering candy-green evidence of her agitation across the table before her. She swept the crumbs up into her hand.
    ’Nice clear ‘k’ talking, Kade,’ she managed. ‘Your turn now, Possum.’
    Tilly popped a pink loop into her mouth, and without attempting to hold the loop in place with her tongue, chewed. She looked at Kade, then at Mia, and grinned.
    ‘Let’s try that one again, shall we?’ Mia said with