The Kiss Code: A Man of the Month Club Novella: A Small-Town Won't Let Her Go Romance Read online

  Not that it matters if the whole town finds out why I’m here. I don’t intend to wait to claim my woman, and it suits my purposes if she knows I’m coming for her.

  Everything she confessed about the strength of her ties to her hometown gives me confidence she’ll never be able to ghost me again. Not from here.

  “Harmony Hammond, ma’am. I’m here because Harmony Hammond stole my heart three months ago when we met at a convention where she was receiving an award for her Whiskey Clicks app. I followed her here, so I can steal hers in exchange. I figure it’s only right, seeing as how I don’t expect I’ll ever get my heart back from her.”

  “Well, I’ll be a puppy’s uncle. That girl told everyone she was taking a vacation in Cabo San Lucas to shake off the sadness after her daddy died and she mourned him proper for a piece of time. You’re telling me she went to some big city conference for business that wasn’t about Hammond Whiskey? Oh my, isn’t that just the sneakiest little tidbit.”

  Apprehension crawls up my spine. I’m pretty sure my plan to send tongues wagging about my arrival in town has just exploded back in my face. It never occurred to me that Harmony might not have told anyone she was going to Vegas or why. Ms. Norris pats my hand and smiles so widely at me I can see the streak of neon lipstick across one of her incisors.

  “Rest assured, young man, when Harmony Hammond finds out you’ve come for her, you’ll have more to worry about than my blowing your cover. Whew, that girl’s been a tornado since she first learned to walk. This is gonna be the most fun I’ve had since Gerald Wilkerson’s dog got chased up the sycamore tree at the center of town by Hannah Jung’s scraggly old tomcat and had to be rescued by the entire fire department.”

  Just like that, the one-woman welcoming committee zooms right back out the door she came in through. I’m not entirely certain what just happened.

  I’m pretty sure I’ve got a booking to tattoo a first-time tattoo on an octogenarian, who both gave me her blessing to court Harmony and is gonna gossip me into the doghouse before I get the chance to get myself there.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Harmony

  “Tell me the rumors flying around town about my baby sister aren’t true.” Ry’s voice has a hard edge again. The one I got used to during the years he was gone. It’s funny how, even in the short time he’s been home and had Magnolia at his side, that tone became a faraway memory.

  Now, it’s back, and the chasm between Ryland and me feels deep and miserable again. This time, it’s because of my secrets and not my brother’s hard head.

  Another grievance to lay at Nolan’s feet. If I were ever planning to be at his feet again. Which I’m not. In any sense of the words.

  I deliberately ignore the flash memory of when I was all-too-happy to be on my knees for him while his powerful hips pumped forward and back, his hand tangled in my hair to hold me still while he fucked my face. Uncomfortable heat flushes through me even as I force my mind away from the sexy diversion of that weekend in Vegas.

  It’s that weekend causing me all the drama now. There’s a damn good reason I keep both business and pleasure far away from Sycamore Mountain. This moment being exactly why.

  I hate that I’m unsure which rumor my brother’s heard, not that he won’t hear all of them eventually. Mags already cornered me to ask if it’s true the hot celebrity tattoo artist who just moved here is my secret lover.

  Nolan fucking Michaels wasted zero-point-five seconds finding the biggest gossip in town and declaring some pie-in-the-sky intention of claiming me and wifing me up. Another half second spilling the name of my most recent, and to date bestselling, mobile application, Whiskey Click. A cross between a quiz app that helps users identify whiskeys and cocktails to best suit their tastes and a drinking game for members to play to help determine whether they’re too inebriated to make smart choices online. Monthly fee-paying members can tailor it to their specifications to lock down certain parts of their phones if they fail the inebriation games. No more drunk dials or social media oopsies after a few too many shots.

  I sold that one for a fat seven mil at the conference in Vegas where I’d met Nolan. Riding high from the sale and the accolades, I’d been looser with my personal details than I normally would have.

  Now, I’m paying the price. For years, I’ve hidden myself inside the town’s expectations of me. The Hammond kid who’s unworthy of taking over for their father. The one who excels at nothing but hangs around anyway, desperate for their father’s approval. The flighty sweetheart who is always willing to lend a hand but incapable of much more.

  Unknown to them, it’s been years since that’s all I was. Yet there’s comfort in holding the status quo where no one really looks too closely or expects too much. My father, flawed as he had been, loved me. I never doubted it, even when he broke my heart by overlooking me in favor of my absentee brother.

  The people of Sycamore Mountain hadn’t known what I did, though, and their expectations of me never rose any higher than seeing me as a flighty failure. I was cherished in the way all the young people in a small community are but nevertheless, disregarded as anything more than pretty fluff.

  Logically, I knew I couldn’t maintain the secret forever. It doesn’t make being outed any easier by admitting that to myself.

  I’m still bitter Nolan’s here. That he’s making me face, not only the people I care about and have hidden things from, but the way he made me feel that weekend. The way I still feel when I allow myself to think about the way our bodies moved together.

  There had been none of the typical first time being with someone awkwardness between us. From the moment he slid his hand around my waist on the dance floor of the casino club attached to the convention center, it was as if my body accepted it had met its master.

  Walking away at the end of the conventions had been heartbreaking. Enough so, I’d considered looking him up to see if he’d be interested in some sort of ongoing, long-distance friends with benefits situation. I’d never contemplated something like that before.

  Instead, here I am considering whether he’s gained enough notoriety around town that folks will notice if he goes missing. There’s a lot of woods around here to hide a body in; I’m just saying.

  Who am I kidding? I’m a lot of things, but murderous isn’t really one of them.

  “Earth to Harmony.” Ryland’s accusatory tone doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t want to lash out at him when it’s really Nolan I’m angry with, but it’s impossible to bite back my retort completely.

  “I don’t have to tell you anything, Ryland. You may be in charge of Hammond Distillery now, but you’re not in charge of me. If you don’t know me well enough to know whether a rumor you heard about me is true or not, you should see that as the sign it is.”

  Okay, so maybe there’s some residual anger still simmering in my guts about how Ry abandoned us all for so long. A dull flush climbs over his cheeks, and he sucks in a sharp breath. I know I hurt his feelings, but fuck it all, what about mine? Seems as if the men I know are all determined to center themselves in my life as if I’m a puppet just waiting for them to pull my strings.

  “I’m only trying to look out for you, Harm.” Stiff and formal, it’s obvious the reminder he doesn’t really know me is an unwelcome one. “I don’t understand why you’re so secretive. Do you think I wouldn’t want to share in your celebrations and be proud of you?”

  Ah, so the rumor he’s heard is about my other career. Watching that one make the rounds has actually been sort of amusing. Folks around town, who have no idea what coding is or why it’s important, seem to twist and convolute the story as they pass it along. It would be a comical game of twenty-first century telephone if it wasn’t my life being spun around and dissected.

  “Not everything is about you, Ry. Keeping some things private is a person’s right. It’s not as if you were ringing me up to cheer every time you got a promotion while you were in Charlotte. Right?”

  “Fair point. But I’m here now, and I thought we were getting closer.”

  Frustrated as I am with his highhanded approach just now and with the situation overall, I really don’t want to fight with him. Having him back in Sycamore Mountain is really the only good reason for me to stay. Sure Mags is my best friend and moving away from her would be rough, but we’d be as close as sisters no matter how many miles apart we are.

  The same wasn’t true for my actual sibling and me. Repairing the divide between us has to come from me this time. Whether I feel as if I deserve to keep some things private or not, my relationship with my brother is more important.

  “We are, bro. Look, the app sold months ago. Before you were even back in town. The convention in Vegas was a formality. Pomp and grandeur to boost interest and hype the acquisitions team for promoting my next one. Dad had just died, you had only been back for a minute, things with Magnolia were heating up. The timing wasn’t right for a big reveal.”

  “Fine, you’re right. It’s crappy for me to expect your life to be an open book when I’ve done my fair share of secret keeping. Can we just agree that we’ll tell each other what’s going on in our lives from here on out?”

  “Sure, but seriously I need you to keep some stuff to yourself, okay? After all, you are married to my bestie, and there are just some things about that we don’t need to share.”

  Ry’s face relaxes with relief before the dopey grin he gets anytime Mags’s name comes up takes over. Seriously, if there’s anything I’ve learned in the past few months, it’s that mentioning her is the quickest way to distract Ryland.

  I need to keep that in mind once he hears the other rumor going around.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nolan

  Possible, okay probable, I’ve made a miscalculation in my planning. I failed to anticipate the speed at which my one-woman welcoming committee would spread the news of Harmony Hammond’s besotted fool, as I’ve come to be called.

  Did I want to make my intentions clear? Absolutely. Was it my objective to piss Harmony off so completely that even now, a week later, she silently removes herself from every public place I catch up to her? Not even a little bit. Yet, here we are.

  It’s actually embarrassing how quickly she nopes out of my presence as if she’s worried sustained contact might cause her to turn to stone. The only one turning to stone around here is me. Right now, I’m unsure what’s more fossilized; my entire being under the force of her glare or my cock simply from the ecstasy of being near enough to hear her voice.

  “Sorry, Ms. Tarkeho Just because I’ve written the code for some apps doesn’t mean I can write a program to match your granddaughter with a partner who doesn’t still live at home. That’s not quite how it works.”

  Harmony’s just outside the entrance to Owen’s Body Shop talking on the phone. Through the open garage bay, I can see the backend of a Hammond truck hoisted up on the lift. With Harmony faced away from me to pace while she listens to Ms. Tarkeho’s response, I take the opportunity to move closer. So close that when she spins to pace back this way, she can’t avoid running into me.

  It's underhanded to sneak up on her like this, but what else is a guy supposed to do when the woman of his dreams, a woman who ghosted him after the most universe-shattering hot sex of his life, refuses to speak to him?

  Her eyes narrow immediately in frustration. Still, the honey brown that rings her pupils thins to almost nothing as the centers blow wide with arousal. That’s the exact validation I’ve needed.

  I’m not alone in the magma-hot combustion between us. Not that there was any true doubt in my mind.

  Connections like that don’t just happen. Not for me, anyway. I left home at seventeen, pretty much the minute I finished high school. My family’s fine, and I don’t have some tragic backstory or anything dramatic like that.

  It was simply an issue of always feeling a little out-of-step with the people around me. What I wanted in life didn’t match up with what was around me.

  Three months ago, almost twenty years later, I still wasn’t sure I’d ever find what I set out in search of. All I was certain of was I hadn’t found it yet. My soul knew something my brain hadn’t seemed to figure out.

  Home isn’t a place. It’s Harmony Hammond.

  Already tired of being surrounded by the rowdy tattoo and body modification crowd by the end of the first day, I’d found a quiet corner in the convention center’s on-site restaurant bar to nurse a beer and reflect.

  Harmony had slipped up to the host stand with a furtive look over her shoulder as if she were on a mission to escape, too. With her ballcap and neon orange Converse sneakers, I fully expected the maître d’ to refuse her a table. I had my wallet in hand, ready to toss down cash for my drinks and follow her if that happened. Instead, he’d smiled at her as though she were a celebrity and led her to a table adjacent to mine.

  I did my best to be covert as I tried to figure out if she was someone famous. As big and inked up as I am, it’s kinda hard to fade into the woodwork. Sure enough, Harmony caught my eyes with hers and snatched my heart right out of my chest without a word spoken.

  It took a hot minute for me to realize she’d blown me off at the end of that weekend. I’d made sure we exchanged contact information and already been thinking of how to ensure we saw each other again soon. When my first text was flagged as undeliverable only a few hours later, I realized Harmony intended to walk away from what we had. That wasn’t going to fly with me. Not then and not now.

  “You!” One syllable, a wealth of caustic wrath. That’s okay. I know I underestimated how much my showing up here would shake things up. She’s pissed at me for blowing her cover, and I get it. Over the past week, it seems I’ve met nearly everyone in this little town. Pretty much as soon as anyone is introduced to me, I get told how shocked they are to find out Harmony’s an internationally courted tech genius. Followed by how pissed off she is that her secret’s out.

  In my defense, even people living under rocks have heard of Harmony Rose and the apps she designs. How could I have known her family and friends all thought she was just an airhead? I get the impression everyone in town really underestimated her, and she played on that to keep her brilliance under wraps. Why? I can’t figure it out.

  “Yeah, I know. I had no clue the whole Harmony Rose thing was a secret. Let me make it up to you.” I’m willing to grovel if that’s what it takes to get Harmony to forgive me.

  “Make it up to me by leaving me be, Nolan. We had a great time—I’ll admit that much—but it was a fling. I’ve made my peace with you showing up here and setting up shop. It’s my own fault, really, for shooting off my mouth about how great Sycamore Mountain is to live. I don’t know what more you want from me.”

  Hurt arrows through me, turning my stomach to acid, but I push it back. Her words don’t match the way her body leans toward mine. Harmony may want to ignore what we are to one another, but I’m not giving up without a fight.

  “I’ve made no secret of what I want, Harmony. This whole town knows why I’m here.”

  “Yes, and doesn’t it strike any chords for you that the biggest problem here is that they do?” With her sassy little fist propped on her cocked-out hip, I don’t think she realizes what she just admitted.

  Harmony’s not upset that I’m here. She’s mad because she can’t continue to hide her genius from the people who love her most.

  Nor can she keep hiding her heart behind casual hookups far from home. That’s an entirely different issue, though it’s one I intend to get to the bottom of. Just how many brokenhearted dopey men has she left in the dust? To hear folks around here tell it, Harmony Hammond doesn’t date, doesn’t flirt, and certainly doesn’t bring men to her bed.

  Much as it pleases me to know I won’t run into her conquests all over town, it pisses me off to think she’d lump me in with whatever other chumps she’s had vacation flings with. Believe me, I’m not judging her for enjoying her single status. I’m just not going to let her write me off as a forgettable weekend when she had a bit of fun.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Harmony

  There’s a smudge on the lower inside corner of Nolan’s glasses that I can’t look away from. It ought to give him a hopelessly geeky vibe, even with all the ink. Instead, that little blur is a reminder of how his lenses had gone foggy with the heat generated between us when we kissed. How he’d ripped them away from his face and tossed them onto the nightstand beside the hotel room bed. Sex with Nolan Michaels had been the best I’d ever had.

  Which is depressing and terrifying all at once. Because as much as I couldn’t imagine a future where the two of us fit together three months ago, I have to admit I’m seeing it a lot more clearly now.

  Back then, it felt so important to keep the two halves of my life separated. Now that it’s all out there and everyone knows all my business? It’s hard to remember what I was so dead set on protecting.

  “Let me make you dinner. I can apologize profusely for blowing your secret. You can torture me with your fuck-hot body to make me pay.”

  See? This is why I’m having such a hard time hanging on to my Big Mad. Nolan is one of those guys who manages to be both the commanding alpha in the room while also being funny and nerdy and adorable.

  Thing is, I know he feels bad for telling my business. He’s not the malicious type, and it’s not like there’s any obvious reason why I would want the people closest to me to think I was an empty-headed twit.

  Now Ry’s home, Magnolia’s happy, and my dad isn’t around to arrogantly assume my success in the tech world justifies the years I felt like a historical romance’s bastard third son in our household.

  I can be annoyed he blabbed and now everyone and their uncle wants me to do IT work that’s completely outside my wheelhouse. At the same time, it’s a relief for Mag’s and Ryland to really see me.