One Kiss More by Mandy Baxter

going to pass out. She wasn’t up for this. Couldn’t do it. And she had no one to turn to for help.
    Landon’s gaze lingered on her phone before he brought his eyes up to meet hers, pinning her with his stare. “Well, are you going to answer it?”

Chapter Seven
    “Answer the phone, Emma.”
    Landon refused to break eye contact with Emma and she looked like she might throw up. Her eyes grew wide and her chest inflated with her rapid breath. The expression on her face was a study of indecision. And fear. A protective urge spiked in Landon and he reached for the phone, bound and determined to shut down the cause of her distress.
    “No!”
    She tried to stop him, but his reflexes were quicker and he snatched the phone into his grasp. Landon noted the “unknown” ID of the caller before swiping his finger across the screen and hitting the speakerphone function. “Hello?”
    “Hi! This is Tammy from bank card services. I’m calling in regards to a promotion we’re running and—”
    Landon hit the button to switch the call back to the handset and placed it in Emma’s hand. The look of shock on her face didn’t go unnoticed, nor did the quaver in her voice as she brushed off the credit card solicitor’s offer. If anything, this was the proof he needed that Emma was not only hiding something, but also in a shit load of trouble.
    Emma ended the call and stuffed her laptop and her phone in a briefcase. Her hands shook as she pulled the zipper closed and she tipped what was left of her coffee over in her haste to put everything away. Landon grabbed a napkin and began to mop up the mess while Emma pushed her chair away from the table in a growl of wood against tile.
    “Don’t leave, Emma,” Landon warned as he reached out to grab her hand. The contact was electric. God, he wanted to pull her into his lap and hold her tight in his arms while he kissed her senseless.
    A quick look around the coffee shop must have confirmed that people were beginning to stare because Emma sat back down slowly and leaned over the table, though she did nothing to disengage her hand from his. Landon wanted to close his eyes and soak in the physical contact. Revel in the warmth of her touch, softness of her skin, the weight of her hand resting in his. Which was so goddamned wrong and he knew it. But his career be damned, he did nothing to stop it.
    “Let me ask you something. If you were in my position, and it was your dad, would you cooperate?”
    Landon thought about that for about a half a second. “I would.”
    “Because you’re just so right? Is that it? Black and white. Good or evil. There’s no gray area for you, and if your dad was in prison, it’s because he belongs to be there. Is that it?”
    She had no idea how close to home she was hitting. Landon wouldn’t put it past his father to engage in some of those “black area” dealings that—if he didn’t have the best attorney money could buy—would land him in a federal prison somewhere.
    “You can’t ask me to pass judgment on your father and what he might or might not have done. He was convicted and sentenced. And he escaped from federal custody. It’s not my place to determine if he’s guilty or not. My job is to find him and bring him in.” It was a hard truth that pained him to speak, but he wasn’t about to sugarcoat anything for her. “I’d cooperate because if my dad did something to land him in prison, he’d be there because he damn well deserved it.”
    “Yeah, well, my dad is innocent ,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “He didn’t deserve to have his career ruined by a federal investigation, and he sure as hell didn’t deserve to be thrown in prison.”
    “Emma, he made a full confession.”
    She gave him a sad shake of her head as though he were pathetic, not to mention dense. “Oh, and I’m sure no one in the history of history has ever been coerced into a false confession.”
    Landon sighed. This was too damned hard. “That’s