I lowered my hands to look at him. “This complicates things.”
“Understatement of the century,” he agreed. “But maybe complicated isn’t bad.”
“It is when one of us is supposed to be planning the other’s wedding to someone else,” I pointed out.
Shit. The bet. The arrangement. The professional boundaries I’d just shattered into a million pieces by letting Callan Burkhardt explore my tonsils with his tongue while his hands wandered toward second base.
“Anica,” he began, his voice serious. “About the arrangement?—”
“I need to go,” I interrupted, unable to bear whatever he was about to say. Whatever logical explanation or plan he had for fitting this—whatever this was—into his larger scheme. “I need to think.”
“Anica, wait?—”
But I was already heading for the door, portfolio clutched to my chest, lips still tingling from his kiss, body still humming with unfulfilled desire. Damn haunted house flooded.
“I’ll call you,” I said over my shoulder, not looking back at him. “To reschedule. The candidate meetings. We’ll... figure this out.”
I fled the penthouse before he could respond, my heart pounding and my professional boundaries in tatters. What had I done? More importantly, what was I going to do now?
As the elevator descended, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes, the memory of Callan’s lips on mine still burning.
I am so screwed.
And not even in the fun way.
CHAPTER 14
A Woman With Little Hands…
CALLAN
Istood, staring at my phone like it might spontaneously transform into a rabid honey badger determined to devour my dignity all because I needed to call a woman who’d seen me with morning wood and knew I was afraid of jellyfish.
Billionaire problems, ladies and gentlemen. Not listed in Forbes, but devastating nonetheless.
It had been exactly twenty-three hours and seventeen minutes since Anica had fled my penthouse, leaving behind the lingering scent of her perfume, the ghost of her lips on mine, and my dignity in tatters. Twenty-three hours and seventeen minutes of replaying our kiss in my mind, each time adding new and increasingly unlikely scenarios where my grandmotherdidn’tinterrupt us via wall-sized video screen.
I needed to call her. It was the mature, responsible thing to do. We had a business arrangement that had been complicated by the sudden introduction of tongues and wandering hands, and as the gentleman in this scenario, the onus was on me to clear the air.
I picked up my phone, then immediately set it down again. What exactly was I supposed to say?
Hey, remember when we almost had sex on my couch before my grandmother caught us? Good times! Anyway, about those bride candidates...
Or perhaps…
So, that kiss. On a scale from ‘career-ending mistake’ to ‘let’s do it again immediately and maybe add some light bondage,’ where would you rank it?
The truth was, I had no idea where we stood. She’d run out of my penthouse like it was on fire, which wasn’t exactly an encouraging sign. But before that? Before that, she’d been just as eager as I was, her body responding to mine in ways that suggested our mutual attraction wasn’t just in my imagination.
I wanted more. A lot more. The kind of more that had nothing to do with our professional relationship and everything to do with the way my dick had gotten hard before she’d moaned against my mouth.
I picked up the phone again, this time forcing myself to dial before I could chicken out. My finger hovered over her name in my contacts.
“Just call her, Burkhardt. You’ve negotiated multi-million dollar deals. You’ve testified before Congress. You’ve explained cryptocurrency to your grandmother. You can handle one conversation with a woman.”
I hit dial before I could talk myself out of it again.
She answered on the fourth ring, just as I was composing a casual voicemail in my head.
