He straightens, looming over me, that heat radiating off his skin sending me into early ovulation. “Maybe I wanted to see if you’d react,” he says on a whisper, leaning so close I can see the undertone of a dare in his gaze.
I swallow. “You’re testing your assistant’s reaction to your sex life? Should I get HR up here with popcorn?”
He lets out a small, humorless laugh, and for some reason it hurts worse than his anger. “My sex life isn’t your job, Beatrice.”
“Neither is fetching coffee from Brooklyn, but you seem to enjoy watching me run,” I shoot back, gaining volume to cover the hot-cold confusion boiling beneath my skin.
He leans in so close I grow dizzy with his cedar scent. “What is your job, then, Bea?”
My nickname on his lips sounds too comfortable, too tempting, and I want him to call me that again.
I try to think of something smart—something that’ll push him just enough to earn a laugh, or a groan, or whatever counts as a win with Noah King. But my whole brain is jammed up by the fact that he’s closer to me than he’s been for the whole year, six inches from my face, with his deep, dark eyes boring into me. I can feel the tingle on my cheeks, on my jaw, down the slope of my neck. I want to look away, buthewants me to look away, and I refuse to let him win.
“My job is whatever you say it is, remember?” I force a little sarcasm into my voice, but it cracks at the edges.
His smile is slow and mean. “Then stop worrying about my Friday nights,” he orders, but there’s nothing remotely professional in the way he says it. There’s a dare sparkling in the silence between us. A wire that’s about to snap, and we both are waiting to see who’ll be the one to do it.
“Why didn’t you meet Amanda on Friday?” My voice comes out breathy while my teeth keep biting my lower lip. I can’t command my muscles to stay put because, apparently, my body is hellbent on trying to seduce this specimen with anatomical inadequacies.
I watch his throat work as he swallows. The question hangs between us like a loaded gun, and I realize I’ve pushed too far. But I can’t take it back now.
“Because,” he says, his voice rough as gravel, “I was too busy thinking about someone else.”
My heart stops. Actually stops. The office around us fades to white noise—the hum of computers, distant phone calls, the elevator dinging down the hall. All of it disappears until there’s nothing but Noah’s dark eyes boring into mine and the admission hanging in the air like smoke after a big fire.
“Someone else,” I repeat, my voice barely a whisper.
He straightens slowly, putting distance between us, but his gaze never leaves my face. “Don’t read into it, princess.”
But I already am. I’m reading into every breath, every flicker of every pause, every word he didn’t say. I’m reading into the way he blocked Amanda’s number and the lunch he left on my desk yesterday. I’m reading into Friday night and the way he’s looking at me right now, like I’m a puzzle he can’t wait to solve.
“You stood her up,” I say, and it’s not a question anymore.
His jaw ticks. “I had work to do.”
“You had work to do,” I repeat, tasting the lie on my tongue. “On a Friday night. After you sent me on a wild-goose chase to the archives.”
He steps back, running a hand through his hair, and I know I’ve hit something true. The careful distance he’s been maintaining all week cracks just enough for me to see through.
“Don’t,” he warns, but his voice lacks its usual force.
“I’m not,” I snap, but my voice wavers. I’m pushing, and he’s pushing back, and we’re teetering on the edge of something that feels dangerous. Thrilling. Inevitable.
Noah’s eyes flash with frustration. It’s a look I’ve seen before, on the island, in moments when we got too close and the air crackled with possibility. But we’re not on the island anymore. We’re here, in this glass fishbowl of an office, with a year’s worth of bitterness waiting between us.
“Then drop it,” he growls, but I can’t. I won’t.
“Why?” I challenge, rising from my chair and circling my desk toward him. We’re toe-to-toe now, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body. “Afraid I’ll figure out your game?”
“There’s no game,” he says, but his voice is a shade too rough to sell it.
“Then you’re really bad at whatever this is,” I shoot back, chin up, pride stupidly leading the charge while my common sense begs for backup.
He looks at my mouth, and my heart actually trips. If he closes that last inch, I don’t know what I’ll do.
The universe chooses this moment to save me from myself in the form of Martin barreling down the hallway like a human confetti cannon.
“Emergency!” he declares, breathless, flinging a folder onto my desk. The socks theme today is bananas. Of course. Very fitting because someone’s inadequate banana has been on my mind a lot lately.
