At least she was trying to convince herself of that.
The top slammeddown on Karl’s laptop.
As if watching Meredith and Clay hug wasn’t bad enough, they’d gone upstairs and didn’t come right back down.
It didn’t bear thinking of what she might be doing up there. But just in case, he pulled up his list and made another tally of what he’d have to clean from her past.
28
BECOMING AN ADDICTION
“You’ve got a visitor.”
Clay was in his office when one of his men popped his head in three days later. “What?”
“There is a woman down there looking for you. She didn’t give her name.”
His office was on the upper level, allowing him to look down on production if he wanted to but not see the front entrance.
He switched the screen on his computer and looked at the camera to see Meredith in another one of her long cotton dresses, this time red. She had white and red little sneakers on her feet.
Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her big bag on her shoulder that held her wedding binders, her body almost not able to bear the weight.
They did nothing more than text a few times since he walked out of her place on Monday feeling more relaxed than he had in years.
The fact she knew he needed to think and have space might be more terrifying than the grip she had on him.
He went down the stairs to the front area.
She turned, a smile on her unpainted lips.
All he wanted to do was grab that dress and yank it up to see the treasures under it again.
She was becoming an addiction he wasn’t going to be able to manage.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too,” she quipped. “Come give me a kiss. Or are you too afraid someone might see you being human?”
He snorted, but complied. “Now what are you doing here?”
“I’m meeting a coworker to show them the barn for a wedding.”
“Oh. Did I know that?”
“You mean did I send you an email that you didn’t read?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” he said. “That.”
“No,” she said, grinning. “This was a last-minute thing. It’s a teacher at the middle school. She reached out and said that her fiancé had time today to look at the barn if I could squeeze it in. You have an event there this weekend. I didn’t think you’d mind. But I’ve got time and wanted to say hi.”
Meredith could get into the barn without him. She had the security codes. There was no reason she shouldn’t.
If he trusted her in his bed, he trusted her as an employee to do her job. She needed access for that.
“Hi,” he said.
She gave his arm a little nudge over his joking reply. “Can you show me around? I don’t know much about what you do, just what I like to drink.”
