“Your kitchen is a shrine to starting your day off right,” he says, holding the bowl and spoon out for me. My heart does a little flip in my chest.
“Oh. Thank you.” I take the bowl and turn back to my wardrobe. All of the colors blend together and my mind blanks on where the skirts, the blouses, the dresses hang. Suddenly, I don’t know how to dress myself. He’s still standing there, so I face him and make a show of taking a bite of granola.
He cracks his toes. His feet are big. And hairy. And so absurdly masculine in the soft hues of my walk-in closet that for a moment I think I understand foot fetishes.
“You should wear that red dress.” He gestures to a wine-red dress with long sleeves and a low neckline. “You look amazing in red.”
I frown in an attempt to hide my blush. “That’s not exactly work appropriate.”
The V isdeep.
“You could wear this blazer.” He flicks the sleeve of a navy blue blazer hanging on the other side of the closet. “How much time do I have?” he asks.
I blink, distracted by his chest, the peppering of hair there, his nipples, a dark reddish-brown. Crunching the granola, I swallow and it almost gets lodged in my throat, it’s so dry. “Ten minutes,” I croak.
“Yeah,” he says with a smile. “Because you took too long in the shower.”
I turn away before he can see me smile. I eat the rest of my breakfast standing up in the closet. From the bathroom comes an electric guitar and the echoing bang of drums, a wail that leads into a rap song. Wesley’s music reverberates but his voice is even louder, belting out the lyrics.
It’s obnoxiously loud and the complete opposite of how I usually start my day. But by the time the song is over, my head is bobbing.
I’m in my home office when he calls for me from down the hall. “Corrine?”
“I’m coming,” I snap. I can’t help it. He showered faster than me, he made me my favorite breakfast without even asking, and he picked out a great outfit. And now I can’t get whatever that song he was blasting in my bathroom out of my head.
“I’m sorry,” I say, stopping in front of him with my bag over my shoulder and files in my arms. “I’m not usually this disorganized.”
“I figured,” he says, pulling a few files and my bag from my hands, gesturing for me to lead the way out.
“So...” He scratches the back of his leg with his shoe as we wait for the elevator. “Can I, uh...bum a ride to work?” He smiles in a way I should find obnoxious, but is really just charming.
“Everyone will see.”
“You could let me off around the corner,” he counters. “Plus, otherwise, I’ll be late. And my boss hates it when I’m late.”
He bumps his shoulder with mine and smiles and I can’t help but smile back. I feel like this smile is giving away too much about myself and what I’m feeling.
That I’m so thankful he showed up last night. That I liked getting ready with him this morning, even if it has me feeling completely off-kilter.
So I do it grudgingly.
“Fine. But around the corner.” I point my finger at him as we step off the elevator into the parking garage to make my point. I review the day’s schedule and things we’ll need to do when we get in on the drive over. If I can just get back into my routine, into work-mode, I’ll be able to stop thinking about the way he looked last night, as he came in the dim glow of the candles.
The car shifts forward a few inches as I put it into park.
“Shit.”I was so focused I never even realized we’d already made it to work.
I slouch down in my seat and try to peer out the windows. He leans over and places his hand on my thigh. I tense.
He gives me a gentle squeeze. “Hey. Don’t worry. I’ll get out first and take the stairs into the lobby. No one will know we drove in together. I promise.”
My jaw is sore from all of the clenching and unclenching I do. The problem is I realize I’m being a touch anal retentive about this. Letting him see me this flustered feels almost as embarrassing as getting caught by our coworkers. “Okay,” I say.
He hesitates. “I really want to kiss you goodbye.”
I want him to kiss me goodbye, too. “You’re going to see me in a few minutes upstairs,” I say instead of doing just that.
He smiles, crooked and boyish, andfine—I reach out, closing my fist over his sleeve. I pull him back to me and kiss him hard and quick. It’s not even close to good enough but he smiles again, popping out of the car and jogging to the stairs. My heart pounds long after the heavy door to the stairwell slams closed and I pull myself from the car.
