What the hell was she doing?
“Did you approve these?” Hope’s voice was back to that panicked, screeching quality.
Angelica again breathed deep, searching endlessly for the center that Hope always seemed to throw her off of. She rolled her shoulders and closed her eyes, reaching down to plant her fingers on the tabletop to keep herself as steady as possible.
“You know that I don’t deal with my social media.” Her voice was quiet and calm, which in the middle of this conversation was quite a damn feat. Because she felt anything but calm. Her heart raced to the point that it was hard to breathe, but when she did manage to drag in hot fresh air because the AC still wasn’t working in this fucking room, she was greeted with Hope’s scent and nothing else. Her entire body was taut, frozen in place because she wasn’t sure she could move even if she wanted to. She was locked here, stuck here, tethered down because Hope wouldn’t budge a damn inch to give her space.
“You pay her though.”
Lyric.She must have said something to Hope throughout the time they’d met up in the last few weeks and months. She was proud of what she was doing, and from what Angelica had looked at before, she wasn’t doing a bad job at it. And in all honesty, these new photos and posts weren’tbad. They just implied something.
Something that was very wrong.
Or right.
But either way, it was something that she and Hope weren’t talking about and were doing nothing about. Angelica breathed slowly. “Lyric does my social media, and I do let her have quite the range of freedom with it. For the record, I didn’t know she’d posted these.”
It took absolutely everything in her to keep her voice calm, edging on monotone. Because inside, she was a tornado of raging hormones and desires, but she’d sworn to herself over and over again that she wouldn’t.
Thattheycouldn’t.
She wouldn’t be the one to make a move or to do something that would put Hope’s entire family at risk of falling apart. If Hope made that decision…
Angelica let that thought trail off because she didn’t want to finish it. Instead, she finally looked up and made eye contact with Hope. It was as if the whole world just stopped moving. Her heart rate slowed. She couldn’t look away from Hope’s eyes, from the beauty and honesty but also the fear and worry that she found there. That was what she loved about Hope—she never hid what she was feeling. Everything was there in full blatant honesty for the taking.
And yet that never seemed to bother Hope.
Angelica’s lips parted, her entire body pushing its weight into her toes as she leaned impossibly closer. She breathed raggedly in and out, her entire being resting on whatever Hope was going to do or say next. Would that anger be gone?
“How did younotknow?” Hope threw at her before pausing. Her gaze dropped from Angelica’s eyes to her lips… and they lingered there.
Were they even talking about the Instagram posts anymore?
Angelica wanted so much to lean in and taste Hope’s lips, to fully remember what it felt like to be pressed against her, to touch her. She was a live wire waiting for it to happen, but it didn’t. There’d be so much harm in that if she did it, so much backlash that she’d have to face. And in her opinion, Hope had made it clear that she wasn’t looking for that.
Not now.
Probably not ever.
“Angel…” Hope murmured, her gaze still not lifting from Angelica’s lips.
“I don’t police my employees,” Angelica whispered. “But I’ll talk to her about them.”
“She needs to take them down.” Hope finally looked up into Angelica’s eyes and immediately turned away to stare at the phone. Her cheeks were flushed, that gentle rosy hue that Angelica longed to see in a woman. She knew that she lookedgood, and she knew that it affected people. But to see it in Hope’s gaze now? In her body? In the way she held herself? That held a thrill that she didn’t quite expect.
Because Hope was new to this.
She’d never been with a woman before, and try as she might, that did add a little something special to the way Hope was reacting to her now. A tease of first time, or new experiences, of what would happen if they truly were to break down this last barrier.
Angelica closed her eyes at that thought.
It was nothing more than a dream, and she just had to keep reminding herself of that. Hope wouldn’t leave her husband, and she certainly wouldn’t leave her daughter—not that Angelica would ask her to do that ever. But she wasn’t someone who was going to tear her family apart. At least Angelica prayed she wasn’t, because they were going to need to keep some strong boundary lines up between them.
Hope pushed her hip into the table, her phone in her hands, and her eyes glued to it. “Do you know what these photos imply about us?”
Angelica’s heart skipped a beat. “Nothing that’s true, so it doesn’t matter what it implies.”
“But…” Hope trailed off, raising her gaze to meet Angelica’s again. Her full lips were parted as if she was going to say something else, but she didn’t. She’d full on stopped.
