“I’m fine,” I replied honestly. “Baird didn’t cheat on me.”
My boss didn’t look so certain, but her gaze moved to the dress. “Well, that’s stunning.”
“Yes, and it’s up for preorder so it’s not available yet, but I need to look amazing tonight, and I wondered if I could buy this with my discount?”
“No.” Christina shook her head but with a small smile. “Take it. A gift from Pennington’s as part of the campaign.”
I gaped at her. The dress was worth seven hundred pounds. “Are you sure?”
“Of course. I assume we’ll see it all over social media tonight. Marketing can make up a post later tagging the designer and the link to the preorder. I’ll talk to Hilary.”
“Thank you, Christina.” I meant it in more ways than one.
She gave me a kind smile but then shooed me out. “Now go work.”
I had every intention of going back to work, but first I needed to find the perfect pair of shoes to match my dress.
When I sat back down at my desk fifteen minuteslater, it occurred to me I might not just be dressing up to be seen tonight.
I might have been a grown woman, but I was also a woman with a developing crush on her best friend/fake fiancé, and I wanted him to notice me. Not just flirt casually like he always did but really notice me and think I was the most beautiful woman in the room.
“Oh, Maia.” I dropped my head in my hands, my words muffled, “You’re in big trouble.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BAIRD
It was official.
Maia MacLeod was trying to kill me.
She stared at me.
While the blood pounded in my ears and flew straight to my dick.
A minute ago, when I’d knocked on her flat door, she’d yelled “Come in!” and I’d marched inside, pissed off to find the door unlocked. “I could have been anyone, My!” I called to her, stopping in the doorway of her living room/kitchen. She wasn’t in there.
“I knew it was you from the camera app!” Her voice traveled from the direction of her bedroom.
“I’m just sayin’, keep your flat door locked. You ready?”
“Putting on my shoes.” She sounded a little out of breath.
And then she was there—my lecture on security for a single woman living alone dying in my throat—standing in front of me in a dress that somehow managed to be classy as fuck and the sexiest piece of clothing I’d ever seen in my life. Maia looked like she was ready to hit thered carpet. Her dark hair flowed down her back and shoulders, sleek, straight. I wanted to fist all that hair in my hands as I?—
“Fuck,” I huffed out, scrubbing a hand down my beard.
The dress had a modest neckline, but it sculpted to her breasts, her small waist, her luscious hips, and there was a split in the hem that was definitely going to kill me. Her long, gorgeous tan legs looked even longer in the sky-high, barely there strappy sandals she wore.
“My face is up here.” Her words trembled with amusement.
I reluctantly dragged my gaze back to her face. Her makeup was more than usual. Smoky eyes that made the light violet color even more striking.
“Do you even know how beautiful you are?” My voice was rough with the magnitude of my feelings for her.
Maia appeared happily surprised and shocked the hell out of me by asking, “Really?” Like she didn’t know.
That pissed me off. It pissed me off that Maia MacLeod had lived thirty years on this planet and was so damaged by her worthless mum and her moronic ex that she didn’t know she was a fucking goddess among us mere mortals.
