But he touched her as if she were a priceless piece of eighteenth-century Delftware.
He tilted his head forward, until he encompassed her world. “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” she whispered back, and he nodded, but he didn’t look convinced.
He’d asked the same question when they’d checked into their lavish suite, which—to her mingled horror and excitement—contained only one bed. One enormous, fluffy-looking bed. But she hadn’t answered him then. Instead, she’d merely told him they needed to take photos before their tour of the island. Which was true, but also a way to buy herself time to think.
“Now put both arms around his waist and smile, Callie. Thomas, bend your neck and rest your forehead against hers.” Gladys waited for them to follow directions, then tsked in disapproval. “Tighter, please. You should be pressed right up against one another.”
If she moved any closer, even by a millimeter, she might spontaneously combust. And she couldn’t decide whether the prospect of burning to ash in Thomas’s arms sounded more frightening or irresistible.
So instead of shifting, she stayed completely still.
Thomas studied her face for a long moment, and then flicked a glance at Gladys. “Just a moment, please.”
Ducking his head, he murmured in Callie’s ear, “I don’t want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable. Just say the word, and I’ll make up some excuse why a certain pose doesn’t work for me. Or you can pinch my arm. Or something.”
Sincerity and concern fairly glowed from every line of his face, even as unmistakable heat poured from that long, lean body of his. Even as she stepped closer, and his eyes went heavy-lidded. Even as his fingertips on the flesh of her back tightened and trembled, biting pleasurably through her blouse before loosening once more.
“Don’t worry,” she told him.
He didn’t appear satisfied with that answer. “I mean it, Callie.”
“I know.”
She couldn’t help smiling at him, just as Gladys had requested. And when she did, he blinked a few times. As if she really had blinded him.
Maybe she’d been confused up in their suite, but given a few minutes to think, given a few minutes to feel how he touched her, Callie could only reach one conclusion.
Unless Thomas planned to make his big-screen debut in the immediate future, he wasn’t play-acting for the cameras when he held her hand, looked at her with tender affection in those blue, blue eyes, or expounded on what he—bafflingly—considered her many virtues.
He was into her. Big time.
How had she missed it?
Had the haze of her frustration obscured who he really was, how he really felt, from her? Or had he totally hidden his feelings while she’d dated another man?
She didn’t know, just as she didn’t quite know what to do with those feelings. Whether she should rebuff them as gently as possible or explore what they might mean for her. For them.
Because yes, she could almost smell the ozone from the electricity they were generating. But she’d also spent the last several months mired in anger and frustration because of him. She’d cried after her shifts and cursed his name and prayed he’d contract a heinous cold and miss a week of work.
Maybe the next several days would help her find the right way forward. She hoped so, because right now, she didn’t know what the hell to do.
But she did know how to feel.
Cherished. Lustful. And above all else, awful.
Absolutely, completely awful.
Because all those months she’d been bitching about him to her friends and silently fuming to herself under a pasted-on smile at the desk, he’d been admiring her perfume and leather boots and marveling at her librarian abilities.
Maybe he’d deserved her rancor; maybe he hadn’t.
Either way, it didn’t feel good to have disliked a kind, decent man who said her smile blinded him and her anger could stop the tides. Who held her like treasure. And no matter what she decided to do about him—about them—she was never, ever going to complain about him again.
He didn’t need to know about her issues with his work style.
And he definitely didn’t need to know she’d once dreaded the very sight of him.
