“Woo!” She wriggled off his lap. “As much as I appreciate the vibration, do you need to grab that?”
“Nope,” he said, reaching for her softness again.
But she pointed to his pocket. “It could be a new customer. Grow your business!”
It was, in fact, a new customer, the third one that day. Richard and Byron’s wedding had been excellent advertising. He moved to the kitchen table to set up a meeting for an October event while Josie fanned herself and pantomimed overheating, presumably because of his business-phone voice.
He rejoined her on the sofa at the conclusion of the call, and she extended her hand in a fist bump. “Kicking ass! Taking names! I told you I’d make you big!”
He gently knocked his knuckles into hers. “I’m just taking it one cake at a time.”
“No! Keep dreaming,” she commanded. “We’ve turned the downstairs into a functional kitchen and customer area, and we’ve made the upstairs your home. What do we need to do next?”
We. Over and over and over again. He grasped that little word and shoved it into the center of his chest, using it to stoke the fire that she’d kicked to life that first night on the train. What he’d initially seen as volatile and bossy was actually passionate and, well, bossy. And while he hungered for the color she injected into his life, he also feared that she was getting the short end of that bargain. He might craveher, but she craved noise, excitement, drama, all things he wasn’t equipped to provide. Once she’d built up his business, she’d move on to her next project, and he needed to prepare himself for that.
But that didn’t mean they couldn’t satisfy a mutual craving right now.
“Next? We break in the couch properly,” he told her. “Strip.”
Turned out, she followed orders just as well as she gave them.
Twenty-Four
“Success!” Josie clicked the Update button and punched her fists into the air in triumph, then looked guiltily over her shoulder at Finn’s closed bedroom door.
She and Erik had spent the night at her apartment, and she didn’t want to disturb her roommate any more than she already had the night before. Even in her tamest sexual encounters with Erik, she tended to get a little… vocal.
“Check it out,” she said more softly, shifting her cross-legged position to face him on the couch. “Your website is officially finished.”
He took the laptop from her, a tiny spark of excitement flashing in his blue eyes. Josie of three months ago would never have recognized it, but at this point she could see how jazzed he was to check out the finished product. She’d launched a bare-bones site during the dark period when she thought he was engaged, and since the wedding, she’d spent all her free time perfecting it.
She held her breath as his gaze flicked across the screen. The homepage slider offered shot after shot of his creations, looking pristine and elegant against the backdrop she’d set up in his old apartment. “Not too shabby, right?”
She drank in the sight of him smiling softly over her work. The past two weeks had been a challenge. Her schedule of evening events hadn’t meshed well with his client meetings and the time he’d been spending with Gina on some tech upgrades for the bakery. The two of them always seemed to be on opposite ends of the city, and when they’d managed to get together, it had always been too rushed.
Not only did she miss him, but they’d left their relationship maddeningly undefined, and the limbo was seriously messing with her. Now that they were finally enjoying a leisurely morning together, she wanted to use the opportunity to suss out how he was feeling about theyou, me, weof it all. Was she just a hookup with an expiration date, or were they something more? What could she possibly expect from a guy who’d invented a fiancée a month ago to keep her at a distance? Why wasn’t he dropping any hints, dammit?
“This looks great, babe,” he said.
Babe. It was the second time he’d called her that, and although it wasn’t terribly creative as far as nicknames went, a non-nickname guy calling her a term of endearment had to meansomething, right?
She was distracted from the implication of “babe” by the memory ofhowhe’d made his no-nickname policy clear. Heat rolled through her body in a slow wave, but before she could wrench the computer from his hands to demand another demonstration, he clicked on the About section and grimaced.
“Stop it,” she ordered before he could say a word. “You look magnificent in that picture.”
“I look like a smug asshole.”
She nudged his shoulder with her own. “You look like the talented artist that you are. And that mysterious little smile you’ve got going on will be the thing that pays off your mortgage in a few years.”
It was true; her light kit and the crumbling plaster in his old apartment had done wonders, but mostly she’d allowed his stark beauty to take center stage. He looked steady and competent, warm and thoughtful.
He looked like a man she could love.
The thought popped unbidden into her brain, stealing her breath. This was new emotional terrain; her previous relationships had been too brief and too shallow to fill the great chasm of need inside her. But here she was wondering if this reserved man could give her what she’d spent a lifetime chasing.
Her jokes, her clever words. All of it crumbled as she turned to study his face. When she first met him, she’d considered him as inscrutable as granite, but she could read him now. The lip twitch. The shift in the muscle near his eye. He was pleased. Hell, he was downright ecstatic. But was it the website or was it her?
His gaze flicked to her, and his mouth curled into that private smile that was hers alone. It made her bold. Maybe he’dwelcomeher feelings. Maybe he’d even return them someday. She opened her mouth to tell him everything, all her fears and her hopes, all the soft yearnings blossoming in her heart.
