God, I hated that. I hated everything about it.
The desperation of it. The fact that it took approximately four minutes. The fact that I needed to do it at all. That my brain couldn't conjure anything except her standing at my sink with her hair down and her chest bare and that expression on her face when she turned around and found me standing there.
I have a fake date with her in ninety minutes.
I get up, peel off my shirt, and head to the shower.
I fucking hate her.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BLAIRE
"Are you nervous, Blaire?"
Camille asks it from the chair behind me where she's closing out her laptop, and I realize my hands have found the hemline of my dress that I've been fussing with for the last thirty seconds without noticing.
I drop the fabric.
"I wouldn't say nervous." I turn back to the mirror. "This man vehemently dislikes me, and I don't know why. And now he's seen me practically naked."
I cringe at the memory. Ugh. On the one day I don't wear a bra.
"Well, this morning you said you considered robbing the bank next door, so you'd get arrested and couldn't go anywhere for the next few days."
I wave a hand. "Semantics."
I truthfully don't know why I'm nervous. It's not even a real date. But I'm determined to get Bennet to at least stop openly hating me the way he seems to, and even if my brain knows the distinction, my anxiety can't help but remind me that I've never actually been on a real date before. Colt didn't wine and dine me. We married in high school, and that was that.
Also — and I'm acknowledging this purely as an objective observation — Bennet Sullivan knocks Colt completely out of the park. The man is insanely hot. And for one brief second this morning, before he schooled his expression back into contempt, I could have sworn I saw something else on his face entirely. His eyes were definitely what the BookTok folks would call hooded.
"You look amazing," Camille says. "You've got this."
I stand a little taller, grateful that she knows what I need to hear at this moment. She's right. I do look amazing; thanks to the small glam team she brought in and the dress. She picked up a burgundy silk slip, loose and flowing but somehow still elegant, paired with turquoise sky-high heels that make a statement I never would have thought to make myself. I don't have Camille's eye for these types of outfits, but I benefit enormously from it.
A knock at the door interrupted our conversation, and my stomach drops exactly the way I said it wouldn't.
"Calm down." Camille is already moving toward it. "It's just my food order. You look like you're about to jump out of your skin." She glances back at me with a grin she isn't trying to hide. "Not nervous. Ha!"
"Shut it, Cammy."
She opens the door.
It is not her fucking food order.
Bennet stands in my door, propped up against my door frame with his hands in his pockets. Fuck, does this man know how to wear a suit. The way the midnight black brings out the dark features of his eyes is a little mesmerizing. Even dressed down with the two top buttons of his black button-up shirt undone, he is drool-worthily gorgeous. It is hard not to stare,even with the bitterness I'm carrying around like a carry-on bag every time I see him.
Camille is blatantly staring at him with her mouth open, then finally she looks back at me.
Her expression says she understands several things simultaneously and is going to have a great deal to say about all of them later.
"Mr. Sullivan." I step forward before she can open her mouth. "This is my assistant, Camille. Cammy, this is our client, Bennet Sullivan."
"Pleasure," Camille says, with a warmth that is approximately forty percent professional and sixty percentfuck me, daddy.
Bennet's eyes have already moved past her to me. For a moment it's the same look from the restroom this morning — dark and hooded, unhurried. He runs his hand slowly along his jaw, and I realize I'm not imagining it. He likes what he sees, and the knowledge of it gives me a confidence boost I wasn't expecting and absolutely needed.
"You ready?" he asks.
