She picked up her latte and took a long sip. When she set it down, her eyes were wet, and she wasn’t bothering to blink it away.
“Wednesday coffee. Is this what we’re doing now?”
“If you want.”
“I’d like that.”
“And lunch when we can. Walks. Texts. I’ll take whatever you’ll give me.”
“So we’re actually dating.”
“Are we?” He leaned forward. “Is that a problem?”
“No. It’s not.”
“Good.”
They sat with their coffee cooling. Outside, strangers passed the window.
“I have a meeting at eleven,” she said.
“I have a call at eleven thirty.”
“We should go.”
“Probably.”
Thursday came too slow and too fast.
Gabriel stood outside Tessa’s building at six fifty-five, hands in his pockets, trying to look like a man who wasn’t about to crawl out of his skin. He had changed his shirt three times. He skipped the tie. Left the top two buttons undone because he didn’t want anything formal between them.
He was losing his mind.
At seven exactly, he buzzed her apartment.
“Come up,” she said through the intercom.
He took the stairs two at a time to her fourth-floor apartment, where the door was already open.
She stood in the doorway in a simple black dress that skimmed her body like water, clinging to every curve he had spent weeks trying not to think about. Her hair was down. Her lips were a bold, unapologetic red that made every civilized thought evaporate from his head.
“Hi,” she said.
He forgot how to speak.
“You okay?”
“No.” His voice came out rough. “You look—” He stopped. Started over. “You look?—”
Pink touched her cheeks. “Is that a problem?”
“Yes.” He stepped into the doorway, close enough that her hair brushed his shoulder. “Because now all I want to do is forget we have dinner plans.”
The math was simple. Two hours across a candlelit table, or two hours behind a closed door with that dress. He was already hard, and she hadn’t even touched him yet.
“I’m trying hard to be a gentleman when all I want to do is—“ He caught himself. “We should go. Before I do something that gets us both in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
