Page 30 of The Perfect Heart

No matter how badly I wanted it.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Halle’s words were soft, a caress on my cheek, her gaze flicking between my eyes and mouth, and suddenly, I wasn’t sure how long I could hold on to my self-control.

I had just told Nicole we had to be professional, and here I was, breaking my rule not fifteen minutes later.

Almost without thought, I leaned forward, my head dipping just slightly, our gazes locked like magnets, our breath mingling. She was close, so close—

“Nash?”

Halle tore away from me, wiping at her mouth like we had actually kissed, to face Joseph, who was leaning in the door.

Damn it, why hadn’t I closed it? Locked it?

“Hey, Joseph. We were just talking about work.” Halle’s voice had an edge of hysterics, and she waved at me as she scurried out. “I’ll talk to you later, Nash, okay?”

And then she was gone.

Joseph’s eyebrows shot up, his attention trailing after her before returning to me. “What the hell was that about?”

“Work, just like she said,” I grumbled, dropping into my chair and pulling myself closer to the desk to hide the raging bulge in my jeans.

But hiding it didn’t make it go away, desire and heat pulsing through me until I had half a mind to go after Halle and pull her into the storage room. Which I couldn’t do because this was my bar, and we were all professionals here. Just as I had told Nicole.

It would still make it difficult to get through the rest of the day with some semblance of normalcy.

Damn it.

Chapter 15

Halle

“DAMN IT.”

I muttered the words under my breath, repeatedly jamming my finger at the print button as the receipt machine sputtered and jolted. The table I was trying to cash out was readying to leave, packing their takeout boxes, laughing and planning the rest of their evening.

They wouldn’t be happy if it took forever to get their receipt.

A glance around told me everyone else was busy, so I turned and trotted back to the office, hoping Nash wouldn’t be too busy to help. But this would just take a second and would keep paying customers happy.

And Nash wouldn’t get upset if I was the one disturbing him, even if I was one of his employees here and not his best friend. In fact, I had a sneaking suspicion he would be happy about it, especially after whatever had happened in his office the previous day.

I wasn’t sure what it had been, even though it had been on my mind the rest of the day and into the night, where it had intruded on my dreams. Not that I had minded leaving my nightmares of Jack behind for a night, but I had woken with an odd mix of confusion and longing.

I had experienced longing before—the quickening of my heartbeat, the way my stomach clenched and little sparks of electricity dancing through my chest and across my skin, longing mixed with desire and excitement. But I had never once experienced it with Nash, and it was throwing me so off that I almost felt like I would tumble off my feet at any second. I’d already dropped a tray with plates on the way to be washed and spilled a glass of beer, though not, thankfully, on a customer.

The odd thing was, I wasn’t even sure what had happened in Nash’s office yesterday. One second, we had been talking about Nicole and the fact that Nash was decidedly single. The next, we had stood so close together I could feel his breath on my skin, see how his pupils dilated, tense as he began to lean toward me, his gaze locked on my mouth. My heart rate had spiked, and I had barely dared breathe as time slowed to a crawl in anticipation, an odd mix of eagerness, confusion, and uncertainty churning in my stomach.

A rush of relief washed over me when Joseph interrupted the moment before anything could happen, and I had high-tailed it out of Nash’s office. Thankfully, the rest of the day had kept both of us entirely busy, too busy to revisit anything. But an odd disappointment had stayed with me, too, an emptiness where the excitement had been.

The question was, had I really wanted Nash to kiss me? Or was this some odd offshoot of my gratefulness for his care at such a difficult time in my life? Was I rebounding from Jack, straight to the one man I could always count on? Were these odd feelings for Nash nothing more than a grateful heart and a sense of safety I was mistaking for attraction?

Or was it something else?

Could it be something else? My pulse quickened when I thought about it, though whether it was anticipation or anxiety, I didn’t know.

And worse, what if I had imagined it all? What if I had misread the situation entirely, and Nash had simply been conversing with me as the close friends we once had been?

The only thing I did know was that I wouldn’t say anything unless Nash did. At least, not yet. I had decided that morning, tired of my head spinning, that I would wait to see what happened. It was far too early for me to engage in a relationship anyway, not so soon after Jack.