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She lets her head fall to the side. “What does that mean?” she asks.

“I can’t help you, Avril.”

She rolls her eyes like she thinks I’m kidding, or want her to beg or something. “Come on! I need to hurry this up. Worth and Poppy are going to start looking in Manhattan if I don’t come up with a solution.”

I pause. “So? What’s the problem with that?” I ask. “Wouldn’t it be easier to have two hotels in New York rather than be traveling between two cities?”

“In some ways,” she says. “But where’s the fun in easy?”

It’s a great answer, because it’s not an answer. It’s like she’s borrowing from my playbook. I can’t hate her for it.

“So you want the Boston hotel. Your brother and sister want the New York hotel.”

“They’re happy with the Boston hotel if we can get the right site.”

“The site you can’t get.”

“Right.”

“Are you saying I’m your only hope?”

“My only hope?” She fixes me with a look. “So, Obi Wan Kenobi, are you going to help me or what?”

I let out a huge laugh at her Star Wars reference. I think I might have just fallen in love.

I shake my head. I want to help her. But for all the wrong reasons. “I can’t,” I say, honestly. “I can’t get what I need in this situation without⁠—”

“Without what?” she snaps impatiently.

“Without being a dick. I never mix the personal and the professional.”

“What?” she says.

“We have a personal relationship. It makes it tricky. Messy. And I don’t do messy.” It’s not that I never work with people I have personal relationships with. In fact, I try to have personal relationships with everyone I work with. I just don’t want to sleep with anyone I work with. It’s an important distinction. I’ve very deliberately kept my private life very private and my work life completely separate. I would never work with Bray or Deacon. Friendships cloud business decisions. My father learned that the hard way.

“You think I won’t be able to keep my hands off you? You’re not so irresistible, you know.”

I raise my eyebrows, and wait a beat so she can remember the countless orgasms she had the other night.

“Seriously,” she says. “If it makes you feel better, we can agree here and now that we’ll never have sex again.”

I sigh. “The problem is that I don’t want to agree to that. I’m into you.” As I say the words, I realize they’re true. I like this woman. I want to understand how she manages to get under my skin, how she manages to sneak past my defenses and get me talking about my dad.

Her cheeks flush, despite the fact that she’s trying to pretend that my confession irritates her.

“But if I tell you there’s no hope that we’re ever going to be a thing, then you could take on this project. Right?”

I shake my head slowly. “You’d never keep your end of the bargain.”

She laughs, incredulous. “Wow. You’re a real piece of work. You really do think you’re irresistible, don’t you?”

“I’m not saying I’m irresistible. I’m realistic. You can’t say we’ll never be a thing, because we’re already a thing. And that’s messy.”

“This is exhausting,” she says. “I don’t think it’s anything to do with the fact that you don’t want to get messy. I think we’d be forced to spend time together on this project, and then when I don’t fall in love with you, you’d have a bruised ego.”

“Oh, it’s not that. You’d definitely fall in love with me.” I shoot her a grin, and she rolls her eyes. “But like I said, it’s messy. And I don’t like messy.”

“From what little I know about your job, it’s the very definition of messy. You’re trying to get people together. Different people, different industries, different deals. There aren’t rules or boundaries.”