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She’d searched the bedding and bags surrounding them. He had halfheartedly helped while wholeheartedly chowing down on her food. Neither of them had found her missing keychain. It was like it had vanished into thin air.

“Just picture the audience in their underwear,” she said as she rifled again through her purse, which she’d hurriedly retrieved from outside.

“As I recall, when I win this bet, you won’t be wearing any underwear.” He leaned an elbow on one knee and offered up a sexy smile.

Her pulse raced against her throat, and she had to work extra hard to be offended. “No. I mean, yes, but…” She shut her eyes to recalibrate. “What I meant was, it’s easier to give a speech if you focus on talking to the people you know. Joanie or Clive…or me.” She returned to digging through her bag. “Or not me. Someone you like.”

“I like you.”

Such a simple sentiment, but for some reason, it hit her square in the chest.

“What?” He gave her a tender smile that was her favorite from his arsenal. “I do.”

“Sure, okay.” She tossed her handbag aside. “That explains the plastic spiders you’ve been hiding everywhere since we made this bet. Let’s see, one in my paperclips, one on top of my monitor…one inside my desk drawer.”

“I heard you scream from the other side of the building.” He grinned, inordinately pleased with himself.

She shook her head. He was a lot like having a bratty brother around. He dragged a hand through his hair and chuckled, the flash of his white teeth offsetting the dark shadow of his jaw.

Maybe “brother” was a poor choice of word.

“I’m not exactly on your top-ten list, either.” He leaned back on his forearms. The air-filled bed shifted. “Can’t even get you to stand in as my date at a company dinner without adding it to the stakes of a bet.”

Despite the easy smile on his face, he sounded hurt.

“I— It’s not that.” What was his angle? Why would he care if the stuffy redhead from work turned him down? His black book was likely thicker than both testaments of the King James Bible. “You’re the one who made it part of the bet rather than ask me outright.”

He pushed himself up, and the air in the mattress shifted again. For a half-second, she forgot to breathe. She wasn’t sure what gave him the allure. The casual way he wore his hair, the mischievous spark in his eyes, or the way the lantern lit his face, making him look like a boy and a man at the same time.

“I asked you out before. You said you didn’t date coworkers.”

“I don’t. But that was before…before I knew you.”

He watched her for a few sweaty seconds.

She tried not to fidget.

“Would you have said yes if I had asked you recently?”

“You mean if you asked…” She licked her dry lips. “Just…asked?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

He blew out a laugh. “There ya go.”

“I respect our working relationship too much to risk it,” she mumbled. But that wasn’t the full truth. The truth was her ex-boyfriend from her former job had raked her over the coals. Emmett had been the cause of her being forced to leave. She’d taken the brunt of the workplace rumors that came with dating him because she understood she was working in a male-dominated field. But then Emmett had betrayed her. He accused her of lacking ethics, of stealing his design. Unsurprisingly, the pompous assholes running Lewis & Becker had sided with him.

Not that she thought for one second that Marcus would accuse her of something that heinous…or that Joanie or Clive would believe him and then force her to leave. But when she started fresh at Cameron Designs, she’d vowed not to make the same mistake she’d made at L&B. She had been smarting so much from the injustice that she’d made Joanie swear not to tell Clive the real reason Lily had left her former firm.

Back then, freshly wounded and freshly shitcanned, she’d taken one look at Marcus and assumed he would chew her up and spit her out if given the opportunity. When he’d asked her out, it had only reinforced that fear. She’d concluded that he probably asked out every girl within earshot. And then she’d decided that she wouldn’t become one of many.

Looking at him now, she wondered if she’d made too many assumptions about him. Assumptions that had stuck, despite the evidence refuting them. Like the fact that, yes, he had dated a lot when she’d first been hired, but recently, not so much. He spent his nights at the office working late almost as often as she did. Now that she thought about it, his date to last year’s RSD dinner had seemed more like an acquaintance than a romantic prospect.

“You respect me. That’s a new one.” He tossed a few Corn Nuts into his mouth.

She’d never seen him with less than 110 percent confidence. What was going on with him?