I scrunched my nose, searching for features John definitely didn’t possess. “Short. Ginger. Funny. And tanned. Very tanned.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” I cleared my throat.
“Am I distracting you from your work?”
“No. But your gigantic body is sucking all the oxygen out of the room and, frankly, it’s a waste of perfectly good air.”
I said it too fast. Way too fast. Which made it obvious: yes, he was distracting me. I wondered if this was how he’d made it so far in life—charm, a husky voice, and an annoyingly lucky set of genes.
“Don’t you have work to do too?” I asked. He still hadn’t gotten up.
He shrugged. “I’m nearly done.”
Crap. He was gliding through his revisions like butter on hot toast, and I was… not. Panic prickled beneath my skin. Imposter syndrome knocking, hard. Of course I wasn’t going to win this thing. Had I ever really believed I could compete withJohn Kater?
But I shook it off. Ihadmade it this far. Top five out of over ten thousand. I could do this.
Iwoulddo this.
I closed my eyes and emptied my head, counting backwards from twenty. 15, 14, 13… 9, 8, 7…
“Did you fall asleep?”
I groaned. “If you don’t mind, I’m trying to concentrate.”
He tilted his head, thumb dragging over his lips, one elbow on the armrest. “Looked like sleeping to me.”
Before I knew what I was doing, I tossed a pillow at him.
He caught it, of course. And smiled like the devil.
“This is pointless,” I muttered, slamming my laptop shut and kicking the blanket off. “Good night.”
“What did you need the picture for?”
I froze. “I don’t know what you mean.” My face went hot.
“Sure you do.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “I wanted a group picture for social media, like I said.”
“You don’t have social media.”
My spine snapped straight. “How do you know?”
He tapped a finger against his lips. “I looked you up.”
That… felt... weird. “What? Why?” My words came clipped, armed to the teeth.
He shrugged. “Just checking out the competition.”
I crossed my arms, which pulled my shirt up. Cool air brushed the tops of my thighs. I pretended not to notice that John probably had a perfect view of my polka dot underwear.It was laundry day when I packed, okay?
“If you say so.”
He sighed and leaned forward. “Why don’t you stay and drink your tea, Nora?”
