That same wicked smile—the one from the casino and not the office—filled his face.
For a heartbeat, he wasn’t her boss.
She wasn’t his assistant.
They weren’t bound by job titles or expectations or all the invisible rules between them they’d agreed upon.
He was just a man out for his morning run.
And she was a woman who couldn’t stop remembering the heat of his body, the press of his hands or the way she’d finally let go that night.
It took everything she had not to let it show.
Because here, they were equals.
Kind of.
If she ignored the part where he ran a billion-dollar empire and she made sure chocolate was in his desk at all times.
“On your way back or just getting started?” he asked.
“Returning home, though I’m going to assume you live back there?”
One of those condos she was admiring. No shock to her if she really thought of it.
“I do,” he said. “And are you in the Seaport District, or crossing over on the Harborwalk?”
“If you run alongside me, you’ll see,” she said, grinning.
“Ahh, going to keep me guessing. I like that.”
This was the man from their one night, where he didn’t know who she was.
The one who bantered with her, made her body sing, then scared her enough to escape before they could talk again.
They were talking now. And she liked it.
Maybe way too much.
She waited a beat, tried to form her thoughts, then blurted out, “This probably isn’t smart.”
“What?” he asked with a half-smile. “Having a running partner? People do it all the time.”
“Is that what it is?”
He laughed. “Nora. Our feet are moving in sync. If you want me to speed up or slow down I will. But this is the direction I was going anyway. Your call.”
She was being ridiculous. They weren’t strangers.
Not even close.
“It’s okay. I guess, I don’t know. This whole thing is still taking me time to wrap my head around.”
They fell into a rhythm, their strides matching. She moved a little closer to him as they came up on runners in the other direction. Not tripping over the other, but as if reading each other’s moves, just like they had that night.
The push and pull. The pump and grind.
The arch and moan.
