Nope. He wasn’t thinking about that. Whatever moments in the past he’d thought had happened were just them being human. She was impossible to ignore. He was not oblivious to the way he looked.Just human.
Another message dinged, but he wouldn’t look. If she had an itinerary change, she could send it as she’d done yesterday. Looking at text messages opened him up to Romeo-esque comments and pictures he didn’t want to see.
“Oh my God.” Jules walked out of the bathroom, her phone outstretched.
Her face made his stomach drop to the floor. She looked as if she might pass out. He moved toward her.
Blushing, she squeezed her eyes shut. “These pictures.”
The photos were why they’d done this. He couldn’t decipher her expression. “What’s wrong with them?”
“Look, Rhys.” She shoved her phone into his face.
“Whoa, shit.” Their picture slammed into him like an avalanche. It knocked the air from his chest and sparked lust.
“That’s…” The image captured the very second she’d melted against him. And for the first time, he had a taste of the invasiveness that she welcomed into her life. “Us.”
That moment, that kiss, had been all his. Now the world had it too.
Of course they did. That was the point of going onto the beach, for a hidden-away photographer to take a picture of their fake relationship, which they had soft launched on her social media yesterday.
Yet he couldn’t look away. He couldn’t deny everything he’d experienced last night and felt possessively deep inside him. No wonder Viv and Scar had said something.
“I don’t know how you handle this,” he muttered, turning from her phone.
Actually, he did know how Jules handled it. She faked everything.
“You—” He stopped short at the sight of her lips pinched together and her wide eyes too bright and shiny, like she might cry. “Hey. It’s fine.”
“It’s not.” She spun back into the bathroom, slamming the door in his face.
He held up a hand to knock but didn’t have the slightest clue what to say. Closing his eyes, he pressed his forehead to the door. He would never be able to erase that photo from his mind.
“Jules.” He swallowed hard. That picture was exactly what Sloane had wanted. It was what Jules wanted. Except it was too much, too real, too exposing. “I shouldn’t have kissed you like that,” he said too quietly for her to hear.
Not then. Not there. Really… not ever.
He’d been playing a stupid game and hadn’t realized the long-term effects. Everything could change for them, and he could want her all day long, but was it worth ruining their working relationship? They’d done this for so long that it felt like losing her was the same as losing part of him.
Did he want her? Who in their right mind didn’t? She was talented and gorgeous, but that had never stirred anything in his chest—until last night, then again today. Maybe it had before. He couldn’t analyze their past when she was crying in the bathroom.
That was the bigger problem, and he didn’t understand why. This wasn’t anything new to her.
Then it hit him like Sloane Ellis had dropped a ton of headshots on him. Jules Lowry was a commodity people bought, sold, and traded. Nothing was real—except maybe for last night.
Nothing was real, and that was why she was so lonely and why she’d agreed to marry Mason.
How the hell had Rhys missed that? He could literally see everything, remember everything, but had missed a monumental detail.
The bathroom door opened. Her eyelashes were damp, but the tears were gone. “Will you take me for coffee, please?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I can get it and bring it back if you want.”
She shook her head. “I’m sure someone out there needs to take our picture.”
Rhys curled his hands into fists so that he wouldn’t reach for her. That wasn’t an option. Rhys clamped his molars then ordered his jaw to relax. “Jules.”
“What? Don’t look at me like that. Okay?”
